Comedian and actor Diane Morgan chooses the life of Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding.
Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding is best known for his role in the Battle of Britain. He is widely regarded as the architect of Britain's unlikely victory, using an intelligence strategy known as the Dowding System. The Battle of Britain was at the very end of his military ... Show More
Jun 30
Sir Seretse Khama, first president of Botswana
Seretse Khama was born in 1921 in Bechuanaland when it was still a British Protectorate. In 1966 he became Botswana's first president. In between he married a white Londoner, Ruth Williamson, was exiled by the British, and made to renounce his interest in succeeding as head of th ... Show More
27m 43s
Nov 2016
Colin Holmes, “Searching for Lord Haw-Haw: The Political Lives of William Joyce” (Routledge, 2016)
During the Second World War millions of Britons tuned in nightly to hear the broadcasts of Lord Haw-Haw coming from Nazi Germany. Though the label was broadly applied to a number of English-speaking broadcasters, it was most famously associated with William Joyce. In Searching fo ... Show More
52m 31s
Jul 2021
The English country house party
It’s sixty years since the house party at Cliveden where Christine Keeler encountered Minister of War, John Profumo and the Soviet Naval attaché, Yevgeny Ivanov. The events of that weekend, a heady mix of sex, politics and espionage have filled newspapers, books, films and TV dra ... Show More
44m 50s
Mar 2022
Margaret Fuller: Early feminist and war correspondent
In in her 1843 essay The Great Lawsuit, the American journalist and early feminist Margaret Fuller forcefully argued for the rights of women to work, think and live on their own terms, not just as companions and foils for men. She was one of the first Americans to do so. Fuller w ... Show More
39m 29s
Jan 2022
Scottish Government consultation on gender recognition laws, Hazel Hunt, Pragna Patel, Rosie de Courcy & Megan Nolan
How widely is the Scottish Government consulting on its plans to allow people to legally change sex without a medical diagnosis? Emma Barnett speaks to Lisa Mackenzie from MurrayBlackburnMackenzie, an Edinburgh-based policy analysis collective who say the SNP is breaking a manife ... Show More
57m 56s
Apr 2019
Start the Week gets emotional at the Free Thinking Festival
Harriet Shawcross is a film-maker whose first book Unspeakable reflects on how, as a teenager, she stopped speaking at school for almost a year, communicating only when absolutely necessary. It mixes personal experience with travel diaries and interviews. Ambassador William J. Bu ... Show More
50m 58s