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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
History’s Strangest Questions: Where does the name America come from?
Everyone knows America was named after Amerigo Vespucci. The Italian explorer. The New World. The map. Case closed.Except it isn't.Current research points to someone else entirely. Someone hiding in plain sight for five hundred ye...
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The Dutch East India Company — Every Port Has a Price (Part Three)
The VOC was dissolved on the thirty-first of December, 1799. But empires don't simply end. They leave things behind.In the third and final part of this series, we sail into the aftermath. The ports your ship is passing through, Semarang,...
The Dutch East India Company —Nutmeg: The Spice They Traded Manhattan For (Part Two)
What if the most valuable commodity on earth — more precious than gold, more coveted than silk — grew in just one place? Six tiny volcanic islands in the middle of the Indonesian sea, surrounded by reefs, monsoons, and men willing to kill to ke...
The Dutch East India Company — Spies, Spices and the Birth of the Stock Market (Part One)
One man. A stolen map. The birth of modern capitalism.In 1583, a young Dutchman talked his way into the heart of Portugal's Asian empire — and spent six years quietly copying its most jealously guarded secrets. Routes. Charts. The knowle...
The Flying Tigers, CAT, Air America — An Unbroken Thread: The Legacy (Part Three)
They flew wars that officially never happened. They built a nation that might not exist without them. They were civilians on paper and combat veterans in reality — and most of them came home to silence.This is the final chapter of the tr...