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. Most members of the public assume their reliability. But are they telling us the truth? In 2009, 5 elderly Kenyan war veterans filed a case against the British government in which they claimed that thousands of Kenyan nationals had been subjected to severe acts of inhumane and degrading treatment, torture and arbitrary killings in the 1950s - all at the hands of the British colonial administration. The case would come to upend all our assumptions about archives’ reliability, and about the way that we write British history itself. This fascinating and important documentary tells their incredible story, exposing the depth of the cover up that rocked the establishment and changed the way we view colonial history forever.
I was thrilled to be joined by Mark Vincent, an expert in criminal subculture and prisoner society in Stalinist Labour camps. Mark has looked at thousands of journals, song collections, tattoo drawings and slang dictionaries to reveal a hidden side of Gulag daily life. In this podcast, he also ex...
For 150 years the Ku Klux Klan has existed in the shadows, terrifying outsiders with its reputation for violence and racism. For the first time, key leaders of today's largest surviving KKK organizations reveal their true identities and grant access into their homes, charity events, secret meetin...
19th century Birmingham was famous for its industrial might, but particular parts of it were also renowned for a more infamous reason: its gangs. Dan headed up to Birmingham to meet bestselling author and celebrity local historian Carl Chinn to learn the true history behind Birmingham's most noto...
