The first shot fired by British forces in the First World War was fired by an African soldier in Africa. Historian David Olusoga presents three 1418 Now art commissions that will highlight the often overlooked role played by African soldiers.

In early 1900, Rudyard Kipling, Mary Kingsley and Arthur Conan Doyle crossed paths in South Africa during the Anglo-Boer War. Motivated in various ways by notions of duty, service, patriotism and jingoism, they were each shaped by the theatre of war. Sarah LeFanu joined me on the podcast to explo...

Dan talks to Dr Christine Schmidt, a curator if the Wiener Library about the historical parallels for internment, and whether the situation we are in today is comparable.

Derek Nieman and Noemie Lopian work together. Two people from very different backgrounds, they tour the world telling people about their family stories. Author and writer Derek Niemann discovered only a few years ago that the grandfather he never knew had been an SS officer, in charge of slave la...

Dr Amara Thornton talks us through a newly discovered film documenting archaeological excavations at the site of Nineveh.

Professor John Oxford is a virologist. He is one of the world's leading experts on influenza. He is a leader in the study of the great Influenza outbreak of 100 years ago that killed upwards of 50 million people around the world. I talked to him today to ask him, what are the key lessons that we ...

22 November, 1963, gunfire at Dealey Plaza, Dallas. Told through newsreels and archive, this film provides a snapshot of the grief and shock that gripped the world in the aftermath of the assassination of JFK.

Archaeologists excavated the ancient past during peacetime, but in war they had a different mission - to play a vital role in modern military intelligence. Historian of archaeology Dr Amara Thornton explores a network of archaeologist-spies, codebreaking, mapping and running agents, and with expe...

Operation Market Garden was the Allied operation to end the Second World War by Christmas 1944. The brainchild of Bernard Montgomery, it involved the combined use of airborne and armoured divisions carving a path through the Netherlands, securing several vital bridges, bypassing the formidable Si...

David McGrory joined me on the podcast to discuss Coventry’s Blitz. On the night of 14 November 1940, a Luftwaffe air raid devastated the city of Coventry.

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.

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...

An informative film made for American troops travelling to Britain, letting them know what to expect and advising them on how to behave. The film covers varied subjects, from the humble British pub, to rationing, to the treatment of black British servicemen.

Charles Emmerson thinks the crucible of the modern world was not the 1960s but the tumultuous years at the end of the First World War and those that followed. This was when Communism and Fascism became mainstream movements. This was when the borders of the Middle East, and Eastern Europe were dra...

A very special episode for the 75th anniversary of the Dambusters raid. Dan talks to Paul Beaver, Secretary of State for Defence Gavin Williamson MP, and Wing Commander John Butcher, from today's 617 squadron.

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...

Danny Boyle joins Dan to discuss his 14-18 Now project, Pages of the Sea, which marks 100 years since the Armistice.

If the standout documentary from our East Meets West season, 'WW2: China's Forgotten War' has left you wanting more then don't miss this companion interview with Rana Mitter, Professor of the History and Politics of Modern China at the University of Oxford. Mitter, who presents the documentary an...

Diane Ducret is a French writer and essayist. In this captivating episode, she discusses the wives of some of the most reviled dicators in history and questions the impact they had on the men they loved.

Historian of modern Europe Sir Richard Evans reveals whether there is any truth that Hitler, at any stage in his public career, showed support for Zionism.

Stephen Frears is an Oscar winning film director. Frears has directed British films since the 1980s including My Beautiful Laundrette, Dangerous Liaisons, High Fidelity, The Queen, Philomena and Florence Foster Jenkins. His most recent film, Victoria and Abdul depicts the real-life relationship b...

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...

Peter Snow explores the part Dover Castle played in Operation Dynamo in 1940, the evacuation of British troops from Dunkirk.