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History Cafe

History Cafe

By: Jon Rosebank Penelope Middelboe
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 True history storytelling at the History Café. Join BBC Historian Jon Rosebank & HBO, BBC & C4 script and series editor Penelope Middelboe as we give history a new take. Drop in to the History Café weekly on Wednesdays to give old stories a refreshing new brew. 90+ ever-green stand-alone episodes and building...

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Episodes
  • #11 Fidel Castro was not a communist - Ep 2 Why did Kennedy cause the Cuba Missile Crisis?

    #11 Fidel Castro was not a communist - Ep 2 Why did Kennedy cause the Cuba Missile Crisis?
    Sep 3 2025
    1959: The first country the new revolutionary president of Cuba visits is the United States of America. And he’s a big hit. The students at Princeton carry him on their shoulders. Castro wants a trade deal with the American government. So why does Kennedy fight the presidential election of 1960 on getting tougher than the Republicans with Cuba? (R)

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    29 mins
  • #10 'These missiles do not significantly alter the balance of power' - Ep 1 Why did Kennedy cause the Cuba Missile Crisis?

    #10 'These missiles do not significantly alter the balance of power' - Ep 1 Why did Kennedy cause the Cuba Missile Crisis?
    Aug 27 2025
    We have the memo to President Kennedy dated Day 2 of the crisis with his own security chiefs clarifying that the Soviet missiles on Cuba made ‘no significant difference.’ So why does October 1962 develop into the closest we’ve ever come to nuclear war? (R)

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    32 mins
  • #112 Loss, love and the struggle to stay alive in 1912

    #112 Loss, love and the struggle to stay alive in 1912
    Aug 20 2025
    Jon explains his decision to write an historical novel, A Spring Marrying. He discovered the extraordinary history of the sail trawlers working off the English coast before 1939 whilst making a film for C4. It was the men who crewed them that fascinated him the most. Down in Brixham, Devon, they had four crew – skipper, mate, deckhand, and a cookie who was often only 12 or so. Theirs was an unremitting routine. Danger and death were never far away: it was the most dangerous job in the land. Yet they earned a reputation as supreme, quietly proud seamen, religious, brilliantly able to navigate without charts and survive just about anything. Except, maybe, falling in love with the town’s most complicated young woman.

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    27 mins
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