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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
Rearview Mirror Chronicles
Latest Episodes
Zulu - The Day of the Dead Moon (Part One)
On a single afternoon in January 1879, in a corner of southern Africa most of the men fighting there could not have found on a map, the British Empire suffered the worst defeat in its history, and, a few miles away, under the same sky, fought t...
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The Durian: Four Hundred Years of Arguement
They banned it from the trains. They barred it from the hotels. And still they called it the King of Fruits. For four hundred years the durian split every traveller who ate it clean in two, one gagging at rotten onions, the next mel...
Would You Survive a Day in the 14th Century?
How hard was it, really, just to stay alive in the fourteenth century? You wake up in an English village around 1350 and find out, one hazard at a time. The smoke-filled house. The sewer you drink from. The splinter that becomes a g...
History’s Strangest Questions: Was a Lord of the Realm Hanged for a Comma?
In 1911, the British Crown knighted Roger Casement for exposing colonial atrocities in the Congo and the Amazon. Five years later, the same government hanged him for treason. Ever since, people have said he was "hanged on a comma", that a singl...
The Penang Riots of 1867 - George Town at War
George Town, 1867.Beneath the British flag, another power ruled the streets.Secret societies commanded thousands of men. Money flowed through opium, gambling and the revenue farms. Loyalties ran deeper than the law, and behind the...