The death penalty and broadcasting bans
The History Hour28 Jan 2023

The death penalty and broadcasting bans

Max Pearson presents a collection of this week's Witness History episodes from the BBC World Service. Our guest is Chiara Sangiorgio, Death Penalty Adviser at Amnesty International, who tells us about the history of the death penalty and its effectiveness.

The programme begins with two perspectives on capital punishment: Yoshikuni Noguchi recounts his time as a prison guard on death row in Japan in the 1970s; then we hear archive recordings of Albert Pierrepoint, Britain's most famous hangman.

Poland's former-Minister for Foreign Affairs, Radosław Sikorski, describes how close he came to death in the 2010 Smolensk air disaster, in which the country's President was killed.

Paul McLoone, the frontman of The Undertones, a punk-rock band, tells the bizarre story of how he became the broadcasting voice of IRA commander Martin McGuinness when the organisation was banned from British airwaves in 1988.

Finally, Karlheinz Brandenburg explains how he revolutionised the way we listen to music through his invention of the MP3.

Contributors:

Chiara Sangiorgio - Death Penalty Adviser at Amnesty International Yoshikuni Noguchi - Japanese death row prison guard. Albert Pierrepoint - British executioner. Radosław Sikorski - former-Minister for Foreign Affairs of Poland. Paul McCloone - band member of The Undertones and the voice of Martin McGuinness. Karlheinz Brandenburg - inventor of the MP3.

(Photo: Nooses. Credit: Rebecca Redmond/EyeEm via Getty Images)

Episoder(469)

Walking the Great Wall of China

Walking the Great Wall of China

Walking the Great Wall of China; the death of Pope John Paul 1 after just a month in the job; turning against a colonial power - how Guinea gained independence from France; the life and times of anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko, and the British Land Girls of World War Two.(Picture: Yaohui Dong, Wu Deyu and Zhang Yuanhua on the Great Wall of China. Courtesy of Yaohui Dong)

29 Sep 201750min

When Animals Make History

When Animals Make History

Five remarkable stories of animals in recent history - from the guide dog who led her owner out of the World Trade Center on 9/11 to a ferocious shark attack to the locust swarm that flew more than 5000 miles across the Atlantic ocean.Photo: a Great White Shark - Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

24 Sep 201749min

The Collapse of Northern Rock

The Collapse of Northern Rock

The run on a British bank which signalled the coming global financial crisis, a schoolboy arrested in East Germany for writing a letter, a doctor remembers the Sabra Shatila massacre in Beirut, and a Nigerian archaeological treasure trove.Photo: Northern Rock customers queuing outside the Kingston branch, in order to take their money out on September 17th 2007. Credit: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images

16 Sep 201750min

The Fairy Photos

The Fairy Photos

The search for a spirit world after WW1 that led people to believe that photographs of fairies were real. Plus Jamaica's worst train crash, France's last execution by guillotine, the man who saved the Proms and life in a giant greenhouse in Arizona - Biosphere 2.Photo: Frances Griffiths and the "Cottingley Fairies" in a photograph made in 1917 by her cousin Elsie Wright with paper cut-outs and hatpins. Credit: Alamy

9 Sep 201750min

The Death of Princess Diana

The Death of Princess Diana

Princess Diana's brother remembers the passionate speech he gave at her funeral, and one of the doctors who treated her at the scene of her fatal car crash remembers her death.Plus, how George Orwell wrote Animal Farm, the development of a revolutionary new 3D medical scanning technique, and the birth of the online auction site eBay.Picture: Earl Spencer and Prince William at Princess Diana's funeral. Credit: Getty/AFP

2 Sep 201749min

Medicine in World War One

Medicine in World War One

In BBC archive recordings, veterans tell the story of how medical care dealt with the horrors of WW1. Plus when Germany put Nazis on trial, race riots in London's Notting Hill in 1958, and in East Germany in 1992. And the inventors of Botox.Photo: Australian wounded on the Menin Road on the Western Front, 1917 (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

26 Aug 201749min

Nike and the Sweatshop Problem

Nike and the Sweatshop Problem

On this week's programme, how campaigners took on Nike in the 1990s, plus the Turkish invasion of Cyprus and the newspaper which defied Argentine's military dictatorship. We also find out more about nudism in East Germany and the great Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore.PHOTO: Nike worker Cicih Sukaesih telling her story in America in 1996 (courtesy of Jeff Ballinger)

19 Aug 201750min

Reagan's Bombing Joke

Reagan's Bombing Joke

Ronald Reagan's joke about bombing Russia in the 1980s, the murder of a Palestinian cartoonist in London, communal violence in India a year before partition, the man who discovered the Great Pacific Garbage patch, and Florence Nightingale, in her own words and those of people who knew her.Photo: American president Ronald Reagan in the 1980s at his desk in the White House, Washington DC. Credit: Hulton Archive/Getty Images

11 Aug 201752min

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