In this BBC Radio 4 series, Richard Herring attempts to reclaim objects that we've grown to fear and hate because of what they symbolise. Via stand-up comedy, vox pops and interviews, he tackles a selection of things that have been given a bad name. In this episode, he looks at the hoodie. How has a tracksuit top with a hood attached come to inspir...

In this BBC Radio 4 series, Richard Herring attempts to reclaim objects that we've grown to fear and hate because of what they symbolise. Via stand-up comedy, vox pops and interviews, he tackles a selection of things that have been given a bad name. In this episode, he's trying to rescue the English National Flag from its associations with far-righ...

In this BBC Radio 4 series, Richard Herring attempts to reclaim objects that we've grown to fear and hate because of what they symbolise. Via stand-up comedy, vox pops and interviews, he tackles a selection of things that have been given a bad name. In this final show from the first series, Richard discusses Dolly the sheep as he examines why we ar...

The RMS Titanic sailed from Southampton en route for New York on her maiden voyage with 2228 passengers and crew on board. On the 14th April at twenty minutes before midnight, sailing at almost full speed, she struck an iceberg and sank in just two and a half hours. Over 1500 lives were lost. This is the story of a great tragedy described by the su...

In Top of the Class, John Wilson meets leading figures in their fields and takes them back to the places and people they left behind. This third series sees him accompanying novelist Andrea Levy as she goes back to her adult education writing class, and taking Michael Portillo back to his old grammar school to meet his former teacher.

Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Lenny Henry, Griff Rhys Jones and Dawn French, and host Clive Anderson, star in the improvisation radio show that spawned the TV phenomenon. Based on comedy suggestions from the studio audience, this is ad-libbed comedy at its best. Regulars Stephen Fry and John Sessions are joined by Lenny Henry, Dawn French, Hugh Laurie,...

Born the son of a Billingsgate market porter at the height of the Second World War, David Jason spent his early life dodging bombs and bullies, both with impish good timing. Giving up on an unloved career as an electrician, he turned his attention to acting and soon, through a natural talent for making people laugh, found himself working with the l...

Jennifer Saunders' comic creations have brought joy to millions. From Comic Strip to Comic Relief, from Bolly-swilling Edina in Ab Fab to her takes on Madonna or Mamma Mia, her characters are household names. But it's Jennifer herself who has a place in all our hearts. This is her funny, moving and frankly bonkers memoir, filled with laughter, frie...

We may think we know about it, but what was life really like for the British people during the First World War? The well-known images - the pointing finger of Lord Kitchener; a Tommy buried in the mud of the Western Front; the memorial poppies of remembrance day - all reinforce the idea that it was a pointless waste of life. So why did the British...

Born in 1935, in the city of Bath, Mary's childhood was a curious mix of idyllic picnics and ramblings, and alarming air raids; of a spirited and outdoorsy home life and a dreaded school existence. All nearly cut horribly short by an almost fatal bout of polio when she was thirteen, which isolated Mary in hospital, away from beloved family and frie...

At the beginning of 1864, the Civil War was far from won; terrible and bloody Union setbacks and casualties lay ahead. Abraham Lincoln was facing a re-election battle as some northern Democrats were ready to start peace talks that could leave the Confederacy a separate slaveholding American nation and as his secretary of the treasury, Salmon P. Cha...

A special audiobook of interviews featuring some famous names in the world of Shakespeare performance. Discussing their experience of Shakespeare at school and how they have been inspired to pursue careers that involve his work, this is a lovely resource for students who struggle with the Bard's works.

Pat Conroy's father, Donald Patrick Conroy, was a towering figure in his son's life. The Marine Corps fighter pilot was often brutal, cruel, and violent; as Pat says, "I hated my father long before I knew there was an English word for 'hate.'" As the oldest of seven children who were dragged from military base to military base across the South, Pat...

Michael Goldfarb looks back to the Europe of the 1930s and asks how artists, writers and film-makers responded to the poverty, mass unemployment and poltical instability of the Great Depression. Through the work of Bertolt Brecht, George Orwell, Jean Renoir and others, Michael charts the devastating impact of the slump as economic crisis impoverish...

1920s America was a place of drama, tension and hedonism. It glittered and seduced: jazz, flappers, the birth of Hollywood, and a glamorous gangster-led crime scene flourishing under prohibition, punctuated by momentous events such as the political show trials and the huge Ku Klux Klan march. It also produced a splendid array of writers, musicians...

London's East End in the 1950s was a vibrant place-a closeknit community of families where children made playgrounds on bombsites and a lively social scene emerged. It was into this world that Jennifer Worth entered as a young midwife. Post-war life could be a stuggle, but there was also warmth and humour. Farewell to the East End chronicles the li...

Were things really better in the good old days? Only if you were healthy, wealthy and male. For most, life in London was one of grinding poverty, binge drinking, prostitution and gun crime. The 19th century was a time of growing awareness of the existence of an impoverished underclass - a terrifying demi-monde of criminals, tarts and no-hope low-li...

At the end of the Second World War, some of the highest ranking Nazis escaped from justice, Aided and abetted by the Vatican, they travelled down secret 'rat lines' and were taken in by shady Argentine secret agents. Vengeful Holocaust survivors and inept politicains attempted to bring them to justice and there were daring plots to kidnap or assass...

When Alan left school at fifteen little was expected of him. An 'O' level in art is not the most obvious passport to success, but in the ancient greenhouses of the local nursery, Mrs T's little lad found his spiritual home, learning his trade and the strange ways of human nature. But the comfort and familiarity of his home in the Yorkshire Dales wo...

In the insightful narrative tradition of Oliver Sacks, Monkey Mind is an uplifting, smart, and very funny memoir of life with anxiety-America's most common psychological complaint. We all think we know what being anxious feels like-it is the instinct that made us run from wolves in the prehistoric age and pushes us to perform in the modern one-but...

A guided tour of Roman Britain with historian Guy de la B‚doyŠre, as heard on BBC Radio 4. In 55 BC, Julius Caesar invaded Britain, which was then on the edge of the known world. But he was unable to conquer it. Where Caesar failed the Emperor Claudius, in AD 43, succeeded and the mighty Roman Empire came to stretch from Cairo to Carli...