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In Our Time: History Podcast Transcripts

BBC Radio 4 · 231 episodes with transcripts

Historical themes, events and key individuals from Akhenaten to Xenophon.

Spoken has transcripts of 231 In Our Time: History episodes, with the speakers named. The newest listed here is from July 16, 2026.

History

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Latest In Our Time: History transcripts

The Delian League

July 16, 2026

Misha Glenny (0:00)

This is In Our Time from BBC Radio 4, and this is one of more than a thousand episodes you can find in the In Our Time archive. A reading list for this edition can be found in the episode description wherever you're listening. I hope you enjoy the program.

Hello. In 478 BCE, the Greco-Persian Wars had seen a series of armed conflicts for over 20 years. After the defeat of a second Persian invasion, a League of Cities across Greece came together. They formed a new alliance, led by Athens, an alliance which we now call the Delian League. In the following decades, Athens…

Paul Cartledge (1:46)

You started off in 478, so I'm going to take you back 70 plus years to about 550 And that's when the Persian Empire, sometimes we say the Achaemenid Persian Empire, rose very, very suddenly in, of course, Iran. Within 50 years, it had spread east-west, far east as Afghanistan, Pakistan, as far west as the Aegean…

So, no one focused, but the nearest bit of the Greek world to the Persians was actually within the Persian Empire. So, as the Persians expanded west in the second half of the Sixth Century BC, they conquered a whole string of Greek cities along the western seaboard of what is the Aegean Sea for the Greeks. You have…

Misha Glenny (4:23)

Okay, so why the name Delian League? It comes from the island of Delos where the alliance was established, but why was Delos, it's quite a small island, why was it chosen?

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