The Amman Bombings

Max Pearson presents a collection of the week's Witness History interviews from the BBC World Service. On the 40th anniversary of the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl, we hear from one man involved in the clean-up operation. Our guest is Jordan Dunbar, presenter of the BBC documenta ...  Show more

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

A former governor of Punjab, Sir Michael O'Dwyer, was killed by an Indian immigrant in London in 1940. The assassin, Udham Singh, said he was avenging the deaths of hundreds of civilians who had been fired on by colonial troops in Amritsar in India in April 1919. When he was put ...  Show more

The partition of India led to millions of Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs fleeing their homes amid horrific violence. This is the first of two programmes remembering that time.Listen to the story of Saleem, who was only five-years-old when his family tried to escape to the new Muslim c ...  Show more

How a small Nigerian Islamist group launched one of the deadliest insurgencies in Africa. In 2002, a new radical sect emerged in Maiduguri in north eastern Nigeria led by a charismatic preacher, Mohammed Yusuf. He preached against anything he deemed un-Islamic or having a western ...  Show more

In 1857 tensions in Company-controlled India came to a head in what the British called 'The Indian Mutiny', now referred to in India as the First War of Independence. The uprising and bloody reprisals sent shockwaves through the Empire, ended the rule of the East India Company, a ...  Show more