For football fans, just the mention of Liverpool’s ‘Kop End’ evokes an image of a packed stand full of fans. Many other football clubs also have a Kop stand too.

But why do those stands have that name?

In this episode we’ll be talking about the Battle of Spion Kop. Fought in South Africa in the dying years of the Victorian era, the battle was the bloodiest day for the British army up until the First World War. The battle featured incredible heroism, command incompetence and the presence of figures such as Winston Churchill and Mahatma Gandhi. So let’s look at the battle which, as a notable historian once said: “became the byword for a bloodbath.