The history of art heists

Max Pearson presents a collection of the week's Witness History interviews from the BBC World Service.This week, the moment when Irish writer Roddy Doyle discovered he'd won one of the most prestigious honours in fiction: The Booker Prize. And our guest, Merritt Moseley, emeritus ...  Show more

Max Pearson presents a collection of the week's Witness History interviews from the BBC World Service. Our guest is Sahar Saleem, an Egyptian paleoradiologist specialising in using medical imaging technology to study mummies and ancient artefacts.We start with the story a Jewish ...  Show more

Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat, saved thousands of Hungarian Jews from the Nazis during World War Two.Once Soviet troops reached Budapest, Wallenberg reported to Soviet officials on 17 January 1945. But he was never seen in public again. Rumours of his fate have circled eve ...  Show more

It’s been a year since Brazil’s National Museum burned down in a fire. Not only was its collection one of the most extraordinary in the world, but Brazil’s entire history ran through the museum. On the second floor you could meet the prehistoric skeleton that was the ‘mother’ of ...  Show more

On 30 April 1945 Adolf Hitler killed himself in a bunker in the German capital Berlin as Soviet Red Army soldiers closed in. But first he married his lover Eva Braun, and dictated his will. In 1989, Traudl Junge, one of Hitler’s secretaries who was in the bunker when he died, sha ...  Show more

In 1977, Nigeria hosted the largest festival of African arts and culture there had ever been. About half a million visitors attended, as well as 16,000 delegates including Stevie Wonder and Miriam Makeba.Dozens of African nationalities, and people from the African diaspora were r ...  Show more