Historia & arkeologi

In sixteenth-century Venice, one young noblewoman dares to resist the choices made for her Venice in 1509 is on the brink of war. The displeasure of Pope Julius II is a continuing threat to the republic, as is the barely contained fighting in the ...

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1911 saw the fall of the Qing Dynasty and the abdication of the last Emperor in China. 100 years on, Isabel Hilton describes how China coped with the collapse and looks for any lingering legacy in this BBC Radio 3 report originally broadcast as th...

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The Royal Albert Hall has attracted some of the biggest names in showbiz throughout its 140-year history. From rock events to The Proms, Cirque du Soleil to the Chelsea Arts Ball, it has played host to an huge variety of performers. In these two p...

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Battlefields is what every Richard Holmes fan has been waiting for. Richard Holmes skilfully clarifies the complexities of four major World War 2 military campaigns: El Alamein, Italy, Arnhem and the Battle of Britain (the Main Offensive). In this...

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A compilation of readings from the book of the same name by the co-creator of the comedy series, Knowing Me, Knowing You . Iannucci proffers his inaccurate insights into science, the arts, and such topics as the first fist-fight on the moon, an Of...

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A guided tour of Roman Britain with historian Guy de la Bedoyere, as heard on BBC Radio 4. In 55 BC, Julius Caesar invaded Britain, which was then on the edge of the known world. But he was unable to conquer it. Where Caesar failed the Emperor Cla...

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Dear Mr Bigelow is an enchanting selection of weekly 'pen-pal' letters written between 1949 and 1961 from an unmarried woman working at the Pier Approach Baths in Bournemouth, to a wealthy American widower, living on Long Island, New York. Frances...

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'It didn't matter that they were now three miles beyond their target site, that communications were dropping out and that they were running low on fuel. All that mattered to Neil as he searched for a safe spot to land was that boulders littered th...

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A dramatic, sparkling tale of sex, glamour, intrigue, romance and heartbreak, England's Mistress traces the rise and rise of the gorgeous Emma Hamilton. Born into poverty, she clawed her way up through London's underworlds of sex for sale to becom...

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'I will be good,' promised the thirteen-year-old Victoria, when she understood that she would be Queen of the most powerful country in the world. That, of course, is a matter of opinion. And there are other layers to the story.With a combination o...

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The narrow street on which Harry Bernstein grew up was seemingly unremarkable; there was nothing to distinguish it from the hundreds of other such working class streets in the industrial north of England - save for an invisible wall down the middl...

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On 21 July 1942 the Nazis invaded Poland. In the small town of Zolkiew, life for Jewish 15-year-old Clara Kramer was never to be the same again. While those around her were either slaughtered or transported, Clara and her family hid perilously in ...

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Brought to you by Penguin.John Julius Norwich expertly examines the history of the oldest continuing institution in the world, tracing the papal line down the centuries from St Peter to the presentOf the 280-odd holders of the supreme office, some...

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'Today, Gordon's words are simple and heartfelt. He promises, as his own school motto said, "e;to do his utmost"e;. I know that the same will go for me, too. We turn to the door, greeting the policeman on duty. It is time to play our part ...

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On the morning of 24th February 1944 following a devastating Luftwaffe raid, Donald Wheal and his family were homeless refugees with bulging suitcases and faces blackened by soot blast. In World's End, the first part of his bestselling childhood a...

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Best-selling author Donald James grew up in World's End, Chelsea during the Blitz years. Just on the edge of a fashionable middle class world, his childhood experience was in stark contrast to the privileged, bourgeois lifestyle glimpsed a few hun...

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A naive young man, a railway enthusiast and radio buff, was caught up in the fall of the British Empire at Singapore in 1942. He was put to work on the 'Railway of Death' - the Japanese line from Thailand to Burma. Exhaustively and brutally tortur...

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Brought to you by Penguin.In Hope and Glory Stuart goes in search of the places, people and events of the century we have just left behind that have shaped the look and character of modern Britain. From the death of Victoria to the demise of New L...

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Born only five years after Pakistan was created in 1947, Imran Khan has lived his country's history. Undermined by a ruling elite hungry for money and power, Pakistan now stands alone as the only Islamic country with a nuclear bomb, yet it is unab...

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Ross Kemp has encountered conflict and warfare the world over, broadcasting from some of the most volatile military hot-zones. From meeting the world's deadliest gangsters, to perhaps his hardest assignment of all; embedded with the British Army i...

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A LIFE LOST. A LOVE CUT SHORT.'From the moment I set eyes on him I adored him. The connection between us was so strong it went beyond everything else. His job, my job, his lifestyle, my lifestyle. All that fell away...'Christina and Oz had their w...

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The night of May 16th, 1943. Nineteen specially adapted Lancaster bombers take off from RAF Scampton in Lincolnshire, each with a huge 9,000lb cylindrical bomb strapped underneath them. Their mission: to destroy three dams deep within the German h...

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The acclaimed Science of Discworld centred around an original Pratchett story about the Wizards of Discworld. In it they accidentally witnessed the creation and evolution of our universe, a plot which was interleaved with a Cohen & Stewart non-fic...

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Refreshes the parts other history books can?t reach... A bit ropy on the Renaissance? In the dark about the Enlightenment? Or, in fact, do you need a revision course on the entire history of the world and want to read a witty, irreverent, definite...

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Adolf Hitler was an unlikely leader - fuelled by hate, incapable of forming normal human relationships, unwilling to debate political issues - and yet he commanded enormous support. So how was it possible that Hitler became such an attractive figu...

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Berlin,1933. William E. Dodd, a mild-mannered academic from Chicago, has to his own and everyone else's surprise, become America's first ambassador to Hitler's Germany, in a year that proves to be a turning point in history. Dodd and his family, n...

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What if you had the chance to live your life again and again, until you finally got it right?During a snowstorm in England in 1910, a baby is born and dies before she can take her first breath. During a snowstorm in England in 1910, the same baby ...

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14 November 2012 marks the ninetieth anniversary of the BBC's first ever broadcast and the beginning of the British love affair with radio. This fascinating book takes as its starting point those early, tentative programmes broadcast from Marconi ...

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1912 was an incredible year, marking the height of the Heroic Age of Exploration. Curiosity about Antarctica was at fever pitch, and between 1910 and 1914 five teams of intrepid explorers embarked on the greatest race of the era, to travel beyond ...

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Six raids that changed the course of history.Operation Judgement: one of the most spectacular efforts of World War Two, where obsolete British biplanes attacked the Italian fleet in Taranto.Operation Archery: the first true combined operation carr...

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