Scrooge is practically tangible in the room with us today. Actually that’s me.

As usual it falls to the sensible people to do the important work of wishing you a Merry Christmas in an entertaining and informative way.

So in the absence of any sensible people on the FOH team, we’ve drafted in a glamourous assistant to do the work for us in this episode, which will be a short sleigh ride through some of the historic events we’ve covered on the podcast, as well as some we haven’t.

Our assistant will draw from the hat (ok Dan, beret) each time a number linking to a particular theme.

There are as always varying interpretations of the brief. For some reason, I singularly failed to make any of mine Christmassy, but Dan’s make up for it!

In case you can’t keep up with what is probably our greatest rapport to date (given that Dan sounds about 30 years older than usual due to inexplicable illness, probably not), what we discuss is listed below:

1 - The number of frost fairs held on the Thames in the 19th Century (1814).

2 - The actual number of governments there were in Revolutionary France in 1848.

3 - The number of print runs A Christmas Carolwent through in December 1843 (published on 19 December 1843).

4 - The number of armies on the march in the Hapsburg Empire in 1848

5 - 1845 - the Irish potato famine. Episode: https://footnotesofhistory.com/28

6 - Premier of The Nutcracker in the Old Style calender (6 December 1892). Episode: https://footnotesofhistory.com/27

7 - The number of the Pre-Raphaelites, one of whom; Edward Burne-Jones painted many versions of the Nativity. Episode: https://footnotesofhistory.com/26

8 - For the year of the general election 1868, the year after Disraeli extended the franchise to the working classes… then lost.

9 - 1869 and the completion of Monet's painting 'The Magpie '. Episode: https://footnotesofhistory.com/18

10 - For our tenth episode The Great Stink - still one of my favourites. Episode: https://footnotesofhistory.com/10

11 - In the song, it's usually “Swans a Swimming” so we can talk about The Swan King. (NB: it’s actually Seven Swans a Swimming in the Christmas song, but I think we got away with this one) Episode: https://footnotesofhistory.com/29

12 - December 1812, the Grand Armèe is chased out of Russia.

P.S. Make sure you sign up to our email list and play the revolution game here: https://footnotesofhistory.com/revolutionchallenge, become an FOH legionnaire and pick up your special Christmas present from the FOH team!

You won’t regret it!