Richard Van Emden catches up with Dan Snow to talk about the commemoration of the final year of World War One.

Professor Andrew Hindmoor, head of Politics at the University of Sheffield, chats to Dan about the days that he thinks shaped Britain today. He talks about the notion of looking at specific days as a way of looking at history, and then talks about everything from Theresa May to Stephen Lawrence t...

John Geddes joined the Parachute Regiment as a teenager in the late 1970s. Within a couple of years he was plunged into the Falklands War and the bloodiest battle the British Army had fought since the Korean War. In this podcast John talks to Dan about his experience in the army, his memories of ...

On 29 December 1940 London experienced one of its worst nights of the Blitz. German bombers dropped tens of thousands of bombs, destroying more of London than the city's famous Great Fire of 1666. The following morning, a photographer took a picture through the smoke and fire of Saint Paul’s Cath...

On Christmas Eve 1914 many sectors of the Western Front in France and Belgium fell silent. Troops from all sides put down their weapons and sang carols, exchanged gifts and buried their dead in No Man's Land. The following day the truce continued in many, but not all areas, and troops gathered in...

80 years ago Wing Commander Joseph Watts was killed when his RAF Hampden Bomber crashed, as it returned from a bombing raid in Occupied Europe. He left behind a daughter, and also an unborn son. John Watts, born 8 months later, would never meet his father. But recently he discovered that at the R...

Just before dawn on 10 May 1940 the largest concentration of motorised vehicles in history roared into action. After months of quiet it was the start of Hitler’s invasion of the West. What followed was a stunning combination of new tactics and new technologies that left Britain and France – two w...

Last summer, we were lucky enough to interview Wing Commander Tom Neil, one of the last of 'the Few' who fought in the Battle of Britain. During the Battle he shot down at least 13 enemy aircraft; he saw over half his squadron shot down within 5 minutes; he is also credited with the longest fligh...

The Palace of Westminster is one of the world's most famous buildings: 'the mother of parliaments'. Since the days of Simon de Montfort parliaments having been meeting at this location in the heart of London. Though plagued by controversy and destruction over its long history the site's significa...

On the 73rd anniversary of the firebombing of Dresden, Dan Snow accompanies British veteran Victor Gregg, a POW in Dresden during the raid, as he returns to the city for a historic meeting with Irene Uhlendorf, who was just 4 years old on the night of the bombing. Together they are able to talk a...

State archives in Britain are thought of as being a pristine area in which we preserve, conserve and utilise the nation’s history. The Public Records acts of 1958 and 1967 require government departments to conserve any information that tells us about our shared past, and how we came to know it. M...

At the end of May and the beginning of June 1940, over 370,000 Allied soldiers found themselves at great risk, surrounded by German forces on all sides & with their backs to the Channel. The eyes of the World fixed their gaze on the small Allied perimeter that remained, around the beaches of Dunk...

Max Eisen was only 15 when he and his family were taken from their Hungarian home to the infamous Auschwitz Concentration Camp during the Second World War. All of his relatives were killed; only Max survived to see VE Day and eventual liberation. 74 years on from being liberated, he talks about t...

During the years of World War Two, a short lived, but remarkable, organisation existed. The Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA) was a civilian service that was tasked with the delivery of aircraft from factories to the squadrons of the RAF and Royal Navy, and the delivery of supplies. Featuring pilots ...

German forces seized control of the Channel Islands on 30 June 1940. By-passed by the Allies as they pushed east they remained under Nazi rule for almost 5 years, until the end of World War Two. This is the story of the British men and women who lived under the German occupation.

Of all the clubs in the world, perhaps the most extraordinary is the Guinea Pig Club, a group of Second World War veterans that suffered terrible injuries and were then treated by pioneering surgeon Archibald McIndoe. Today there are only a handful left. Dan visits Jan Stangreciuk, one of the few...

March 1944: 76 Allied airmen escaped through a tunnel from their prisoner of war camp deep in occupied Poland. Their aim was not only to get back to Britain and rejoin the war, but also to cause as much inconvenience for the German war machine as possible. Within a few days, all but 3 had been re...

The Battles of Imphal and Kohima was a crucial turning point in the attempted Japanese invasion of India during World War Two. By October 1942 Singapore, Hong-Kong, Malaysia and Burma had all fallen to the Japanese; the Imperial army looked unbeatable. Yet it was then, when morale was at its lowe...

At about 1am on 17 July 1918, in a fortified mansion in Ekaterinburg in the Ural Mountains, the Romanovs – ex-tsar Nicholas II, ex-tsarina Alexandra, their 5 children, and their 4 remaining servants – were awoken by Bolshevik captors and told they must dress and gather their belongings for a swif...

At the end of World War Two the British public wanted to get back to ‘normal’. The gay men who had served their King and country found themselves subjected to a vigorous enforcement of the draconian law that would put them into prison if they were found guilty of indecency. But servicemen living ...

Over the course of his 106 years, Doctor William Frankland has experienced more than most. He served with the Royal Medical Corps during World War Two, spending more than three years as a prisoner of war of the Japanese following the fall of Singapore. After the war, his medical career focused on...

At noon on 10 April 1912, crowds gathered at Southampton to watch the maiden voyage of the World's largest ship RMS Titanic. A sleek, modern luxurious liner that was offering a safe and fast crossing of the Atlantic Ocean. Titanic was said to be invincible. She cruised down Southampton waters on ...

Captain James Cook is one of the greatest maritime navigators in history. Born in 1728 to a Scottish father and English mother, Cook grew up in Yorkshire and soon developed a great fascination with the sea and exploration. In 1746 Cook joined the merchant shipping industry when he moved to the ne...

Avi Shlaim is Emeritus Professor of International Relations at St Antony's College, Oxford. Here he discusses the background and implications of the historic Balfour Declaration of November 1917.