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PODCAST

Rearview Mirror Chronicles

Keith Hockton, FRAS, is a writer, publisher, and award-winning podcaster based in Penang, Malaysia, with a deep passion for uncovering the stories that shaped our world. As the Southeast Asia Editor for International Living magazine, Keith explores the intersections of history, culture, and modern life across the region.A dynamic lecturer and storyteller, he speaks internationally on Southeast Asian politics, economics, and history—bringing the past to life with clarity, wit, and insight. Keith is

history documentary

All Episodes

61:34

The Roman Invasion of Britain: The Empire Strikes...

Rearview Mirror Chronicles ·

2025/12/21

Send us a text This episode opens with the bizarre and unsettling prelude under the mad emperor Caligula, when invasion looms like a dark cloud, only to dissolve into mockery and chaos. But the threat doesn't vanish—it festers. Then comes Claudius, an unlikely emperor desperate for legitimacy, who does what Caligula could not: he unleashes his legions across the Channel in a gamble for glory and power. We plunge into the clash of worlds—Rome's iron discipline crashing against the wild, fractu...

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53:04

The Roman Conquest of Britain: Julius Caesar Lands At...

Rearview Mirror Chronicles ·

2025/12/17

Send us a text In this episode of Rearview Mirror Chronicles, we return to the moment Julius Caesar steps onto the shores of Britain in 55 BC, a bold gamble at the very edge of the Roman world. Britain is not yet a conquest but a rumour, a place of shifting tribes, chariots on the beaches, and uneasy diplomacy. Caesar’s landings are about prestige and intelligence as much as warfare, and they bind Britain, loosely but permanently, to Rome’s ambitions. From there, we trace how Britain becomes ...

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39:36

The Numerburg Trials and Beyond - Part Two

Rearview Mirror Chronicles ·

2025/12/09

Send us a text In Part One we watched Hermann Goring face the judges at Nuremberg, but Part Two is where the story really hits home. Because Nuremberg did not end in 1946, it launched a revolution, one that still shapes global justice today. It gave us the Genocide Convention, the tribunals for Rwanda and Yugoslavia, and ultimately the International Criminal Court, a court designed to hold even presidents and generals to account. But here is the twist. The same world that created these rules ...

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45:55

Christopher Marlowe, A Murder in Deptford

Rearview Mirror Chronicles ·

2025/12/04

Send us a text Christopher Marlowe was a genius, a heretic, and almost certainly a spy. In the shadowy world of Elizabethan London, where faith was treason and a careless word could mean death, Marlowe moved easily among informers, torturers, and men who vanished without trace. He wrote blazing poetry by candlelight and carried state secrets by day. He drank with killers. He argued with atheists. He lived on the edge of the gallows. In this episode of Rearview Mirror Chronicles, we foll...

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48:19

They Died for Applause, Inside the Life of a Gladiator

Rearview Mirror Chronicles ·

2025/12/01

Send us a text Step inside the blood soaked heart of ancient Rome, where fame was forged in steel and death was sold as entertainment. From slaves and prisoners to superstars of the ancient world, gladiators lived brutally short lives beneath the roaring crowds of the Colosseum. In this episode of Rearview Mirror Chronicles, we uncover who these men really were, how many truly died, how the games were staged, and why an empire became addicted to watching humans kill for spectacle. This is not...

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39:45

Hermann Göring - The Numerburg Trial

Rearview Mirror Chronicles ·

2025/11/22

Send us a text Hermann Göring sat in the dock at Nuremberg draped in arrogance, still convinced that history might yet bend in his favour. Our latest episode peels back the veneer of the Reichsmarschall and exposes the unsettling truth that the man who helped forge a regime of industrial murder was not a monster from myth but an ordinary human being who revelled in power, vanity, and spectacle. We walk through the trial that should have broken him, the testimony that stripped away the last il...

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39:13

Regan - Let's Make America Great Again

Rearview Mirror Chronicles ·

2025/11/14

Send us a text Ronald Reagan. The smiling cowboy president who told Americans he would make their country great again, long before that slogan returned to stalk the halls of power. But behind that easy grin was a far more complex figure, and in this episode I step into the darker rooms of his legacy. Reagan sold a dream of American renewal, but for many it came wrapped in fear, austerity, and a widening gulf between those who had plenty and those who were quietly abandoned. His tax cuts rewir...

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35:39

The British Raj Shattered - Five Partitions That...

Rearview Mirror Chronicles ·

2025/11/09

Send us a text In the span of just three decades, the British Raj fractured into five nations, each born in blood, hope, and fire. From Burma’s quiet separation in 1937 to the violent birth of Bangladesh in 1971, The Five Partitions tells the story of how one empire’s retreat redrew the map of Asia, and scarred its people forever. Millions died, tens of millions were displaced, and borders were carved through homes, hearts, and histories. Journey with Keith Hockton and Sam Dalrymple as ...

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37:12

The South Sea Bubble – The Madness of Men

Rearview Mirror Chronicles ·

2025/11/07

Send us a text In 1720, London lost its mind. Merchants, maids, dukes, and kings all chased the same glittering dream, a company that promised riches from the farthest seas. But what began as a daring new financial experiment became one of the greatest scandals in history. The South Sea Bubble wasn’t just a crash, it was a mirror held up to human greed, belief, and folly. This is the story of a nation that invented the modern stock market, fell for its own illusion, and paid the price in ruin...

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13:00

Lady Emma Hamilton – Love, Loss, and Legend - Part Three

Rearview Mirror Chronicles ·

2025/11/03

Send us a text In this final episode of the Nelson and Emma saga, the guns fall silent — but the story is far from over. As the smoke clears at Trafalgar, Britain gains its greatest hero, and Emma Hamilton loses everything she loves. Keith Hockton takes you from the decks of HMS Victory to the quiet despair of Merton Place and the lonely exile of Calais, tracing the final years of the woman who once held the heart of an empire. It’s a story of love and loss, of fame’s cruel fickleness, and of...

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66:52

Admiral Horatio Nelson – The Man Who Loved Emma -...

Rearview Mirror Chronicles ·

2025/11/01

Send us a text Last time, we told the story of Lady Emma Hamilton, the woman who loved Nelson. This time, we tell the story of the man who loved her back… and the battle that would make him immortal. It’s September, 1805. England waits in fear of invasion. Across the Channel, Napoleon’s armies are massing, and one man stands between Britain and disaster. Horatio Nelson. He’s older now, exhausted, worn thin by years at sea. But he’s still burning, for his country, for victory, and above all, f...

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70:29

Lady Emma Hamilton - The Woman Who Loved Nelson

Rearview Mirror Chronicles ·

2025/10/27

Send us a text You know, every so often, history gifts us a character so dazzling, so impossible, that they almost seem invented. Lady Emma Hamilton was one of them. Born into poverty, she reinvented herself again and again, actress, artist’s muse, courtesan, and eventually, the most famous mistress in England. But Emma wasn’t just a pretty face. She was a survivor, a strategist, and perhaps one of the first true celebrities. She captivated painters, seduced princes, and bewitched a nation. A...

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39:27

The Darker Side of Samuel Pepys

Rearview Mirror Chronicles ·

2025/10/23

Send us a text Most people know Samuel Pepys as the man who gave us one of the greatest diaries in English history, a meticulous observer of the Plague, the Great Fire of London, and the Restoration court. A man of reason, order, and astonishing curiosity. But turn the page a little further, and a different Pepys begins to emerge, darker, more conflicted, and all too human. A man who writes not just of kings and fires, but of lust, shame, deceit, and the strange bargains we strike with oursel...

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37:40

When the Future Was Beautiful: The Art Deco Story

Rearview Mirror Chronicles ·

2025/10/20

Send us a text Art Deco, it’s the style that made the future look glamorous. Born from the ashes of the First World War, it captured an age hungry for beauty, speed, and progress. You can see it in the skyline of New York, the sweep of an ocean liner, the shimmer of a cocktail bar at midnight. In this episode, we dive into the world of Art Deco, the movement that turned industry into elegance and gave modernity its first true sense of style. From Paris to Penang, from Chrysler spires to Bakel...

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56:01

Spain on Fire: The Spanish Civil War

Rearview Mirror Chronicles ·

2025/10/15

Send us a text In the summer of 1936, a group of generals launched a coup to save Spain from its own democracy. What followed was a nightmare. The Spanish Civil War would claim half a million lives and divide a nation for generations. From Franco’s ruthless rise to the bombing of Guernica, from the dreams of the Republic to the betrayal of the democracies that looked away, this episode unpacks the war that foreshadowed the Second World War, a conflict where poets became soldiers, cities becam...

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36:02

The Magna Carta: A Promise That Endured

Rearview Mirror Chronicles ·

2025/10/08

Send us a text In the summer of 1215, a bad-tempered king met his match in a field by the Thames. Surrounded by rebellious barons, King John of England was forced to seal a document he barely understood, one that would outlive him by centuries. The Magna Carta wasn’t meant to change the world. It was supposed to be a quick fix, a peace treaty. But instead, it planted a radical idea: that no one, not even the king, is above the law. In this episode, we go back to Runnymede, to the mud, the pol...

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51:40

Sunday Bloody Sunday

Rearview Mirror Chronicles ·

2025/10/02

Send us a text Two Sundays, fifty years apart, changed Ireland forever. In Dublin, 1920, Michael Collins’s men struck at dawn, assassinating British agents. By afternoon, Croke Park ran red with blood as Crown forces opened fire on a football crowd, killing men, women, and children. Half a century later, in Derry, 1972, British paratroopers shot down unarmed civil rights marchers, reigniting the Troubles and inspiring U2’s haunting anthem Sunday Bloody Sunday. This episode unravels both trage...

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37:09

Victoria's Secret

Rearview Mirror Chronicles ·

2025/09/23

Send us a text A widowed queen, a loyal servant, and a friendship that defied every convention of the Victorian age. In this episode, we uncover the unlikely bond between Queen Victoria and John Brown, a relationship whispered about in drawing rooms, condemned in newspapers, and immortalised in legend. Was Brown simply her devoted attendant, or something far more intimate? From the windswept Highlands to the corridors of Windsor, we follow the trail of letters, estate inventories, and r...

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62:29

The Colosseum: Power, Glory, and Death

Rearview Mirror Chronicles ·

2025/09/13

Send us a text For nearly 2,000 years, this colossal arena has stood as Rome’s most breathtaking monument to spectacle, power, and blood. In its day, the Colosseum wasn’t just a stadium—it was a machine built for awe. Here emperors staged games that made the entire empire gasp: gladiators battling to the death, wild beasts from Africa unleashed before roaring crowds, and the Roman people fed a steady diet of violence, theatre, and politics disguised as entertainment. But the Colosseum is more...

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27:42

Edinburgh Castle: Scotland’s Dark Heart

Rearview Mirror Chronicles ·

2025/09/07

Send us a text Picture this. You’re standing on a black volcanic rock, the wind clawing at your coat, the sound of bagpipes drifting faintly from somewhere down on the Royal Mile. Ahead of you, looming over the city like a brooding giant, is Edinburgh Castle. Its stone walls, scarred by centuries of fire, rebellion, and siege, rise from the crag as if carved by some ancient hand. This isn’t just a fortress. It’s the beating heart of Scotland’s story. Here kings were crowned, traitors were exe...

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133 results

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