The Joy of Six 1582

"Watching him involved engaging a kind of cognitive dissonance: this desperate, thin man was the same person as a sweet 6-year-old saying he wanted to learn about the moon; a handsome 20-year-old studying Physics in Oxford flirting with the camera; a 48-year-old who had realised that the research he was still passionate about had hit a dead end." Jude Rogers on 70 Up.

Ferdinand Mount has no truck with the idea that Britain has always welcomed refugees: "The usual narrative of the Peasants' Revolt describes John Ball and Wat Tyler's march to London, Ball's sermon at Blackheath ('When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?') and the brave conduct of the young Richard II. We don’t often hear about the massacre of the Flemings in Cheapside on 14 June, though it was at the heart of the revolt and an episode of frenzied violence. According to a contemporary chronicle, the rebels 'beheaded without judgment or trial all the Flemings they found, so that mounds of corpses were to be seen in the streets'."

Norman Baker looks at why politicians deny climate change and champion fossil fuels.

"The more I encountered these stories where political and emotional commitments seemed irreconcilable, the more I began to ask: what was life like for those who found themselves inescapably drawn to someone they shouldn’t be?" Alison Garden leads a project building an archive of oral histories documenting mixed marriage in Ireland.

"If you believe he was an imposter, then you believe he was the son of a “boatman” from Tournai, forced to play the role of Richard, Duke of York. If you believe he was Richard, Duke of York, then he was actually the rightful heir to the English throne." Sophie Bacchus-Waterman is writing a biography of Perkin Warbeck.

Animation Obsessive takes us behind the scenes of the classic Bugs Bunny cartoon 'What's Opera, Doc?': "At a cost of $35,510 (almost $430,000 today), it was spendier than most Warner cartoons. It took seven weeks compared to the standard five. To get the extra work done, Jones and his crew secretly shaved a couple weeks off other, easier films and faked their time cards."