Origin Story

Welcome to another bonus episode of Origin Story, where we look at the short and extraordinary life of the Duke of Buckingham (1592–1628). It's a bizarre, tragic tale which weaves together queer history, courtly romance, unending war and the early resistance of parliament against royal power.

More than anything, it is the story of the Favourite, that strange underdiscussed role of the leader's key ally. In our modern era, we've seen figures like Dominic Cummings and Morgan McSweeney take this position – operating as the prime minister's chief loyalist and then being used as a sacrificial pawn to placate their critics. We see a very similar arrangement in the 17th Century, albeit in a significantly more sexy way.

As Sir Francis Bacon said: The favourite is a "shadow" who can be "offered as a sacrifice to appease the multitude". Come with us back to an era where the modern world is slowly being formed, and see how exuberant, unpredictable, emotional and dramatic the early days of the English parliament truly were.

Books

Lucy Hughes-Hallett – The Scapegoat: The Brilliant Brief Life of the Duke of Buckingham (4th Estate, 2024)

Roger Lockyer - Buckingham: The Life and Political Career of George Villiers, First Duke of Buckingham 1592-1628 (Routledge, 1981)



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• ⁠See Origin Story live at the Union Chapel⁠, London on September the 1st

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Written and presented by Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey. Producer: Chris Jones. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production

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Tickets are flying out of the door for Ian and Dorian’s biggest live show yet at the stunning Union Chapel in London’s sophisticated Islington on Tue 1 Sept.

A spectacular Gothic Revival church on Upper Street, the Union Chapel is a breathtaking venue just a few moments’ stroll from Highbury & Islington Tube – and therefore close to Euston and King’s Cross for the Not-London crowd. As well as the Victoria Line, it’s on the Mildmay Overground so whether you’re in leafy West London or sourdough-and-cold-drip-coffee East London you can be there and home with ease.You can buy tickets here, or Patreon supporters get exclusive discount, so now is as good a time as any to sign up: https://www.patreon.com/c/originstorypod

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tickets are flying out of the door for Ian and Dorian’s biggest live show yet at the stunning Union Chapel in London’s sophisticated Islington on Tue 1 Sept.

A spectacular Gothic Revival church on Upper Street, the Union Chapel is a breathtaking venue just a few moments’ stroll from Highbury & Islington Tube – and therefore close to Euston and King’s Cross for the Not-London crowd. As well as the Victoria Line, it’s on the Mildmay Overground so whether you’re in leafy West London or sourdough-and-cold-drip-coffee East London you can be there and home with ease.You can buy tickets here, or Patreon supporters get exclusive discount, so now is as good a time as any to sign up: https://www.patreon.com/c/originstorypod
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to a bonus episode of Origin Story. For the first time, we’re revisiting an earlier episode to ask what we got right and what we got wrong about the subject. Just before the July 2024 election we profiled Labour’s PM-in-waiting Keir Starmer and made some cautiously optimistic guesses as to what his government might look like — the promise and the pitfalls. Well, it turned out to be mostly pitfalls. As Starmer steps down and Andy Burnham steps up, we perform the autopsy.

Did Starmer have fundamental personal weaknesses that doomed him to failure? What happened to the moral principles and managerial competence that defined his career before he became Labour leader? What mistakes did he make and what opportunities did he miss? Has Starmer killed the theory that a boring technocrat is the antidote to right-wing populism? How did he become so hated? What legacy has he bequeathed to Burnham (it wasn’t all bad news)? How much of this can we blame on Morgan McSweeney? And is it fair to call Keir Starmer the worst Labour prime minister ever? The ghost of Ramsay MacDonald certainly hopes so.

Join us for an in-depth reflection on what went wrong for Starmer and the lessons we can learn about what it takes to be a successful prime minister in the 2020s.

• See Origin Story live at the Union Chapel, London on September the 1st

• Support Origin Story on Patreon

Written and presented by Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey. Producer: Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production

www.podmasters.co.uk

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Welcome to the finale of season nine of Origin Story. We’re wrapping up the season by telling the thrilling, misunderstood story of the Luddites and how their name became an insult synonymous with ignorance, reaction and fear of progress. You can’t get much more Origin Story than that.

It was November 1811 when textile workers in Nottinghamshire first began breaking machinery in the name of a mysterious figure called Ned Ludd. The movement spread through neighbouring counties and reached its dramatic peak in Yorkshire, as these secretive activists waged guerrilla warfare against the factory owners who were destroying their livelihoods.

Soon, England was in a frenzy over the Luddite threat. Led by Tory prime minister Spencer Perceval and the decadent Prince Regent, the ruling classes feared a French-style revolution. As Luddite violence escalated from machine-breaking to arson, food riots and assassination attempts, the state responded with spies, torture and show trials. Swathes of industrial England fell under military occupation. In the midst of all this, Perceval himself was shot dead in the House of Commons. Yet by February 1813 the Luddite fire had burned out and the bosses appeared to have won.

It was only in the 1950s that “Luddite” was turned into a general insult, even as revisionist historians of the English working classes started to tell a different story about the motives of the machine-breakers. Amid rising hostility towards Big Tech and AI, the legacy of the Luddite rebellion feels surprisingly relevant more than 200 years later.

Who were the Luddites? What was going wrong in England in 1811 to inspire such a viral rebellion? Were the Luddites targeting the machines, or the industrialists, or the state itself? Was their uprising really a failure or did it pave the way for fairer industrial relations? What does it mean to be a neo-Luddite today? And can the true history of the Luddites ever prevail over the crude stereotype created by their enemies?

• Special offer! Get 20% off any vehicle history check at carVertical.com/OriginStory

• See Origin Story live at the Union Chapel, London on September the 1st

• Support Origin Story on Patreon

Reading list

Books

• Kyle Chayka – ‘Rethinking the Luddites in the Age of A.I.’, New Yorker (26 September 2023)

• Kyle Chayka – ‘The Age-Old Urge to Destroy Technology’, New Yorker (8 April 2026)

• F.O. Darvall – Popular Disturbances and Public Order in Regency England (1934)

• Carl J. Griffin – ‘Luddism, Machine-Breaking and the Swing Riots’, Revue Française de Civilisation Britannique (2025)

• J.L. Hammond and Barbara Hammond – The Skilled Labourer, 1760-1832 (1919)

• Eric Hobsbawm – ‘The Machine Breakers’, Past & Present (February 1952)

• Brian Merchant – Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech (2023)

• Kirkpatrick Sale – Rebels Against the Future: The Luddites and Their War Against the Industrial Revolution: Lessons for the Computer Age (1995)

• Tech Won’t Save Us: The Real History of the Luddites, presented by Paris Marx (28 September, 2023)

• Malcolm I. Thomis – The Luddites: Machine-Breaking in Regency England (1970)

• E.P. Thompson – The Making of the English Working Class (1963)

Written and presented by Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey. Producer: Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production

www.podmasters.co.uk
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