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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
125 episodes
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
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The 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 Emma - 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
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
Edinburgh Castle: Scotland’s Dark Heart
Picture this. You’re standing on a black volcanic rock, the wind clawing at your coat, the sound of bagpipes drifting faintly from somewhere down on the Royal Mile. Ahead of you, looming over the city like a brooding giant, is Edinburgh Castle....
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Season 1
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Episode 113
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27:42
Notre Dame: The Soul of Paris
Bells ringing across the Paris skyline, echoing over the Seine, rolling like thunder through eight centuries of history. At the very heart of the city, at the heart of France itself, stands a masterpiece: Notre Dame. It has seen kings crowned, ...
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Season 1
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Episode 112
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43:48
The Congo - Leopolds Downfall - Part Three
In the final chapter of our Congo series, King Leopold’s dark empire begins to unravel. From the Antwerp docks, a young shipping clerk named Edmund Dene Morel uncovers a deadly secret, a trade built not on goods, but on guns, blood, and severed...
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Season 1
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Episode 111
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54:10
The Congo - A Society of Murderers - Part Two
Picking up from the blood-soaked ivory trails of Part One, Part Two plunges deeper into King Leopold’s private empire as the hunger for profit shifts from elephant tusks to an even deadlier harvest, rubber. The bicycle boom and the rise of the ...
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Season 1
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Episode 110
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1:15:36
The Congo - The Nightmare Begins - Part One
It is one of the darkest chapters in human history, and yet—astonishingly—one of the least known. At the turn of the 20th century, deep in the uncharted heart of Africa, a vast swathe of land nearly eighty times the size of Belgium was transfor...
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Season 1
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Episode 109
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1:12:49
Bond - James Bond, and his Watches
There’s a reason James Bond makes an entrance like no one else. The tuxedo, the swagger, the one-liners that land like bullets, and of course, the watch. Always the watch. Because in the world of 007, it’s never just about telling the time....
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Season 1
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Episode 108
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20:23
Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury - The Bone Merchant
Late Tudor and early Stuart England was a world of whispers and daggers, where faith could cost you your head and loyalty was a currency more precious than gold. It was a time of espionage, betrayal, and uneasy succession, a kingdom teetering b...
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Season 1
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Episode 107
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45:34
Diana Unfiltered: Beyond the Fairy Tale
Today, we’re stepping into the shimmering, storm-tossed world of Diana, Princess of Wales, queen of hearts, icon of our age.But forget what you think you know. Because Diana’s story, as told in Edward White’s Dianaworld, isn’t a...
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Season 1
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Episode 106
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51:16
Vietnam: The Unwinnable War
Tonight, we enter the shadows of Southeast Asia, where the scent of frangipani drifts through streets haunted by war and secrets. Vietnam is about to become the battleground not just for armies, but for ideals and egos, each choice pulling the ...
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Season 1
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Episode 105
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57:18
The Golden Age of Japan - The Pillow Book
Welcome back to The Golden Age of Japan. Last time, we wandered the scented corridors of the imperial court with Murasaki Shikibu and glimpsed the tangled loves and rivalries that defined The Tale of Genji. Tonight, everything shifts. We trade ...
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Season 1
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Episode 104
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53:12
The Golden Age of Japan - The Tale of Genji
Tonight, step with me into the glittering, treacherous world of Heian Japan—a palace where secrets drift on scented air, poems are currency, and beauty can make or break a destiny.Within these gilded corridors, ambition hides behind ever...
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Season 1
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Episode 103
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57:30
Mary Shelley: Mother of Monsters
Picture this—a storm-lashed night by Lake Geneva, thunder rumbling over the water, candles guttering in the gloom. In a circle of restless young poets and radicals sits Mary Shelley, barely out of her teens, haunted by grief but burning with im...
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Season 1
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Episode 102
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1:02:35
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