London's First Olympics

What is Australia’s capital city? Not Sydney. Nor Melbourne. It’s Canberra: so named at an official ceremony on 12th March, 1913 - when the site was little more than grazing land for sheep. But for this newly-federated nation, Canberra’s remote, inland location was a deliberate c ...  Show more

Disgruntled textile workers stormed a factory near Nottingham on March 11th, 1811, kickstarting the political movement famously known as Luddism. Their protest was not anti-technology per se; instead it stemmed from a desire for better work opportunities and wages, amidst economi ...  Show more

Drive To Survive, the colossal Formula 1 Netflix hit returns to our screens. How has it shaped reality sport documentaries that now dominate the documentary space and what can we expect from the latest series? The 1975, Neil Young and Olivia Rodrigo all announced as 2025 Glasto ...  Show more

400 years ago on the River Thames a mad genius showed off the world's first submarine. A crowd of thousands including King James watched as Cornelis Drebbel disappeared beneath the murky water, only reemerging after three whole hours had passed.The same genius also came up with p ...  Show more

Those on the margins often come to control the center. That maxim ties together the three remarkable people profiled in this episode: Colin Chapman, known as “the mad scientist of F1”, did more to influence F1 design than any other person in history.  Bernie Ecclestone, known a ...  Show more

Max Pearson presents a collection of the week’s Witness History interviews from the BBC World Service.We find out how Sylvan Goldman’s invention of the shopping trolley in 1930s America turned him into a multi-millionaire.Our expert is Rachel Bowlby, Professor of Comparative Lite ...  Show more