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.

Captain Robert Scott's final journey to the South Pole has been called one of history's greatest tales of adventure. And his journals are among the most dramatic and moving documents in the English language. Sensitively read by David Horovitch, this new audio adaptation starts in 1910 as Scott's ship, the Terra Nova, sets sail from New Zealand. The...

Broadcaster and arts presenter Melvyn Bragg fronts 'The Written World', a five-part BBC Radio 4 series following the origins of writing from its first appearance 6,000 years ago and exploring how it has shaped the world's intellectual history. In the first programme he looks at the technology of writing, and how making signs on clay, wood or parchm...

A 15-part BBC Radio 4 series exploring the origins of the Post Office, how it became a cherished national institution, and how it adapted to globalisation and commercialisation. It s called Royal Mail but it should be known as the People s Post. Launched in 1516 by Henry VIII, it was intended to support royal communications and bolster intelligence...

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...

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...