Trapped History

We have a wonderful season opener for you – as wildlife TV legend Michaela Strachan joins Trapped History to help us tell the tale of the woman who fought for nature. Her name was a bit of a mouthful – Ethel Haythornthwaite – but we know her as the defender of Britain’s National Parks and the Green Belt. She even has nearly 100 hills named after her (don’t worry, they’re ‘Ethels’ not ‘Haythornthwaites’!).It's a delightful episode, full of passion, joy and hope as Michaela shares her love of nature, walking and conservation. She even persuades Oswin to pull on his boots . . .

We're delighted – chuffed even – to welcome you to Season 6. Trapped History is out of nappies and toddling all over the place (we're three years old this Christmas), clutching two international awards and a host of fabulous guests as we go!So here's a quick taster of some of the stories you're going to be hearing over the next few months. Sit back, relax and set your reminders: the first episode drops on Monday 15th December.Hope to see you there!

It's not a new episode I'm afraid, but we really need your votes! We're chuffed, delighted, over the moon – pick your favourite – to announce that Trapped History is a finalist in three international podcast awards. And we can shoot for the stars and try to get another award – the Listener's Choice – in two of them: America's Signal Award and Europe's Lovie Awards.So please please please head over to vote.signalaward.com and vote.lovieawards.com, search for 'trapped history' and then just press a few buttons. Bingo. We're up against the big boys here so every vote counts – and every vote is a vote for your history, the history we are proud of presenting at Trapped History.Thank you and keep on listening. Season 6 following in a couple of months . . .

Join us for Helen Lewis' nominee for the Trapped History Hall of Fame: Constance Bulwer-Lytton, daughter of a Viceroy, sister to an Earl – but one of the bravest suffragettes of them all.In changing women's history, she was imprisoned four times for campaigning for the vote, carved "V" for votes on her breast, went on hunger strike and was force-fed by prison guards.In Constance's own words, which can stand for so much political action:"People say, what does this hunger strike mean? Surely it is all folly. If it is not hysteria, at least it is unreasonable. They will not realise that we are like an army, that we are deputed to fight for a cause, and for other people, and in any struggle or any fight, weapons must be used . . . These women have chosen the weapon of self-hurt to make their protest, and this hunger strike . . . involves grave hurt and tremendous sacrifice, but this is on the part of the women only, and does not physically injure their enemies. Can that be called violence and hooliganism?"Constance celebrated women winning the vote in 1918, a milestone in women's history – but she did not live to see women wield the vote in true equality with men. Because it was only at the 1929 general election that men and women aged 21 and over entered the voting booth as equals. But Constance, fatally weakened by her treatment in prison, had already died six years earlier in 1923, at the age of 54.Hers was a bright short life in women's history: forgotten, unsung and hidden – but it is one captured beautifully by Helen here.

We are delighted to be joined today by Helen Lewis, whose new book, The Genius Myth, rips apart the stories we like to tell ourselves about ‘them’ – the heroic geniuses we idolise and adore. This is the ultimate history reboot.And it's one of the reasons we created Trapped History in the first place – because we don’t need more stories about Leonardo, Churchill or Elon. We need the hidden history, the forgotten history, the untold stories. But if anyone can take down ‘The Great Men of History’ it’s going to be Helen!So strap in as we rip through the centuries and the rulebook of what makes someone ‘special’, what constitutes ‘importance’ and why we might just be able to live without these geniuses.