23rd–29th June 2025 - Broad Chalke, Salisbury
The relationship between Queen Victoria and her Indian attendant Abdul Karim was deemed so controversial by her family that his existence was scrubbed from royal history upon her death. Shrabani Basu, whose book is now a feature film, explores how a young Indian Muslim came to play a central role at the heart of Empire at a time when independence movements in the sub-continent were growing in force.
Recorded at Chalke Valley History Festival 2018
Robin Rowland was an officer in Slim’s Fourteenth Army, fighting at the Battle of the Admin Box – the first significant victory against the Japanese – and then at the hell of Kohima and on through the final battles at Meiktila in Burma in 1945. His is an absolutely extraordinary story in which he saw truly terrible things but also witnessed immense courage, tragedy and camaraderie. Here he is in conversation with James Holland.
Audio from Chalke Valley History Festival 2018.
Sir Cecil Walter Hardy Beaton CBE was an English fashion, portrait and war photographer, diarist, painter, interior designer and an Oscar–winning stage and costume designer for films and the theatre. In this talk, his authorised biographer, Hugo Vickers, explores his legacy, a Renaissance man whose style and wit dominated so much of the 20th century.
The Suez Crisis of 1956 led the world to the brink of a nuclear conflict and saw the effective end of Britain’s role as a global superpower. At the centre of this drama was one of the Chalke Valley’s most prominent residents, British Prime Minister Anthony Eden. In this talk, Alex von Tunzelmann provides a blistering account of the machinations behind Eden’s catastrophic handling of the Suez Crisis.
Audio from Chalke Valley History Festival 2015 with Stephen Prince.
This lecture, recorded 100 years on, seeks to explain the Gallipoli campaign and place it in its wider context. It looks at the latest understanding of the evidence from both sides, particularly from the Ottoman/Turkish perspective. The example of Gallipoli remains compelling both for contemporary military operations and the nations involved, especially Turkey, New Zealand and Australia.
Audio from Chalke Valley History Festival 2018.
The battle of Arnhem, the great airborne fight for the bridges in 1944, was a courageous strategic gamble that failed. In this talk at CVHF 2018, Britain’s best-selling historian Antony Beevor, using often overlooked sources from Allied and German archives, reconstructs the terrible reality of the fighting and questions whether this plan to end the war could ever have worked, or whether it was always doomed to become the last German victory.
Audio from a talk at Chalke Valley History Festival 2018.
Stonehenge is our most famous prehistoric monument, massive, enduring, its iconic stones recognised around the world. It has also been an object of curiosity for centuries, the subject of speculation and investigation, the source of a thousand theories. Archaeologist and television presenter Julian Richards, who has been involved with Stonehenge for over 35 years, tells its intriguing story, from medieval times to the present day.
Audio from Chalke Valley History Festival 2018 with Christopher Lloyd.
Christopher Lloyd is a world history author, educationalist and lecturer. He specializes in presenting giant sweeping narratives that aim to create a more natural, interconnected perspective on the past.
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