Berlin’s turbulent 20th century

In the 1870s, British troops invaded the African kingdom of Asante, razed its capital, prowled its palace and plundered its exquisite golden treasures. In this episode, Barnaby Phillips tells Spencer Mizen about the fate of the Asante gold – and explores the decades-long campaign ...  Show more

It was under the rule of the infamous emperor Nero that the Great Revolt, the first of the Jewish-Roman wars, began, sparking many decades of continuous conflict. Speaking to James Osborne, historian and author Barry Strauss traces the story, following the the fate of the Jewish ...  Show more

60 years ago this month, the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) began building a barrier that divided the city of Berlin. It stood until 1989 and came to symbolise the front line of the Cold War. Iain MacGregor, author of "Checkpoint Charlie: The Cold War, the Berlin Wall ...  Show more

The immeasurably famous Irving Berlin seems like the perfect example of a U.S. immigrant success story. But reality is complicated and imperfect, and so was Berlin’s music-filled life.

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The German Democratic Republic was born in the ashes of the Second World War, and described itself as a socialist “workers’ and peasants’ state”. The country struggled for much of the latter half of the 20th century, relying on economic support and political backing from the USSR ...  Show more

On the border between the Western world and the Soviet Union, the Berlin Wall was a symbol of the Cold War. Starting out as a simple barbed wire fence, it would grow in scale and complexity to become a 27-mile concrete edifice, incorporating watchtowers, trenches, electric fences ...  Show more