Harsh living and working conditions, poisonous chemicals and explosions. For 10,000 navvies, hundreds of chemists and engineers from across the empire, and 12,000 women, this was the reality of mixing the 'Devil's Porridge', cordite, in munitions factories on the Home Front. In 1915, an extreme shortage of munitions on the front line was reported back to Britain. In response Lloyd George was made the Minister of Munitions. His greatest project: HM Factory Gretna, the largest munitions factory in the world on the quiet Anglo-Scottish Border. Judith Hewitt curates the Devil's Porridge Museum, which is found on the 9 mile site of the former factory. In this episode of the World Wars, she told James the stories of the unknown men and women brought to work in this crisis: how they came to be here, how they lived and how they left or, for the unfortunate few, how they died.
Their name carries an aura of prestige and mystery - the British Army’s most renowned special forces unit - the best of the best. For this incredible episode, James spoke to author and filmmaker, Damien Lewis, about the story of the Special Air Service. They explore the birth of the unit, the sel...
In 2018, the British city of Salisbury crashed into newspaper headlines worldwide when former Russian military officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, were poisoned with nerve agents there. This was the first time that many people had heard of these deadly, yet invisible and odourless wea...
For International Holocaust Memorial Day 2021, James spoke to Professor Eve Rosenhaft about the experiences of Black and Roma peoples during the Third Reich. Eve is a historian at the University of Liverpool. She has been looking into how the persecution of these groups occured under the Nazis; h...
