Thanks to our local CBC radio station, which has a weekly feature on new and noteworthy podcasts, I learned about the website for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, which covers Great Britain; I think Charlotte Mason, were she around today, might find it a wonderful supplement to H.E. Marshall’s Our Island Story. Yet another reminder that the best history is a story.
The podcasts are here, and there’s a new one every two weeks. Since January 2007, the podcasts have featured everyone from Alistair Cooke to Boudicca, to Roger Hargreaves and Princess Caraboo. And Jimi Hendrix, Edith Cavell, George Harrison, Pocahontas, Madame Tussaud, and more.
You can also sign up for a free biography every day by email. Earlier this month you would have been treated to the life of
Fiennes, Virginia Frances [Ginny] Twisleton-Wykeham-, Lady Fiennes [née Virginia Frances Pepper] (1947–2004), polar explorer and expedition organizer, was born on 9 July 1947 at Mount Alvernia Nursing Home, Godalming, Surrey, the third of four children of Thomas Roy (Tom) Pepper, who owned chalk quarries at Amberley in Sussex, and his wife, Janet Christine Maclntyre, née Brown. The family lived in Pulborough, then Lodsworth, Sussex. She attended schools in Eastbourne and Bath, and secretarial college in Winchester.
Read the rest about the intrepid Ginny, who headed up the White Nile by hovercraft, here.
My favorite advice from the folks at OUP: “If you’re bemused, the BBC has a friendly introduction to podcasts.”
