Dominic Sandbrook says his son, 14, has taught him the secret to reading War and Peace | Books | Entertainment

Described by a recent interviewer as “middle-aged, balding and bespectacled… a picture of ordinariness”, Dominic Sandbrook makes an unlikely superstar. But if there was a Top of the Pops for podcasters, the 51-year-old would be a fixture. Having made his name in a series of well-received post-war histories of Britain with a side-line in perceptive newspaper columns, five years ago he pivoted to the spoken word – launching The Rest is History podcast with fellow archive diver Tom Holland. And the rest, as they say, really is history.

From the Fall of the Aztecs and History’s Greatest Monkeys, to Jack the Ripper and General George Custer – of whom a single episode spawned an extraordinary 11-part series – 20 million downloads a month have sent them into the stratosphere. Listeners have come to love their repartee as they debate, explain and bicker wittily over the past. Quite frankly, Dom and Tom, 58, are the gods of pod.

As well as the sell-out tours, recently appearing at the Sydney Opera House, Australia, they have merchandising, YouTube videos, spin-off books and a supporters’ club. So how does it feel to be a rock star historian? “It’s f***ing brilliant and you can quote me,” chuckles Dominic. “I mean, what’s not to like? When you go into history or writing books, it’s just you and the computer. You never imagine these kinds of experiences. It’s not something we plotted or planned for.”

Launched in November 2020 by Gary Lineker’s Goalhanger company, 800-plus episodes later and The Rest is History is the jewel in the crown of a lucrative business. Two years ago, it was estimated the amiable co-hosts were each pocketing a cool £1million a year. Since then they’ve at least doubled their audience. From being fairly well known in academia and among history book buyers, they’re now genuinely famous – right down to being asked for selfies.

“What’s thrilling is when it’s younger people,” Dominic continues with a grin. “Never in my days of writing history books would someone under the age of 25 stop me. Now, it’s like, ‘I love history’, or ‘My boyfriend really loves your show’.

“When we started, Tom said to me, ‘The important things about this are, firstly, we’ll literally have to do no work and secondly, if it’s rubbish, no one will be listening – so no one will care’. And both those things turned out to be untrue! But I feel really privileged. We’ve had enormous luck, listeners have liked it and we’ve ended up working with brilliant people. It feels like a bonkers kind of dream.”

The appeal of podcasts, he explains, is their intimacy. “You’re in their ear when they’re gardening or walking the dog or even when they’re going to sleep. Podcasts are best when they’re organic. You can’t design one by committee, or rather you can but it won’t be any good.”

Which brings us to my reason for visiting Goalhanger HQ in south London. For as if he wasn’t already busy enough, Dominic has just launched a new show, The Book Club. Tom’s not involved, but it’s expertly co-hosted instead by Rest is History producer Tabitha Syrett.

“We get to travel a lot for The Rest is History,” Dominic continues. “So we spend a lot of time as a very close-knit team and Tabby and I chat about books, because we’re both big fiction readers. And we just wondered, ‘How come there’s not a books podcast?’ So we thought, ‘Why don’t we have the conversations we’re already having, but basically press record and do a book a week?’”

The new standalone show launched last week with a discussion about the highly topical Wuthering Heights, including, naturally, Emerald Fennell’s new Margot Robbie-Jacob Elordi movie adaptation. Episodes to follow include Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet – before they tackle Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and The Secret History by Donna Tartt.

“When you’ve read a really good book, you want to go to the pub and chat about it with your friends or family,” says Dominic. “We wanted to capture that so the conversations are not like two literary critics… but actually just people who like books.” Part of the appeal is undoubtedly the inter-generational chemistry – Tabby is 28 – and future picks from Sally Rooney’s Normal People to Virginia Woolf are designed to take the co-hosts out of their reading comfort zones.

For her part, Gen Zedder Tabby, a Zimbabwe-born north Londoner, says: “It’s rooted in a genuine friendship built over many years working together on The Rest Is History. Our shared love of books has always shaped our conversations but our differing perspectives, being from different generations, has also led to plenty of good-natured, bookish bickering. I think listeners enjoy that balance: warmth, curiosity and the occasional lively disagreement.”

She admits: “It’s slightly nerve-wracking for me stepping in front of the microphone after years working behind it alongside two of the most talented historians and storytellers in the world. But my friendship with Dominic has made it feel natural.”

Goalhanger’s podcasts, which also include The Rest is Classified with former CIA analyst David McCloskey and ex-BBC security correspondent Gordon Corera, and The Rest is Entertainment with Friday Murder Club novelist Richard Osman and columnist Marina Hyde, typically lean on the chemistry between presenters.

Dominic continues: “We definitely don’t want a teacher-student dynamic. It was really important to me that it be a relationship of equals. If you listen, Tabby actually gives me quite a hard time and that’s as it should be. Tom and I are of a similar age, similar background, and I felt this would have a really fun dynamic, a man and a woman, bit of an age-gap, coming at it from different angles.”

Frankly, given his day job, I’m surprised Dominic has time for any reading at all. “When we put together the schedule that we should pick books we want to read,” he says. “I’m a more tolerant reader these days. For example, I hated Thomas Hardy at school. I just thought, ‘All that messing around with threshing!’ Whereas now it’s absolutely f***ing brilliant, so you change as a reader as your own life experience changes.”

Growing up in Bridgnorth, Shropshire, Dominic’s father Rhys ran a small chartered surveying business with the help of his mother, Hilary. “They weren’t massively academic people themselves. I think they were a bit bewildered that they had this massive bookworm son, but they were very encouraging.”

Today Dominic lives in Oxfordshire with his wife, Professor Catherine Morley, an American literature specialist at the University of Leicester, and their 14-year-old son, Arthur. Ironically, while podcasts are enjoying a boom, books are losing ground, especially among the young.

“I remember my parents asking, ‘Why aren’t you reading Dickens?’ when I was reading Tom Clancy’s The Hunt For Red October. I read every Agatha Christie, I read Ian Fleming, I’ve read the Flashman books and I read novelisations of films like Star Wars. You’ve got to have a balanced diet and you’ve got to read for fun. If you associate books with fun, people will come to the classics in time.

“For GCSE, kids should read books that fill them with enthusiasm and a love of words and a reading – not things they find a slog, that weren’t even written for teenagers. Books are a window onto the world, they’re pure escapism, you tread in someone else’s shoes.”

No problems at home. Arthur, he reveals, has just finished the doorstep that is Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace. “I said, ‘You’re mad, it’s not doable’, and he told me he’d seen somewhere that there’s 365 chapters so, if you read one a day, it takes a year’.

“Now this is in the context of somebody who basically spends all his time thinking about Alan Partridge. But he set himself the challenge and he finished it.” Has he read it himself? Naturally!

“The smartphone is a killer. Partly because of phones, partly because we spend so much time online, a lot of young people are not used to reading long books,” he says. “And having a good attention span is a really important part of being a functioning, adult human being. With all the talk of mental health, I’d argue it’s a good thing to sit down and escape for a few hours into that world and to leave your cares behind.”

He is passionate that – with exceptions such as the justified retitling of the notorious Agatha Christie novel to And Then There Were None – we must not turn past literature into a reflection of modern values and sensibilities, as has been done with controversial rewritings of authors like Roald Dahl and Enid Blyton.

“You don’t have to agree, you just have to respect the difference. A book shouldn’t be a mirror to reflect your own concerns and values,” he insists.

While podcasting clearly has taken a toll on people’s free time, Dominic hopes the new show will complement, not replace, actual reading. But with the best will in the world, shouldn’t the state broadcaster be doing this?

“Such a Daily Express question,” he chuckles. “Here’s your headline, ‘Sandbrook slaps the Beeb’. Well, I do think the BBC has vacated a space and if I was running the Beeb, which thank God I’m not, I wouldn’t be afraid of being highbrow. Not that we are, but one of Goalhanger’s principles is that there is an audience for long-form stuff. On The rest is history, we did a six-part series about Peter the Great – almost six hours. Can you imagine the BBC doing that? No. But they should.”

The sad truth is the BBC, with its obsession with youth, would never have commissioned Dominic and Tom to make The Rest is History. “For the very obvious reason we’re two public school-educated Oxbridge men,” Dominic adds. “Tom Holland is upper-middle class, I’m middle-middle class. It’s a shame the national broadcaster isn’t doing it – but frankly I’m glad they’re not because it’s better for us.”

As history will no doubt attest.

• The Book Club is available now on YouTube and all major podcast platforms