Historical themes, events and key individuals from Akhenaten to Xenophon.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the race to build an atom bomb before anyone else in WW2
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Greek writer known as the father of history.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the author of Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Charles Booth's landmark survey of London's poor and rich.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the upheavals of 1649-60 in the British Isles
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simon de Montfort's fatal struggle with Henry III's forces
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most influential poets of Rome's Augustan Age.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the French fight against Britain in America and its impact
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great French mathematician behind metrication.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 1904-5 clash of Japanese and Russian empires.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Ricardo's argument on free trade after the Napoleonic wars
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and meditations of 'the last good Roman emperor'.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the scale and impact of the plague that raged in 541AD.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Mao's uprising against his own party from 1966-76
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the infamous drowning of enslaved Africans in 1781.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the woman who ruled Austria, shaking up the European order
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how and why Stone Age people decorated caves with images.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the celebrated Athenian statesman and orator.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the cause and impact of the 18th Century gin craze.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Presbyterian solidarity in C17th Scotland and its impact.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the dispute in 1550 over enslavement of native Americans.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Germanic tribes' destruction of three Roman legions.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the scholar who revived learning for its own sake in C8th
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Paris under Prussian siege and then under the Commune
