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)

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The Arnhem Parachute Drop

The Arnhem Parachute Drop

Operation Market Garden - the failed attempt to end the war against Hitler; plus, a deadly nuclear accident in Brazil, the film of the Battle of Algiers, the last regular steam train to run in Britain and one of the Cuban Five jailed in America for spying for Fidel Castro.(Photo: Allied planes and parachutists over Arnhem, Getty Images)

22 Sep 201850min

How I Survived a Fire on a Plane

How I Survived a Fire on a Plane

A lucky escape from a jet plane fire in the 1970s, Chamberlain's talks with Hitler in 1938 plus the killing of the South African anti-apartheid campaigner, Steve Biko. Also toxic waste being shipped around the world in the 1980s and how Britain became obsessed with the idea that aliens were responsible for crop circles.(Photo: Ricardo Trajano as a young man. Copyright: Ricardo Trajano)

15 Sep 201850min

Living under Gaddafi

Living under Gaddafi

Award-winning writer Hisham Matar on life in Gaddafi's Libya, plus how British Bengalis faced the far-right in 1970s east London, the last battles of WW1, the struggle to name St.Petersburg and the first MRI scanner.Photo: Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in Tripoli on September 27th 1969, shortly after the bloodless coup that brought him to power AFP FILES/AFP/Getty Images)

8 Sep 201850min

Surviving the "Death Railway"

Surviving the "Death Railway"

A former prisoner of the Japanese in WW2, plus Hitler's girl guides, how Benidorm became a tourist hotspot, Italian migrant tragedy in post-war Belgium, and the Lake Nyos disaster.Photo: Allied Prisoners of War in a Japanese prison camp 1945 (British Pathé)

1 Sep 201851min

Albert Speer - Hitler's Architect

Albert Speer - Hitler's Architect

Hitler's architect and minister of war, Albert Speer, was one of the few top Nazis to live on into old age. In the late 1970s, following his release from Spandau prison, he gave an interview to the British journalist, Roger George Clark. Plus, the Soviet Union's campaign against alcoholism, the hostage drama that gripped West Germany, and a woman's voice from pre-colonial Nigeria.Picture: Albert Speer standing at the gate of his house near Heidelberg in December 1979. (Credit: Roger George Clark)

25 Aug 201850min

Vera Brittain: Anti-Bombing Campaigner

Vera Brittain: Anti-Bombing Campaigner

Baroness Shirley Williams recalls her mother, WW2 anti-bombing protestor; 20 years since a mass killing in Omagh, the African-American photographer whose coverage of Martin Luther King's funeral won him a Pullitzer Prize, plus when TV finally came to South Africa and the birth of the instant noodle.Photo: Vera Brittain at Euston Station, London, in 1956. Credit: Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

18 Aug 201850min

WW1: Britain's Conscientious Objectors

WW1: Britain's Conscientious Objectors

The treatment of Britain's First World War conscientious objectors, Iran bends the nuclear rules, the CIA's first coup in Latin America, what happened to Eastern Europe's dancing bears, and the culling in Wales of a sacred bull.Photo: A crowd of conscientious objectors to military service during World War I at a special prison camp (Hulton Archive)

4 Aug 201850min

The Whitewashing of Zimbabwe's Ancient History

The Whitewashing of Zimbabwe's Ancient History

The true history of the Great Zimbabwe ruins uncovered after independence, why Churchill lost the post-war election also the first women at the US military academy West Point and the crack down on leftist supporters in the south before the Korean war.(Photo; The iconic tower in the Great Enclosure of the Great Zimbabwe National Monument. It's one of the most important archaeological sites in Africa and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Credit; Getty Creative.)

27 Juli 201850min

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