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AGE OF VICTORIA PODCAST

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by Chris Fernandez-Packham (Victorian History Lover/Queen Victoria Fan)

4.7(127 reviews)

117 episodes

Updated Bi-weekly

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Podcast Overview

The Victorians were the first truly world wide, high speed, high tech civilisation, but they are often misunderstood. Your host, Chris Fernandez-Packham, will bust popular myths, cover events around the world, and focus on a people centric history. You will see how the Victorians shaped the world, changing it from the age of horse, musket, cannon and sail to the age of steam, rifle and iron in this monthly podcast with regular special episodes and bonus content. You will learn about Queen Victoria, Charles Dickens, Volcanoes, Famines, great art, geography and so much more. You will discover how the Victorians changed our landscapes, and mastered new energy forms that have led us to move from being a part of the natural world to shapers of it. You will learn how the modern world was created by the actions of the Victorians. You will learn how the Victorians gave birth to our modern understanding of weather, climate, history and even time and space.

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Publishing Since

5/7/2017

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Recent Episodes

April 7, 2026

EP068 WHEN HUNGER WALKS THE LAND

Episode Overview In the third instalment of our series on famine and revolution, we pull away the veil of headline numbers to investigate the visceral, human reality of the Great Hunger in Ireland. This is an exploration of a land filling with desperation, where the brutal biological mechanics of what happens when the human body begins to consume itself take centre stage. We examine the fate of a terrified people, facing ruin triggered by a disease that wreaked havoc on already weak economies. From the folklore of the Fear Gorta to the harrowing clinical reports of the era, this episode explores how a society is transformed when it is blindsided by biological disaster and administrative indifference. Key Topics Covered: <ul class="wp-block-list"> <li>The Information Vacuum: Comparing our modern “Ocean of Information” to the terrifying silence of the 1840s, where the sickly sweet smell of rot was a mystery without an immediate answer.</li> <li>The Folklore of Famine: Why stories like Hansel and Gretel and the Navajo Dine Bahane carry the genetic memory of starvation, and the specific Irish harbinger of death: the Fear Gorta.</li> <li>The Structural Cage: A deep dive into the Rundale system and Gavelkind inheritance. We look at why the West was trapped in a cycle of subdivision while Ulster was shielded by the “Linen Shield” and Tenant Right.</li> <li>The Biology of Starvation: Using modern metabolic science and contemporary medical records to explain the “Blue Nose,” the “Sunken Orbit,” and the terrifying reality of Autophagy—the body cannibalising its own architecture.</li> <li>The Refeeding Trap: The physiological reason why a crust of bread could become a death sentence for a heart shrunken by atrophy.</li> <li>Conspicuous Consumption: The stark contrast between the “Workhouse Swineries” and the elite social calendar, including the dinner menus of the Cork Harbour Regatta.</li> <li>The Gregory Clause: How a single piece of legislation—the Quarter-Acre Clause—was used to engineer the clearances and force the starving into homelessness.</li> <li>The Ledger of the Dead: Analysis of the 1851 Census and the 20–25% demographic erasure that redefined Ireland forever.</li> </ul> SOURCES Historical Research & Modern Analysis <ul class="wp-block-list"> <li>Delaney, Enda. (2020, December). “‘There But For The Grace of God Go I’: Middle-Class Catholic Responses to Ireland’s Great Famine.” The English Historical Review, Vol. 135, No. 577, pp. 1433–1460.</li> <li>Donnelly, James S., Jr. (2002). The Great Irish Potato Famine. Stroud: Sutton Publishing.</li> <li>Guinnane, Timothy W. (1994). “The Great Irish Famine and Population: The Long View.” The American Economic Review, Vol. 84, no. 2, pp. 303–08.</li> <li>Ó Gráda, Cormac. (2013, March). “Eating people is wrong: Famine’s darkest secret?” UCD Centre for Economic Research, Working Paper No. WP13/02.</li> <li>O’Riordan, Edmund. (2018, May/June). “‘Every Delicacy of the Season’—Conspicuous Consumption During the Great Hunger.” History Ireland, Vol. 26, No. 3, pp. 26–29.</li> <li>Poirteir, Cathal (Ed.). (1999). The Great Irish Famine. Dublin: Mercier Press.</li> <li>Woodham-Smith, Cecil. (1962). The Great Hunger: Ireland 1845–1849. London: Hamish Hamilton.</li> <li>Guinnane, Timothy W. “The Great Irish Famine and Population: The Long View.” The American Economic Review, vol. 84, no. 2, 1994, pp. 303–08. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2117848. Accessed 31 Mar. 2026</li> </ul> Scientific & Medical Analysis of Starvation <ul class="wp-block-list"> <li>Anabtawi, O., & Valente, B. (2025, August 12). “The science of starvation: This is what happens to your body when it’s deprived of food.” The Conversation.</li> <li>Donovan, Daniel. (1848). “Observations on the Peculiar Diseases to Which the Famine of Last Year Gave Origin.” Dublin Medical Press.</li> <li>Keys, Ancel, et al. (1950). The Biology of Human Starvation. University of Minnesota Press. (References derived from the Minnesota Starvation Experiment).</li> </ul> Primary Documents & Government Records <ul class="wp-block-list"> <li>Devon Commission. (1845). Report from Her Majesty’s Commissioners of Inquiry into the State of the Law and Practice in respect to the Occupation of Land in Ireland.</li> <li>Hansard Parliamentary Debates. (1849). HL Deb 15 June 1849 vol 106 cc285-300. (Correspondence of the Earl of Clancarty regarding Ballinasloe).</li> <li>O’Rourke, Canon John. (1875). The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847.</li> <li>Ridgway, James. (1847). The Irish Relief Measures, Past and Future.</li> </ul> Regional Studies & Files <ul class="wp-block-list"> <li>Best, Barbara. (2025). “Local Female Orphans and The Earl Grey Scheme 1848-1850.”</li> <li>Tobin, J. “The Famine in Ballyduff and the evictions of Arthur Usher Kiely.” Ballyduff Archive.</li> <li>University College Dublin. (2024). “Hansel and Gretel’s famine folklore origins.” The Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure.</li> </ul> Folklore & Cultural Context <ul class="wp-block-list"> <li>Dine Bahane. Navajo creation mythology regarding resource scarcity and survival.</li> <li>Fear Gorta (The Hungry Man). Traditional Irish folklore regarding the personification of hunger.</li> <li>Yoruba Mythology. Oral traditions regarding the “Leopards Famine.”</li> </ul> The post <a href="https://ageofvictoriapodcast.com/ep068-when-hunger-walks-the-land/">EP068 WHEN HUNGER WALKS THE LAND</a> appeared first on <a href="https://ageofvictoriapodcast.com">AGE OF VICTORIA PODCAST</a>.

March 3, 2026

EP067 HIGHLANDS & HARDSHIP

<h5 class="wp-block-heading">Summary</h5> While the Great Hunger in Ireland remains one of the most documented tragedies of the nineteenth century, the story of what happened across the Irish Sea in the Scottish Highlands is often overlooked or romanticised. In this episode, we strip away the Hollywood imagery of baronial halls and tartan myths to look at the real experience of the Highland Potato Famine of 1846. We explore the “Geographic Trap” of the Highland Boundary Fault, the Coastal Squeeze of the Clearances, and the legal engineering of the 1845 Poor Law that left the starving with no right to relief. Using the latest research from Sir Tom Devine and Michael Lynch, we investigate the Empathy Gap between the absentee Landlords and the crofters clinging to the soil in the Western Isles. As the “Year of Railway Mania” gripped the England and the Lowlands of Scotland, a biological rot was creeping north. This is a story of how a system that prioritised economic efficiency over human survival turned a bad harvest into a national catastrophe. <h5 class="wp-block-heading">Listen & Follow</h5> <ul class="wp-block-list"> <li>Apple Podcasts: <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=E&source=gmail&q=https://tinyurl.com/APPLEAgeofVictoriaPodcast&authuser=1" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://tinyurl.com/APPLEAgeofVictoriaPodcast</a></li> <li>Spotify: <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=E&source=gmail&q=https://tinyurl.com/SPOTIFYAgeofVictoriaPodcast&authuser=1" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://tinyurl.com/SPOTIFYAgeofVictoriaPodcast</a></li> <li>Website: <a href="http://www.ageofvictoriapodcast.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">http://www.ageofvictoriapodcast.com/</a></li> </ul> <h5 class="wp-block-heading">Support the Show</h5> The Age of Victoria podcast is 100% independent and listener-supported. To help us add more books to the research library and keep the show free for everyone, please consider becoming a patron. <ul class="wp-block-list"> <li>Support on Patreon: <a href="https://www.patreon.com/user?u=19744898&fan_landing=true" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://www.patreon.com/user?u=19744898&fan_landing=true</a></li> </ul> <h5 class="wp-block-heading">In this episode, we discuss:</h5> <ul class="wp-block-list"> <li>The Geographic Trap: How the verticality and isolation of the Highlands created a “Social Silence.”</li> <li>The Lumper Dependency: Why the potato became the biological linchpin of the Highland economy.</li> <li>The Vanishing Middle: The removal of the Tacksman and the death of paternalistic kinship.</li> <li>The Empathy Gap: The psychological distance between the “Managerial Class” and the poor.</li> <li>The 1845 Poor Law: How the Scottish legal system was engineered to exclude the able-bodied from help.</li> <li>The Arrival of the Rot: The “sickly sweet” smell of 1846 and the biological collapse of the North.</li> </ul> <hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/> <h5 class="wp-block-heading">Main Sources</h5> Core Historical Texts <ul class="wp-block-list"> <li>Devine, T. M. To the Ends of the Earth: Scotland’s Global Diaspora, 1750-2010. Allen Lane, 2011.</li> <li>Lynch, Michael. Scotland: A New History. Century, 1991.</li> <li>Lynch, Michael (Ed). The Oxford Companion to Scottish History. Oxford University Press.</li> <li>Gray, Malcolm. ‘The Highland Potato Famine of the 1840’s’, The Economic History Review, Vol. 7, No. 3 (1955).</li> </ul> Crisis, Ideology, and Class Dynamics <ul class="wp-block-list"> <li>Gray, Peter. ‘National Humiliation and the Great Hunger: Fast and Famine in 1847’, Irish Historical Studies, Vol. 32, No. 126 (2000).</li> <li>Howell, David W. ‘The Land Question in nineteenth-century Wales, Ireland and Scotland’, The Agricultural History Review, Vol. 61, No. 1 (2013).</li> <li>Porter, James. ‘The Folklore of Northern Scotland: Five Discourses on Cultural Representation’, Folklore, Vol. 109 (1998).</li> <li>Stroh, Silke. ‘Racist Reversals: Appropriating Racial Typology in Late Nineteenth-Century Pro-Gaelic Discourse’, Gaelic Scotland in the Colonial Imagination (2017).</li> </ul> The Psychology of Wealth and the “Empathy Gap” <ul class="wp-block-list"> <li>Loewenstein, George. ‘Hot-cold empathy gaps and self-control’, Challenges to Happiness: Perspective from Economics and Psychology (2005).</li> <li>Miller, Lisa. ‘The Money-Empathy Gap’, New York Magazine (July 2012).</li> </ul> Primary Sources & Institutional Records <ul class="wp-block-list"> <li>Hansard Parliamentary Debates. HC Deb 01 February 1847 vol 89 cc603-12. ‘Distress in Scotland’.</li> <li>The Scotsman. ‘Editorial on the Highland Famine’, 14 November 1846.</li> <li>Museum of Scottish Railways. A Short History of Britain’s Railways.</li> <li>Knox. Social Structure and Land Tenure in Scotland, 1840-1940.</li> </ul> The post <a href="https://ageofvictoriapodcast.com/ep067-highlands-hardship/">EP067 HIGHLANDS & HARDSHIP</a> appeared first on <a href="https://ageofvictoriapodcast.com">AGE OF VICTORIA PODCAST</a>.

February 3, 2026

EP066 THE PANDEMIC OF ROT

Episode Summary: The Age of Victoria continues its 2026 “Famine & Revolution” series by stepping away from the political scandals of Lola Montez and into the microscopic world of a biological invader. In this episode, we begin our deep dive into the “Hungry Forties” by looking at the environmental and material foundations of the era. Using the “Longue Durée” framework of the Annales School, we explore the forces that dictate the fate of civilizations. We examine the “Malthusian Trap”—the point where surging urban populations outstripped the land’s ability to feed them—and why the humble potato was both the savior and the Achilles’ heel of the 19th-century economy. Support the Show: This podcast is fiercely independent and relies on listener support to maintain access to academic archives and primary sources. To help us reach our goal of 25 paying patrons this month and keep the history deep, please join the crew at: <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/17.0.2/72x72/1f449.png" alt="👉" class="wp-smiley" style="height: 1em; max-height: 1em;" /> <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=https://www.patreon.com/ageofvictoria" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Patreon.com/ageofvictoria</a> Key Topics Covered: <ul class="wp-block-list"> <li>The Annales School & Fernand Braudel: Why history is more than just economics or the work of great people—it is the slow, grinding reality of the “Longue Durée”: climate, biology, and the material systems that constrain human action.</li> <li>The “Biological Invader”: The science of Phytophthora infestans. How a fungus from the Americas managed to cross the Atlantic and “dissolve” the food supply of a continent.</li> <li>The Malthusian Trap: A demographic analysis of the early 19th century. We look at the “tipping point” where population growth finally collided with limited agricultural resources.</li> <li>Urbanisation & The Hinterland: How industrial mega-cities like London and Paris broke the traditional link between people and their food sources, creating a precarious global supply chain.</li> <li>The Chemistry of the Potato: Why the potato was the “perfect” industrial crop—producing more calories per acre than any grain—and why its monoculture became a death trap.</li> <li>The Global “Hungry Forties”: Debunking the myth that the famine was a localized event; tracing the “Pandemic of Rot” as it moved from the USA to Belgium, Prussia, Scotland, and Ireland.</li> </ul> Works Cited & Sources: <ul class="wp-block-list"> <li>Donnelly, James S., Jr. The Great Irish Potato Famine. (A principal source for the socio-political impact and the progression of the blight).</li> <li>Braudel, Fernand. The Structures of Everyday Life: The Limits of the Possible. * Allen, Robert C. The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective.</li> <li>Diamond, Jared. Guns, Germs, and Steel.</li> <li>Bairoch, Paul. Cities and Economic Development: From the Dawn of History to the Present.</li> <li>Wrigley, E.A. Poverty, Progress and Population.</li> <li>De Vries, Jan. European Urbanization, 1500–1800. </li> <li>Grigg, David. The Agricultural Systems of the World: An Evolutionary Approach. </li> <li>Flinn, M.W. Scottish Population History from the 17th Century to the 1930s.</li> <li>Vaughan, W.E. and Fitzpatrick, A.J. Irish Historical Statistics: Population 1821–1971.</li> <li>Bhardwaj, Raju Lal et al. “An Alarming Decline in the Nutritional Quality of Foods.” Foods (Basel, Switzerland) vol. 13,6 877.</li> <li>Clark, Stuart. The Annales School: Critical Assessments.</li> <li>Trinder, “Britain’s industrial revolution.” pp575-602</li> <li>https://merl.reading.ac.uk/collections/royal-agricultural-society-of-england/</li> <li>https://victoryseeds.com/pages/potato-famine </li> <li>Allen, Robert C., The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective.</li> <li>Gráda, Cormac Ó. “The Lumper Potato and the Famine.” History Ireland, vol. 1, no. 1, 1993, pp. 22–23. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/27724042. Accessed 29 Jan. 2026.</li> <li>Solar, Peter M. “Why Ireland Starved and the Big Issues in Pre-Famine Irish Economic History.” Irish Economic and Social History, vol. 42, 2015, pp. 62–75. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26375915. Accessed 29 Jan. 2026.</li> </ul> The post <a href="https://ageofvictoriapodcast.com/ep066-the-pandemic-of-rot/">EP066 THE PANDEMIC OF ROT</a> appeared first on <a href="https://ageofvictoriapodcast.com">AGE OF VICTORIA PODCAST</a>.

117 total episodes available with 2 transcripts

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What is AGE OF VICTORIA PODCAST?: The Victorians were the first truly world wide, high speed, high tech civilisation, but they are often misunderstood. Your host, Chris Fernandez-Packham, will bust popular myths, cover events around the world, and focus on a people centric history. You will see how the Victorians shaped the world, changing it from the age of horse, musket, cannon and sail to the age of steam, rifle and iron in this monthly podcast with regular special episodes and bonus content. You will learn about Queen Victoria, Charles Dickens, Volcanoes, Famines, great art, geography and so much more. You will discover how the Victorians changed our landscapes, and mastered new energy forms that have led us to move from being a part of the natural world to shapers of it. You will learn how the modern world was created by the actions of the Victorians. You will learn how the Victorians gave birth to our modern understanding of weather, climate, history and even time and space.
How often does this podcast release new episodes?: This podcast updates bi-weekly.
Where can I listen to this podcast?: This podcast is available on 9 platforms including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and more. You can also use the RSS feed directly.
Does this podcast accept guests?: Information about guest appearances is not available.

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