The IRA hunger strikes

Max Pearson presents a collection of the week's Witness History interviews from the BBC World Service. First, the story of the Belgian teenager who exposed a scandal within the country’s Royal Family in 1999. Our guest, Professor Kate Williams takes us through some other royal sc ...  عرض المزيد

Max Pearson presents a collection of the week's Witness History interviews from the BBC World Service.We start with the launch of Expedition Robinson in Sweden in 1997 and discuss how reality TV began around the world with our guest Misha Kavka, Professor of Cross-Media Culture a ...  عرض المزيد

In 1981 the British government was faced with prisoners dying on hunger strike in a jail in Northern Ireland. The Irish republican activists were demanding to be treated as political prisoners not criminals. Several of them died during the hunger strike, the first, Bobby Sands on ...  عرض المزيد

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss why the potato crop failures in the 1840s had such a catastrophic impact in Ireland. It is estimated that one million people died from disease or starvation after the blight and another two million left the country within the decade. There had been ...  عرض المزيد

In 1984, the Conservative Party, lead by the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, gathered in the seaside town of Brighton for their annual conference. In the early hours of October 12th a bomb ripped through the Grand Hotel where Thatcher and several other conservative l ...

In the early 1980s, imprisoned IRA members went on a prolonged hunger strike, leading to the death of ten men. This is their story.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.