External Site: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Podcast[info]
There are nearly 200 of these podcasts available to listen to or download (in mp3 format). Each episode lasts between ten and twenty-five minutes and simply consists of an audio version of the person’s entry from the ODNB. The eclectic selection covers writers, politicians, scientists, entertainers and sportsmen and women, as well as ‘Wartime lives’, ‘Criminal lives’ and ‘One-offs’. The selection covers the very well-known - from the Emperor Hadrian and Boudicca, to Captain Scott, J.R.R. Tolkien and Princess Diana. The less obvious choices possibly provide more interesting fare: Nora Joyce, Humphrey Lyttelton, Angela Carter and Charles Darwin’s daughter Anne, to name just a few. Other names are not well-known but are remarkable in some way, such as the biographies of Herbert Burden, a World War I soldier, executed for desertion and Hannah Snell, an 18th century British woman who disguised herself as a man and became a soldier.