‘We’re insanely hubristic’: how The Rest Is History became the world’s biggest history podcast

Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook on storytelling, their strangest interactions with fans and bonding over The Lord of the Rings

How does one measure success? For Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook, the historians behind the hit podcast The Rest Is History, it could be the number of unexpected and overly familiar conversations with strangers. On a holiday high up in the mountains of Bulgaria, Holland was wandering around a secluded monastery when someone called out, “Love the podcast!”

Sandbrook, meanwhile, is used to getting weird looks from fans who find it hard to compute that the man in front of them is one half of the soundtrack to their dog walks and commutes. “The weirdest thing that people say – which I’ve heard more than once – is, ‘My wife and I listen to you in bed every night,’” he says, looking mildly appalled.