Podcast reviews: Jameela Jamil revisits wronged historical mistresses. Meanwhile, Lucy Worsley sizes up the swindlers

Irish Independent

30-06-2025

When Jameela Jamil isn't ­putting her head above the parapet on inclusivity issues, she's co-hosting Mistresses (Audible), a new series putting flesh, bones and brains on six 'Other Women'; the perceived dolly birds of powerful married men.
She has teamed up with historian Dr Kate Lister of ­Betwixt the Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal and Society podcast fame, or from her very funny Instagram posts that straddle academia and erotica.
Up for debate are the life and times of Louis XIV's 'official mistress' Madame de Montespan; Virginia Hill, formerly known as 'the female Al Capone' but latterly disregarded as Bugsy Siegel's moll; 7th century concubine turned first and last female emperor of China, Wu Zhao; ­Fidel Castro's lover Marita Lorenz; ­Malintzin, the enslaved Mesoamerican entwined with conquistador Hernan Cortes; and Mary Boleyn, with whom Henry VIII had an affair before infamously marrying her sister Anne.
Jamil and Lister make a fine double act and occasionally throuple up with The History Gossip's Katie Kennedy for added deadpan wit.
Female con artists, from ­Samantha Cookes to Anna Delvey, are far from a modern phenomenon. Women have always hustled in a world made by and for men. Lucy Worsley dons her best deerstalker hat to sleuth out more Lady Swindlers (Apple, Spotify) in a second season.
Fellow historians, authors, comedians and journalists help her unpick crimes of yore, many of which were acts of survival, such as the so-called headline-grabbing Bob-haired Bandit, 20-year-old New Yorker Celia Cooney, who with her husband went on a robbing spree to help provide for their small family (Cooney's granddaughter here tells the real story behind the column inches).
Another highlight is Catherine Murphy, single mother of three in 18th century London who began counterfeiting money, then considered treason – and the punishment: burning at the stake.
It's either the best or worst time to hear historian Iain ­MacGregor ­on Paul Bavill's History Rage (Acast, Apple, Spotify) discuss the flawed narratives surrounding the atomic bomb.
'What is pissing you off in history?' is Bavill's opening gambit, and MacGregor grinds his axe on the film Oppenheimer. 'Great cast and I like the angle of its approach…' he begins, before berating its absence of a Japanese perspective and agreeing that the Pacific War was essentially 'an enormous race riot'.