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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
138 episodes
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
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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
Admiral Horatio Nelson – The Man Who Loved Lady Hamilton - Part Two
Last time, we told the story of Lady Emma Hamilton, the woman who loved Nelson. This time, we tell the story of the man who loved her back… and the battle that would make him immortal.It’s September, 1805. England waits in fear ...
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Season 1
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Episode 122
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1:06:52
Lady Emma Hamilton - The Woman Who Loved Nelson - Part One
You know, every so often, history gifts us a character so dazzling, so impossible, that they almost seem invented. Lady Emma Hamilton was one of them. Born into poverty, she reinvented herself again and again, actress, artist’s muse, courtesan,...
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Season 1
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Episode 121
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1:10:29
The Darker Side of Samuel Pepys
Most people know Samuel Pepys as the man who gave us one of the greatest diaries in English history, a meticulous observer of the Plague, the Great Fire of London, and the Restoration court. A man of reason, order, and astonishing curiosity.
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Season 1
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Episode 120
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39:27
When the Future Was Beautiful: The Art Deco Story
Art Deco, it’s the style that made the future look glamorous. Born from the ashes of the First World War, it captured an age hungry for beauty, speed, and progress. You can see it in the skyline of New York, the sweep of an ocean liner, the shi...
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Season 1
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Episode 119
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37:40
Spain on Fire: The Spanish Civil War
In the summer of 1936, a group of generals launched a coup to save Spain from its own democracy. What followed was a nightmare. The Spanish Civil War would claim half a million lives and divide a nation for generations.From Franco’s ruth...
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Season 1
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Episode 118
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52:04
The Magna Carta: A Promise That Endured
In the summer of 1215, a bad-tempered king met his match in a field by the Thames. Surrounded by rebellious barons, King John of England was forced to seal a document he barely understood, one that would outlive him by centuries. The Magna Cart...
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Season 1
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Episode 117
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36:02
Sunday Bloody Sunday
Two Sundays, fifty years apart, changed Ireland forever. In Dublin, 1920, Michael Collins’s men struck at dawn, assassinating British agents. By afternoon, Croke Park ran red with blood as Crown forces opened fire on a football crowd, killing m...
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Season 1
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Episode 116
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51:40
Victoria's Secret Lover
A widowed queen, a loyal servant, and a friendship that defied every convention of the Victorian age. In this episode, we uncover the unlikely bond between Queen Victoria and John Brown, a relationship whispered about in drawing rooms, condemne...
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Season 1
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Episode 115
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37:09
The Colosseum: Power, Glory, and Death
For nearly 2,000 years, this colossal arena has stood as Rome’s most breathtaking monument to spectacle, power, and blood. In its day, the Colosseum wasn’t just a stadium—it was a machine built for awe. Here emperors staged games that made the ...
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Season 1
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Episode 114
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1:02:29