Explaining History

In this episode of the Explaining History Podcast, we are joined by Shaun Bythell, proprietor of one of Scotland's largest secondhand bookshops and author of the bestselling bookshop diaries, to discuss his new volume, The Return of the Bookshop Diarist – and the strange, stubborn resilience of the secondhand book trade.

Shaun's bookshop in Wigtown holds a catalogue of some 100,000 titles. He bought it 25 years ago, at the age of 30, on the strength of a bank loan and the previous owner's reassuring words: "Don't worry, banks have money." That 25-year loan has only just been paid off.

The conversation begins with the origins of the diaries – how everyone who worked in the shop said somebody should write a book about it, because things that happen in secondhand bookshops simply don't happen in other shops. Shaun started keeping a diary because his memory is dreadful, and the rest is history.

We explore the landscape for secondhand bookselling in the UK. Unlike new bookshops, secondhand shops have largely weathered the storms of the internet age – partly because their customer base is older and slower to migrate online, and partly because there are simply books in secondhand shops that you will never find on the internet, because nobody has bothered to list them.

Shaun provides a fascinating history of the net book agreement – the system that stabilised the book trade for nearly a century by preventing booksellers from undercutting one another. It was first torn up in the 18th century by a bookseller named James Lackington, who bought remainders at knockdown prices and sold them cheaply, proudly declaring that "even chimney sweeps buy books in my shop." It was formalised again in the 1890s, then circumvented by Waterstones and Borders – who deliberately damaged books so they could be sold at a discount – before being challenged in the courts and deemed an unlawful cartel.

We also discuss the distorting effect of charity bookshops on local high street economies, the siloing of book purchasing culture through supermarkets and celebrity bestsellers, and the role of the secondhand bookseller not as an arbiter of taste but as a guide – someone with a mass of information who can point you towards Dorothea Sayers, Agatha Christie, or Margery Allingham without ever judging what you choose to read.

Above all, this is a conversation about serendipity – the joy of walking into a secondhand bookshop and coming out with a book you never knew existed, on a subject you never knew existed. It is something the internet cannot reproduce.

Topics covered:
- The origins of the bookshop diaries
- Buying a bookshop at 30
- The internet's impact on new vs. secondhand bookselling
- The history of the net book agreement
- James Lackington and the democratisation of literature
- Waterstones, Borders, and the deliberate damaging of books
- Charity shops and unfair competitive advantage
- Supermarkets, celebrity authors, and the siloing of reading culture
- The secondhand bookseller as guide, not arbiter of taste
- Serendipity and the joy of browsing

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Shaun Bythell's *The Return of the Bookshop Diarist is available from all good bookshops. You can also order a signed copy directly from the bookshop. Please consider buying from an independent retailer or directly from the publisher.
Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share.
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In this episode of The Explaining History Podcast, historian Ewan Gibbs joins us again to talk about his new book An Injury to All: The Unmaking of the British Working Class. We discuss the nature of class identity and allegiance in the 20th Century, the almost hegemonic denial of class as a poltiical and historic force in Blair's late 1990s Britain and the effect of mass affluence, home ownership, changing work and aspirations on class identity. We also explore the return of class to the debate, particularly where it has been weaponised by the far right.
Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share.
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In this episode of the Explaining History Podcast, we are joined by Sam Parry of Cardiff Metropolitan University to discuss the concept of stateless nations – nations that have not achieved nation-state status for complex historical reasons.

We focus on three examples: Wales, Catalonia, and the Mezzogiorno – the southern half of Italy. Due to technical difficulties, some material was lost, but the conversation remains rich in insight into how national identities form, change, and sometimes fade.

Sam argues that Britishness is a nationalism of institutions – drawing on Raymond Williams's idea that Britishness is the NHS, the coal board, the steel board, Royal Mail, Marks and Spencer. Many of those institutions are now gone or going. With the loss of empire and the erosion of social institutions, what is left of Britishness? This is a question the state has not grappled with.

We explore how Welsh nationalism grew after the 1950s – not as part of the decolonial movement, but as a response to economic change and the realisation that Britain's hegemonic position in the world had shifted. The Thatcherite revolution eroded key markers of national identity while simultaneously promoting a reactionary xenophobic nationalism. The two – libertarian capitalism and cultural nationalism – will devour each other.

The conversation then turns to Catalonia, which Sam uses as a foil to Wales and the Mezzogiorno. Catalonia is a wealthy region that has not made the step to nation-state status. We trace its history from the marriage of Aragon and Castile in 1469, through the Bourbon reforms that gave Catalonia access to American markets (at the cost of its own laws), to the disaster of 1898 and the rise of Primo de Rivera. The Catalan bourgeoisie consistently chose class over nation – supporting Spanish dictatorship to quell its own radical working class. This in turn created a more radical Catalan nationalism, which was suppressed by Francoism.

Now, Catalonia sees the growth of a far-right Catalan nationalism – neo-fascist in character – alongside the traditional left-wing and democratic expressions of Catalan identity. The idea that "to be Catalan is to be left-wing and democratic" has deep roots, going back to the French Revolution's fusion of nation and citizenship.

**Topics covered:**
- Stateless nations and the question of nation-state status
- Britishness as a nationalism of institutions
- Raymond Williams and the institutional markers of identity
- The erosion of Britishness under Thatcherism
- Welsh nationalism and economic change
- Catalonia's historical path and missed opportunities
- The Catalan bourgeoisie choosing class over nation
- The radicalisation of Catalan nationalism
- The far-right turn in contemporary Catalan nationalism
- National identity as political identity

*Sam Parry's Nations without States is published by University of Wales Press and is available in the US through the University of Chicago, it's also available to order from all good bookshops. Please consider buying from an independent retailer or directly from the publisher.
Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share.
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In this episode of the Explaining History Podcast, we return to Keith Jeffery's official history of MI6 to examine a question that gets to the heart of how the secret state was built: who became a spy, and why?

When the First World War broke out, Mansfield Cumming – the first "C" of the Secret Intelligence Service – faced a peculiar problem. At a moment when all the young men wanted to do their bit at the battlefront, the notion of working in a secret service was as likely to put potential recruits off as encourage them to join. Many of those who most wanted to be involved were, from Cumming's perspective, the least attractive prospects.

This episode explores the social world of early British intelligence. Cumming's wartime recruits were typically not career soldiers or sailors. They were independently wealthy men who did not need to be paid. Frank Stagg, who joined Cumming's staff, found that three of his five main colleagues were Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve officers – one was an engineer from the Columbia Emerald mines, another had been an actor in America before the war, and a third worked for the *Tatler* magazine.

This is the myth of the English gentleman amateur – the chap who does his bit, whose private means free him from the need for a salary, and who puts his intellect to wartime service. The reality was more complex: everyone was on a steep learning curve, and people dropped in and out of the service, alternating between intelligence work and active military duty.

We also trace the organizational growth of Cumming's bureau – from a handful of staff to over thirty by the summer of 1915 – and the bureaucratic turf wars with the War Office that threatened its very existence. The army would have been quite happy to fold MI6 into its own military intelligence. Cumming had to fight continuously to retain his service's independence.

We examine the role of women in the service – as typists, clerks, and even drivers sent abroad – at a time when the Foreign Office obliged women to resign on marrying. And we meet some of the remarkable characters Cumming recruited: Freddie Browning, the celebrated cricketer and Savoy Hotel director; Thomas Merton, the physicist rejected for active service who became the service's first scientist; and Major Claude Dansey, whose career spanned colonial policing in Borneo, Somaliland, and a country club in upstate New York.

**Topics covered:**
- The recruitment problems facing Mansfield Cumming
- The "gentleman amateur" ideal in British intelligence
- Social class and the early Secret Service
- Organizational growth and geographical divisions
- Bureaucratic turf wars with the War Office
- The role of women in the service
- Key figures: Freddie Browning, Thomas Merton, Claude Dansey
- The slow professionalization of intelligence

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Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share.
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China’s war against Japan was one of the largest, bloodiest and most consequential theatres of the Second World War — yet it is still too often treated as peripheral to the wider conflict.

In this episode of the Explaining History podcast, we examine China’s experience of war through Max Hastings’ All Hell Let Loose, exploring the struggle between Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists and Mao Zedong’s Communists, the immense strain placed on Japanese military resources, and the devastating human consequences of occupation.

We look at the strategic importance of China to both Japan and the United States, the brutal campaigns fought across the country, and the extraordinary scale of civilian suffering. The episode also explores Japanese biological warfare and Unit 731, the racial ideology underpinning imperial expansion, the exploitation of so-called “comfort women,” and the enduring trauma left by wartime sexual violence.

Along the way, we consider a larger question: how should we understand China’s role in the defeat of Imperial Japan, and how did the experience of occupation shape the political and historical memory of East Asia after 1945?

This episode contains discussion of war crimes, sexual violence and other distressing material.
Part one of a continuing exploration of China’s Second World War.
Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share.
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Website: explaininghistory.org

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