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Rearview Mirror Chronicles
Keith Hockton, FRAS, is a writer, publisher, and award-winning podcaster based in Penang, Malaysia, with a deep passion for uncovering the stories that shaped our world. As the Southeast Asia Editor for International Living magazine, Keith explores the intersections of history, culture, and modern life across the region.
A dynamic lecturer and storyteller, he speaks internationally on Southeast Asian politics, economics, and history—bringing the past to life with clarity, wit, and insight. Keith is also a proud Fellow of The Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland and is on a mission to make history not only accessible but genuinely entertaining for everyone.
His published books include:
• Atlas of Australian Dive Sites - Travellers Edition (Harper Collins Australia, 2003).
• Penang - An inside guide to its historic homes, buildings, monuments and parks (MPH Publishing, 2012; 2nd Edition 2014; 3rd Edition 2017).
• Festivals of Malaysia (Trafalgar Publishing, 2015).
• The Habitat Penang Hill: A pocket history (Entrepot Publishing, 2018)
• Alana and the Secret Life of Trees at Night (Entrepot Publishing, 2018)
• Penang Then & Now: A Century of Change in Pictures (Entrepot Publishing, 2019; 2nd Edition 2021
• Bersama Lima - Five Together (Entrepot Publishing, 2022)
www.entrepotpublishing.com
Episodes
143 episodes
The Mitfords Revisited: Saints, Sinners, and Scandal
Last year, our deep-dive into the wild world of the Mitford sisters ruffled a few aristocratic feathers and sparked a torrent of listener emails. The question that echoed through every message was simple, but loaded: Were they all bad?...
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Season 1
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Episode 101
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19:07
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Æthelstan - The First King of England
Eleven hundred years ago, a young king stood in Kingston upon Thames and was crowned, and in that moment, something entirely new began to take shape.His name was Æthelstan.In this episode of Rearview Mirror Chronicles, we...
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Season 1
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Episode 144
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41:45
The Mitford Sisters - A Frivolity of Evil
They were born into privilege, raised for balls and debutante seasons—but the Mitford Sisters would become something far more dangerous than society darlings.In the glittering 1920s, Diana Mitford was hailed as the most beautiful woman i...
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Season 1
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Episode 10
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1:03:27
Kipling’s Shadow: The Dark Wisdom of 'If'
Rudyard Kipling’s If— and The Two-Sided Man aren’t just poems—they’re survival guides wrapped in verse. Fierce, honest, and deeply human, they capture the struggle to stay balanced in a world constantly pulling us apart.
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Season 1
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Episode 68
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8:44
Steel Coffins of the Atlantic: Inside Hitler’s U-Boat War
In this episode of Rearview Mirror Chronicles, we descend into one of the most dangerous worlds of the Second World War, the claustrophobic steel tubes of Hitler’s U-boats. Drawing on Roger Moorhouse’s gripping study of the submarine war...
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Season 1
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Episode 143
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47:02
How Christianity Conquered Rome
How did a tiny movement centred on a crucified Jewish teacher grow into the dominant religion of the Roman world? In this episode of Rearview Mirror Chronicles, we explore the extraordinary rise of Christianity, from small communities ...
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Season 1
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Episode 142
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1:03:34
Konfrontasi - A War in the Shadows
Konfrontasi was the war that refused to call itself a war.In the 1960s, President Sukarno denounced the creation of Malaysia and launched a shadow conflict across the jungles of Borneo and into the streets of Singapore. What followed was...
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Season 1
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Episode 141
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41:54
The Trial and Execution of Charles I
In January 1649, something happened that had never happened before.A reigning monarch was put on trial by his own people.In this episode of Rearview Mirror Chronicles, we step inside the charged, breathless drama of the trial of C...
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Season 1
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Episode 140
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50:46
Football in No Man’s Land: Christmas 1914
In December 1914, in the frozen mud between the trenches, something astonishing happened.The war paused.On the Western Front, beneath a hard winter sky, British and German soldiers began to sing. First carols drifted across No Man...
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Season 1
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Episode 139
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34:06
Greenwich - The Home of Time
For most of human history, time was a local affair. Noon was when the sun sat highest in the sky, and every town lived by its own clock. Then, quietly and decisively, one place changed everything.In this episode of Rearview Mirror Ch...
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Season 1
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Episode 138
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35:40
Mysterious Manuscripts
Some books refuse to be read.They arrive without an author, without a key, sometimes without even a recognisable language, and then sit there, daring us to make sense of them.In this episode, we step into the shadowy world of mysteri...
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Season 1
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Episode 137
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48:57
Jane Austen, Her Final Days
In her final years, Jane Austen was finally a published success, and quietly, unmistakably dying.This episode follows Austen through the narrowing circle of her last months, her illness, her unfinished work, and the extraordinary mental ...
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Season 1
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Episode 136
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45:05
Hatshepsut
History tells us that Ancient Egypt was a man’s world. Kings, warriors, gods with beards, power passed from father to son like a sacred inheritance. And then there’s Hatshepsut.A woman who did not simply rule Egypt, she redefi...
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Season 1
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Episode 135
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47:54
Rome’s Final Victory (Part Four)
Rome’s legions have crushed rebellion, broken queens, and burned their way across Britain, but the conquest is not yet complete. In this final episode, we march north with Gnaeus Julius Agricola, the most brilliant general Britain would ...
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Season 1
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Episode 134
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1:04:49
The Rise of Boudicca (Part Three)
Rome thought Britain was broken.In this third episode of the Roman invasion of Britain, we ride straight into fire, blood, and fury with Boudicca, the warrior queen who very nearly destroyed Roman rule on the island.This is not th...
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Season 1
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Episode 133
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58:21
Rome Strikes Back, with Elephants (Part Two)
This episode opens with the bizarre and unsettling prelude under the mad emperor Caligula, when invasion looms like a dark cloud, only to dissolve into mockery and chaos. But the threat doesn't vanish—it festers. Then comes Claudius, an unlikel...
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Season 1
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Episode 132
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1:01:34
Julius Caesar Invades Britain (Part One)
In this episode of Rearview Mirror Chronicles, we return to the moment Julius Caesar steps onto the shores of Britain in 55 BC, a bold gamble at the very edge of the Roman world. Britain is not yet a conquest but a rumour, a place of s...
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Season 1
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Episode 131
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53:04
The Nuremberg Trials and Beyond (Part Two)
In Part One we watched Hermann Goring face the judges at Nuremberg, but Part Two is where the story really hits home. Because Nuremberg did not end in 1946, it launched a revolution, one that still shapes global justice today. It gave us the Ge...
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Season 1
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Episode 130
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39:36
Christopher Marlowe, A Murder in Deptford
Christopher Marlowe was a genius, a heretic, and almost certainly a spy. In the shadowy world of Elizabethan London, where faith was treason and a careless word could mean death, Marlowe moved easily among informers, torturers, and men...
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Season 1
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Episode 129
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45:55
They Died for Applause, Inside the Life of a Gladiator
Step inside the blood soaked heart of ancient Rome, where fame was forged in steel and death was sold as entertainment. From slaves and prisoners to superstars of the ancient world, gladiators lived brutally short lives beneath the roaring crow...
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Season 1
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Episode 128
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48:19
Hermann Göring - The Nuremberg Trials (Part One)
Hermann Göring sat in the dock at Nuremberg draped in arrogance, still convinced that history might yet bend in his favour. Our latest episode peels back the veneer of the Reichsmarschall and exposes the unsettling truth that the man who helped...
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Season 1
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Episode 127
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39:45
Regan - Let's Make America Great Again
Ronald Reagan. The smiling cowboy president who told Americans he would make their country great again, long before that slogan returned to stalk the halls of power. But behind that easy grin was a far more complex figure, and in this episode I...
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Season 1
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Episode 126
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39:13
The British Raj Shattered - Five Partitions - Borders Redrawn in Blood and Dust
Millions displaced. Millions dead. Borders redrawn in blood and dust.Between 1937 and 1971, South Asia was shattered, not once, but five times. From Burma’s separation to the birth of Bangladesh, the British Raj fractured into new nation...
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Season 1
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Episode 125
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35:39
The 1720 South Sea Bubble – The Madness of Men
In 1720, London lost its mind.Merchants, maids, dukes, and kings all chased the same glittering dream, a company that promised riches from the farthest seas. But what began as a daring new financial experiment became one of the greatest ...
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Season 1
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Episode 124
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37:12
Lady Emma Hamilton – Love, Loss, and Legend (Part Three)
In this final episode of the Nelson and Emma saga, the guns fall silent — but the story is far from over. As the smoke clears at Trafalgar, Britain gains its greatest hero, and Emma Hamilton loses everything she loves.Keith Hockton takes...
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Season 1
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Episode 123
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13:00