The Black Country - past and present
Matthew Sweet and guests explore the roots and resonance of "The Black Country" region
22 Sep 202244min
The Normans
Ruthless mercenaries who happened to be very good at PR or a dynamic force in Medieval European politics? Rana Mitter and guests Judith Green and Eleanor Parker discuss the current state of scholarshi...
21 Sep 202244min
Cuba, cold war and RAF Fylingdales
Ian McEwan's new novel Lessons sets a relationship against the backdrop of the Cuban missile crisis and the fall of the wall in Berlin. Researcher and artist Michael Mulvihill, from the University of ...
20 Sep 202244min
Immortality
Karel Čapek's 1922 play The Makropulos Affair about a famous singer who has lived for over 300 years was adapted into an opera by the composer Leoš Janáček and premiered in 1926. George Bernard Shaw's...
16 Sep 202244min
The Lindisfarne Gospels and new discoveries
A dig at Lindisfarne this September aims to find out more about the early Medieval monastery raided by Vikings. New Generation Thinker David Petts from Durham University shares his findings on Holy Is...
14 Sep 202245min
New Thinking: What language did Columbus speak?
Christopher Columbus spoke to lots of people: his family and kin in Genova, merchants in Venice, royalty in Madrid, the crew of his ship, not to mention the people he met on the other side of the Atla...
13 Sep 202245min
1922: The Hollywood Bowl
Created in a natural landscape feature, a conclave hillside, the Hollywood Bowl had already hosted religious services before its stage arrived. In 1922 the Los Angeles Philharmonic played its first se...
6 Sep 202220min
1922: The Lincoln Memorial
Dedicated in 1922, the Lincoln Memorial is a neoclassical temple built to honour the 16th president of the United States. Lisa Mullen discovers why America chose to mark the man who led the nation in ...
2 Sep 202217min
