The fall of Addis Ababa

Max Pearson presents a collection of the week's Witness History interviews from the BBC World Service.Our guest is food historian Dr Annie Gray.She discusses the impact of the first modern, fitted kitchen - the Frankfurt Kitchen - on the kitchens of today. It all goes back to 192 ...  Show more

Max Pearson presents a collection of the week's Witness History interviews from the BBC World Service. This programme contains distressing details.Our guest is Bárbara Fernández Melleda, Assistant Professor in Latin American Studies at the University of Hong Kong.We start with Ch ...  Show more

In May 1991, the brutal Ethiopian dictator, Colonel Mengistu and his miltary regime were on the verge of collapse after years of civil war. The end came when a Tigrayan-led rebel movement advanced on the capital Addis Ababa and took power. They would rule for Ethiopia for decades ...  Show more

In the early months of 2011 demonstrators took to the streets across the Arab world in what became known as the Arab spring. In February, protests in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi soon turned into an armed revolt seeking to overthrow the dictator, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. S ...  Show more

How does a country go from its leader winning the Nobel Peace Prize to all-out war in just one year? That's the question surrounding Ethiopia, which has become embroiled in one of the deadliest wars of the 21st century. The U.S. has called it an ethnic cleansing campaign against ...  Show more

This episode contains graphic references of violence and tortureThe rise of Islamic State (ISIS) stands as one of the darkest legacies of the Iraq War. Founded as Al-Qaeda in Iraq, the organisation joined the conflict in 2003 by attacking not only Coalition troops but Saddam Huss ...  Show more