Charles Wheeler – författare

Moving beyond past histories of Viet Nam that have focused on nationalist struggle, this volume brings together work by scholars who are re-examining centuries of Vietnamese history. Crossing borders and exploring ambiguities, the essays in ""Viet Nam: Borderless Histories"" draw on international archives and bring a range of inventive analytical approaches to the global, regional, national, and local narratives of Vietnamese history. Among the topics explored are the extraordinary diversity between north and south, lowland and highland, Viet and minority, and between colonial, Chinese, Southeast Asian, and dynastic influences. The result is an exciting new approach to Southeast Asia's past that uncovers the complex and rich history of Viet Nam.

Norman Brook was Cabinet Under Secretary during the Second World War and took personal, handwritten notes of the exchanges between Prime Minister Winston Churchill and his ministers. The BBC gained exclusive access to his notebooks, and journalist and broadcaster Charles Wheeler recreates the discussions, concerns - and disagreements - of those cabinet meetings. He narrates this compelling drama-documentary that was first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 - the same day the notebooks were released to the public. Starring David Ryall as Churchill and Tim Pigott-Smith as Morrison, we hear Churchill arguing with his Cabinet over reprisals against Germany - 'if anybody likes to play rough, we can play rough too' - and deciding what information to release to the public about the mass extermination of Jews, the treatment of POWs and the Bethnal Green tube station disaster. Startling insights into Churchill's character are revealed, as well as the background to some of the most dramatic decisions that shaped the history of the 20th Century.