Diane Morgan on Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding

Diane Morgan on Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowdin...

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Spitfire pilot Jeffrey Quill picked by astronaut Tim Peake

"It was brilliant to read some of the old techniques the Spitfire test pilots were using, and in some respects test pilot flying isn't that different today, but we don't have to do everything by notebook and pencil and stopwatch." Tim PeakeJeffrey Quill was born in 1913, and flew ...  Show more

Oliver Postgate

"Postgate's work is deep inside me and I think that's true for so many of my generation...His work represents nothing less than a touchstone for our national imagination and in that sense it's profoundly important"Andrew Davenport, writer, composer, and creator of Teletubbies and ...  Show more

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Jeremy Hutchinson
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Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the former barrister and member of The House of Lords, Jeremy Hutchinson.His life spans eleven decades of British history and he has spent much of it at the very centre of the action. Born during the First World War, he was brought up in the c ...  Show more

War's Fatal Attraction
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Historian Margaret MacMillan looks at representations of war: can we really create beauty from horror and death? Speaking at the Canadian War Museum, she discusses the paradox of commemoration. She questions attempts to capture the essence and meaning of war through art. The prog ...  Show more

Colin Holmes, “Searching for Lord Haw-Haw: The Political Lives of William Joyce” (Routledge, 2016)
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During the Second World War millions of Britons tuned in nightly to hear the broadcasts of Lord Haw-Haw coming from Nazi Germany. Though the label was broadly applied to a number of English-speaking broadcasters, it was most famously associated with William Joyce. In Searching fo ...  Show more

The English country house party
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It’s sixty years since the house party at Cliveden where Christine Keeler encountered Minister of War, John Profumo and the Soviet Naval attaché, Yevgeny Ivanov. The events of that weekend, a heady mix of sex, politics and espionage have filled newspapers, books, films and TV dra ...  Show more