Consistently Eccentric Joe Heathcote

This week we are trying to satisfy Emma's need for transport based history by talking about Claude Grahame-White, an early aviation engineer who loved to design planes, oh so many planes.
Convinced that planes were the key to future wars, Claude launched a one man crusade (sponsored by the Daily Mail) to ensure that the British would be the premier European force when it came to air power. Despite lacking both the creativity of the French and the discipline of the Germans. What resulted was a wild decade of creative output with dizzying highs and frustrating 3.3bhp lows.
Guest Host: Emma Heathcote

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In the second part of our discussion of the Darien scheme we cover the voyage to South America and the experiences of the would-be settlers once they arrived. This is a tale of incompetence and bad luck conspiring together to create a the perfect conditions for misery.
Even the endless naive optimism of William Paterson is no match for the sheer amount of reality that the expeditions experienced over the course of two harrowing years that almost bankrupted a country and set Scotland on the path to agreeing to the Act of Union.
Guest Host: Jack Heathcote

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This week we have a story so big that we will not be able to get through it all in one sitting. The tale of William Paterson and his dream of setting up a trading colony on the isthmus of Darien.
He was not bothered by the fact that he had never visited the place. By the fact that he could not get anyone to invest outside of Scotland. By the open hostility of the English East India Company and the lack of support from the King...
William knew that so long as he was in charge everything would be great, and it would only cost the low, low price of half of the totality of the Scottish economy.
Guest Host: Jack Heathcote

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This week we are dabbling in the world of organised religion to discuss a dissenting Christian Lay-preacher who is remembered to history for a singularly grizzly reason.
Starting out as a middle-class draper with all the advantages of a private education and tonnes of family connections it seemed like Edward Wightman would be living life on easy street (or as easy as it could be in Elizabethan England). Unfortunately his education turned out to be a bit more liberal than his parents might have expected, introducing him a world of non-conformist Christian worship and new-fangled religious ideas.
Still, so long as he kept his head down it was sure to be fine...
Guest Host: Ollie Green

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Many English people erroneously think that the last invasion of mainland Britain took place in 1066. While this was indeed the last successful invasion it was not the last time a military leader managed to get boots on the ground.
That honour goes to William Tate, an Irish-American working on behalf of the French to invade England in order to support republicanism in Ireland at the end of the 18th century. This week we follow his ill-fated mission, trying to decide if he was merely overly confident or downright delusional as he led his ramshackle force of men into the wilds of western Wales for the glory of the new French Republic.
Guest Host: Emma Heathcote

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John O Gaunt was a man who was loyal to a fault. As the third son of King Edward III he spent most of his life dutifully doing whatever his father, his brother or even his Nephew (King Richard II) wanted him to do.
Naturally this led to him being hated by the people of England and always seeming to be quite unhappy.
Eventually he decided that if he would never be king of England he may as well try to be king of somewhere, that somewhere being Castile in modern day Spain.
Join us this week to find out how he got on.
Guest Host: Evie Heathcote

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