Rebecca Rideal

Rebecca Rideal is a historian, a bestselling author, award-winning producer, and the director of the history festival, HistFest.

As a historian, she specializes in the early modern period, the Stuart Dynasty, the Anglo-Dutch Wars, the history of plague, and historical true crime. Her first nonfiction book, 1666: Plague, War and Hellfire, was published by John Murray (UK) and St Martin’s Press (US). She has contributed a chapter to the National Maritime Museum’s Tudor and Stuart Seafarers and is currently working on her second work of narrative nonfiction, God’s Throne.

Rebecca spent over a decade working in specialist factual television where she developed and produced a wide range of programming, including Bloody Tales of the Tower, Adventurer’s Guide to Britain, Escape from Nazi Death Camp, and the triple Emmy award-winning series, David Attenborough’s First Life.

For Investigation Discovery she has produced and written the Signal award-winning true crime podcast Mind of a Monster. She also produces and hosts the critically acclaimed historical podcast series, Killing Time, as well as the medical history podcast series, Sick to Death.

Rebecca has written regularly for press, with articles featured in the Guardian, New Statesman, Prospect and BBC History Magazine. She has also featured as a contributor in London: 1666 (BBC), A Stitch in Time (BBC), The Private Lives of Monarchs (Channel 5), The Great Fire of London (Channel 5) and the radio documentaries The Invention of Great Britain and The Invention of the Netherlands (BBC Radio 4)

She tutors at Oxford University’s Summer School for Adults and has lectured at the Museum of London, the National Maritime Museum, and the British Library, among others.