The Siege of Paris 1870-71

Misha Glenny and guests discuss the origins and evolution of an alliance which transformed the geopolitics of the classical world: the Delian League. Since the start of the 5th Century BCE, city states across Greece had been fighting a series of armed conflicts in the Greco-Persi ...  Show more

Misha Glenny and guests discuss one of the towering figures of Brazilian and world literature, Machado de Assis (1839 - 1908). He was the descendant of slaves and built his career while slavery was still in place in Brazil (abolished 1888) and many of his characters were from the ...  Show more

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the siege of Paris during the Franco-Prussian war and the social unrest that followed, as the French capital was cut off from the rest of the country and food was scarce. When the French government surrendered Paris to the Prussians, power gravitat ...  Show more

In this podcast, Jules Legendre from Révolution - the French section of the International Marxist Tendency - explains what the Paris Commune was, and the lessons that revolutionaries must draw from it today. For two months between March and May 1871 the armed workers of Paris, su ...  Show more

On July 14, 1789 a mob of angry Parisians stormed the Bastille. 

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most consequential battles of recent centuries. On 20th September 1792 at Valmy, 120 miles to the east of Paris, the army of the French Revolution faced Prussians, Austrians and French royalists heading for Paris to free Louis XVI and re ...  Show more