Origins of the Celts

In 63 BC, Rome faced a conspiracy that threatened to tear the Roman Republic apart. At its centre stood two figures: Marcus Tullius Cicero, the grand old orator of Rome and Lucius Sergius Catilina, accused of plotting violence, rebellion and the overthrow of Rome’s political orde ...  Show more

WARNING: graphic descriptions of violence and warfareMeet Diades, Alexander the Great’s overlooked military engineer, the man who made the impossible siege of Tyre happen.Tristan Hughes and Professor Edmund Richardson retell the thrilling, brutal, brilliant story of invention, am ...  Show more

The British Isles were once thought of as the edge of the Ancient World, a land of giants and other mysteries. According to these myths, survivors of the Trojan War set sail to establish a kingdom here which was destined to rule one day rule the world...In today's episode Anthony ...  Show more

Neil MacGregor's history of the world recounted through objects at the British Museum arrives in Northern Europe two and a half thousand years ago. Neil explores the early world of the Celts through two bronze drinking flagons, considered to be the most important and earliest exa ...  Show more

Lasting from the ninth century BC right up until Roman conquest in the first century BC, the Etruscans were a powerful ancient civilisation who inhabited Etruria in ancient Italy, and rubbed shoulders with the other iconic ancient cultures of their day. Often painted as a mysteri ...  Show more

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss The Picts and, to mark our twentieth season, that discussion takes place in front of a student audience at the University of Glasgow, many of them studying this topic. According to Bede writing c731AD, the Picts, with the English, Britons, Scots an ...  Show more