About a month ago (when I first started writing this, nearly 8 months ago now!) I was browsing iTunes podcasts and came across The History of English podcast. It’s presented by Kevin Stroud, a lawyer from the United States. It’s designed to be a complete history of the English language, going right back to the Indo-European roots of the language.
Kevin has a very clear presenting style and is always well prepared, with clear links running through the whole series. The episodes are 30-60 minutes, and vary in length depending on what the presenter decides to include, from linguistics to historical detail. I like the fact that he doesn’t have a fixed length for each episode, as with other podcasts that can mean missing things out or cramming things in. They’re just as long as they need to be, although some people might find them a bit repetitive at times. I think the repetition helps though because Kevin doesn’t assume you remember past episodes, or that you’ve listened to them all.
I’ve learnt a lot of European history from the podcast, including things I vaguely knew about before but didn’t really know what they were, for example the Punic Wars.
I find the etymology Kevin discusses particularly interesting, including the history of the names of various countries which I’d often wondered about. The episode that I thought was most fascinating was about the history of the letter ‘C”, which has helped me with my Russian too as it explained the ‘funny’ order of the alphabet. I regularly have ‘aha’ moments while listening.
I would highly recommend it to anyone with even a passing interest in history or linguistics, which I imagine includes a lot of readers of this blog!
[I’m not sure why it took me 7 months to publish this, since it’s been ready all this time…but better late than never!]
Sandy Millin 
Sandy, thanks so much for posting this! It is awesome!
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