Avi Shlaim is Emeritus Professor of International Relations at St Antony's College, Oxford. Here he discusses his life - from his birth in Baghdad, to studying in Britain and his ongoing historical research.

The Crown has been a highly successful series, watched with intense interest across the globe. The settings and costumes are of high quality, the acting is superb, and it all looks convincing. However writer and broadcaster Hugo Vickers has several historical reservations. He comes on the show to...

For centuries the city of Timbuktu was famed as a golden metropolis situated on the southern fringes of the Sahara; tales of its immense wealth and its reputation as a key centre of learning obsessed travellers and adventurers for many hundreds of years. Timbuktu certainly has one of the most ill...

1917 is a new film directed by Golden Globe winning film maker Sir Sam Mendes. Set in early 1917, at the height of the First World War on the Western Front, Mendes uses the backdrop of the German retreat to the Hindenburg Line as the stage for telling a story inspired by the memories of Alfred Me...

I was thrilled to be joined by the legendary Peter Frankopan, Professor of Global History at Oxford University and bestselling author of 'The Silk Roads: A New History of the World'. In this podcast we discussed the current crisis in a wider historical context, and Peter gave some fascinating ins...

Dan joins author and mudlark expert Lara Maiklem for a spot of mudlarking.

Sir Paul Preston CBE comes on the show to discuss Spain's modern history and explain how the stripping away of its empire in the early 19th century had such a catastrophic impact on the country.

Matt Lodder is the world's leading expert on the history of tattoos. He has found evidence of people using ink or charcoal on their bodies stretching back thousands of years. He explodes myths at every turn. Tattoos were common long before Captain Cook allegedly imported them back from the Pacifi...

Tom Holland sits down with Dan to talk about the history of Christianity, and how the religion has shaped morality in Western civilisation to this day.

Saul David talks about Operation Thunderbolt and his part in the film Entebbe. David offers an insight into the creation of a Historically Accurate Film from the definitive account of one of the greatest special forces missions ever.

Historian Luke Pepera looks at how and why the history of Africa was written out of world history. He also explores how and why, as a consequence of this, the history of Africans in Britain was written out of British history.

Historian Rebecca Rideal explores the significance of the wedding of Meghan Markle to Prince Harry by looking at how actresses have furthered the cause of equal rights and elevated the status of women, breaking new ground and subverting expectations, from restoration England right up to the prese...

A special film exploring the life and legacy of Alan Turing - genius pioneer of modern computing. With Alan's nephew Sir Dermot Turing and exclusive access to unseen family records, we investigate lesser known aspects of his incredible work. This story is rooted in the City of Manchester, home t...

Seb Falk, a historian of medieval science at Cambridge University and the author of The Light Ages, tackles the big questions about science in the Middle Ages.

Bletchley Park is now internationally famous as the home of the code-breakers during World War Two. But the endeavours of Alan Turing, Dilly Knox and their colleagues were so top secret that we are only now beginning to learn how they really lived day-to-day in this magnificent house, where – beh...

Regarded by many as the world's first computer programmer, Ada Lovelace was also the first to envision a world where computers could be used for more than just number crunching. She saw in them the potential to not just solve problems, but create new ideas and even produce music and poetry as we ...

Sam Nightingale is an infectious diseases researcher and is currently treating patients with COVID-19. In this episode of Historic Questions he talks about this new form of coronavirus and how it might change our society. He also explains how humans responded to the emergence of AIDS in the late ...

‘Dictator of British Botany’. ‘Autocrat of the Philosophers’. Sir Joseph Banks has been called many things over the past few centuries. A towering figure in the development of British botany and British natural history during the 18th century, he voyaged across the World with famous navigators su...

Steve Wyler answers the big questions about how communities have responded to pandemics in the past and whether similar reactions can be seen in the current COVID-19 pandemic.

Our new strand, Access All Areas, will take you behind the scenes at top historical destinations. "Like many people my age - some of my strongest childhood memories are of the exciting new devices called "computers" that started appearing in our homes. I spent hours learning programming on a BBC ...

This story has everything: war, politics, betrayal, scandal, murder and at its heart a cracking forensic science mystery. This is the story of Simon Fraser, the 11th Lord Lovat of the Highland, also known as the Fox. In the late 1660s, Simon Fraser was born in a house on the banks of a burn in th...

From the day he was found in a carrier bag on the steps of Guy's Hospital in London, Andy McNab has led an extraordinary life. As a teenage delinquent, Andy McNab kicked against society. As a young soldier he waged war against the IRA in the streets and fields of South Armagh. As a member of 22 S...

Natalie Zemon Davis is a legend. One of the most influential and versatile contemporary historians. A pathbreaking scholar of early modern European social and cultural history, she has also explored the Mediterranean world as seen by Leo Africanus and the culture of slavery in Suriname. She was b...