Here, Melvyn visits Oswestry. Just five miles from the Welsh border, this is a frontier town whose name means "boundary". It's where Offa's Dyke and countless crumbling castles bear witness to centuries of shifting political allegiances. Language too, has been a battleground. Welsh and English have waxed and waned, woven and unravelled. Visit the t...

The final programme in the series considers the future of English dialects. In the last programme in the series Melvyn looks at Standard English. He is joined by Lynda Mugglestone, Fellow of English Language at Pembroke College, Oxford and John Wells, Professor of Phonetics at the University of London. Together they attempt to answer some of the qu...

We explore the rise of powerful non-English linguistic forces in the United States. Starting at Plymouth Rock where the Pilgrim Fathers landed in 1620, Melvyn Bragg follows the development of English in the American colony-from the War of Independence and the founding of the first capital, Philadelphia, right through to the controversial contempora...

The English language in India. Despite being the imposed language of the imperial power, English also had the power to unite the nation. The story of the English language in India is also the story of the British merchants, adventurers and colonial administrators for whom the country was the Empire's jewel in the crown. Calcutta, the great Victoria...

Here we take up the story of Caribbean English where the Brixton Routes left off. For the poet Edward Kamau Braithwaite the legacy of the English language is something from which he, in his tropical landscape, must break free because, as he wrote, "the hurricane does not roar in pentameters". Melvyn Bragg heads off to the Caribbean where he meets a...

English becomes the language of liberation as Afrikaans takes on the label of oppression. In 1994 the first free democratic elections in South Africa were held, bringing Nelson Mandela to power as the country's first black president. One of the other consequences was the elevation of nine African languages to equal status with English and Afrikaans...

With English now hailed on all sides as the world's first "global" language and the preferred medium of expression from United Biscuits to the United Nations, Melvyn Bragg meets people-like former Dome supremo P.Y. Gerbeau-for whom talking English is the most natural way to speak, yet who didn't absorb it with their mother's milk. Also taking part...

1911 saw the fall of the Qing Dynasty and the abdication of the last Emperor in China. 100 years on, Isabel Hilton describes how China coped with the collapse and looks for any lingering legacy in this BBC Radio 3 report originally broadcast as the 'Sunday Feature' on 23 January 2011. After living under the comparative stability of an Imperial sys...

From the BBC Radio 4 series presented and written by Nick Robinson that explores how prime ministers have used their power and responded to the great challenges of their time and how they made the job what it is today. This episode features Sir Robert Walpole, the first and longest-serving prime minister.

From the BBC Radio 4 series presented and written by Nick Robinson that explores how prime ministers have used their power and responded to the great challenges of their time and how they made the job what it is today. This episode features Sir Robert Peel, who put national interest before party.

From the BBC Radio 4 series presented and written by Nick Robinson that explores how prime ministers have used their power and responded to the great challenges of their time and how they made the job what it is today. This episode features Lord Palmerston, who cultivated a cavalier image and dominated mid-Victorian politics.

From the BBC Radio 4 series presented and written by Nick Robinson that explores how prime ministers have used their power and responded to the great challenges of their time and how they made the job what it is today. This episode features Benjamin Disraeli, who turned his skills as a novelist to politics and became Britain's first Jewish-born pri...

From the BBC Radio 4 series presented and written by Nick Robinson that explores how prime ministers have used their power and responded to the great challenges of their time and how they made the job what it is today. This episode features David Lloyd George, Welsh radical who set up the early welfare state, became a presidential PM in the First W...

From the BBC Radio 4 series presented and written by Nick Robinson that explores how prime ministers have used their power and responded to the great challenges of their time and how they made the job what it is today. This episode features Stanley Baldwin, the first prime minister to master radio broadcasting, and how his notion of Englishness sha...

From the BBC Radio 4 series presented and written by Nick Robinson that explores how prime ministers have used their power and responded to the great challenges of their time and how they made the job what it is today. This episode features Clement Attlee, who lacked any charisma, but created the modern welfare state and managed the big political b...

The BBC's Nick Robinson continues his fascinating and absorbing Radio 4 series featuring eight famous British Prime Ministers. This series explores how Prime Ministers have used their power and responded to the great challenges of their time. William Pitt the Younger, who became Prime Minister aged only 24 and held the post for almost 19 years in t...

Clare Balding looks back at the last time that the Olympic Games came to London in 1948. Three years after the end of the Second World War, Britain was still gripped by austerity. Rationing was still in force, severe bomb damage was still much in evidence and no new sports facilities could be built. Visiting athletes were put up in schools and RAF...

In 1979, the British team was in training for the following year's Olympics when Russia invaded Afghanistan. President Carter, backed by Margaret Thatcher, urged athletes to boycott the event, and the worlds of politics and sport seemed caught in a headlock. This fascinating programme sees Sue MacGregor reuniting members of the British Olympic team...

The Royal Collection is one of the most wide-ranging collections of art and artefacts in the world and provides an intriguing insight into the minds of the monarchs who have assembled it. In this series, BBC Arts Editor Will Gompertz examines dozens of these unique objects, in a quest to 'use the Collection as a prism through which to better unders...

Germany as we understand it, unified and strong, only came into existence a mere 140 years ago. Before then? Well, there was Bavaria and Prussia, Saxony, Baden Wurttemberg, Pomerania, Westfalia, Schleswig Holstein - this list is extremely long. And defining where one bit ended and the next began - well, it was utterly bewildering.' Misha Glenny pre...

From the BBC Radio 4 series presented and written by Nick Robinson that explores how prime ministers have used their power and responded to the great challenges of their time and how they made the job what it is today. This episode features Lord North, who is remembered as the prime minister who lost America.