'Jane' - the underground abortion service

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 ...  Show more

Max Pearson presents a collection of the week's Witness History interviews from the BBC World Service.We start with the broadcaster and naturalist, Sir David Attenborough. To mark his 100th birthday, we go back to the mid 1950s and the television programme that launched his caree ...  Show more

It is 50 years since the end of French colonial rule in Algeria.It came after a bloody and brutal war for independence.Hear the story of one young woman who joined the fight against France and paid a high price for her beliefs.(Image: An Algerian flag. Credit: Reuters) 

Five Australian women made front-page news when they were sent to Melbourne's Fairlea Prison for protesting against the Vietnam War in 1971. The women were part of the Save Our Sons movement, which campaigned to stop Australians being conscripted to fight in the conflict. Their j ...  Show more

A group of feminists working under the name “Jane” carried out underground abortions in 1960s Chicago – when abortions were still illegal in most of the US.Initially they gave abortion counselling and put women who wanted to terminate their pregnancies in touch with doctors who w ...  Show more

BBC Correspondent Lyse Doucet introduces novelist Edith Wharton's reportage from wartime France. Wharton, best known for The Age Of Innocence and The House of Mirth, was granted unique access to the Western front and wrote one of the most evocative and undeservedly neglected acco ...  Show more