How do clothes change what we know about someone? This episode of Travels with Textiles takes a look at this in different ways. First, we talk to Eleanor Houghton about her extraordinary new book: Charlotte Bronte's Life Through Clothes which took her nine long years to complete. We may think we know the story of this famous Victorian author, but this book reveals a very different person.

We then move forward in time to the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, between the First and Second World Wars, and try to unravel the meaning of the clothes worn by both the detectives and some of the characters in these well-loved stories. What is going on in this world of immense social upheaval where people are seeking re-assurance and comfort?

And finally we are off to New Zealand to unpick some of the secrets of a high chief's war cloak – or pauku – which has just made the journey home from Britain.

In the high regions of the world a race against time is going on to save some of the most important historic textiles yet found. Climate change means that ice and snow is being uncovered for the first time in thousands of years, and clothes and shoes abandoned or lost in the past are turning up at the edge of snowfields perfectly preserved. But unless the archaeologists reach them quickly, they rot away in the water and light. One of the most abundant areas for finds is Norway, where an archaeological programme goes out collecting every summer and has found an extraordinary array of objects. They have rescued a perfectly preserved tunic that is around 2,000 years old, the only pair of pre-historic skis in the world, a single Viking-age mitten as well as Bronze-age arrows and spears, secured with string and cord. Come with us in this episode to hear the Secrets of the Ice from Norway.

Happy New Year and welcome back to Travels with Textiles, just for Friends of Haptic & Hue. Do you know anything about the person who designed the pattern on your clothing or your furnishings? Most textile designers remain anonymous and yet their work can be recognised globally. Women in Print is a new show that looks at the female designers behind one of the most famous names in pattern and print, Liberty of London.

We are also off to explore the ancient looping technique of Nälbinding, which long predates crochet and knitting, and in some parts of the world is still in use today. And we travel to Bavaria in Southern Germany to unlock the secrets of how surgeons in the 1700s learnt to stitch cleanly and quickly in the days before anaesthetic and antiseptic.

What's in a carpet? A great deal according to the historian and carpet scholar Dorothy Armstrong, who has just published a book called Threads of Empire: A History of the World in 12 Carpets.

For centuries carpets have been the most coveted and expensive of textiles, they have even attracted carpet forgers, and almost no other textile has done that. Every empire builder, king and prince has wanted the finest carpets to signify his power and status. But so often the carpets themselves have been made in humblest of circumstances by people whose names are lost to us.

This episode of Travels with Textiles journeys around the world from Japan to Romania, from the frozen steppes of Siberia to the fringes of the Sahara Desert to find out how history looks through the lens of a carpet.

It is hard to think of a greater contrast than the opulent style of the ill-fated Queen of France, Marie Antoinette, and the misery of decades of clothes rationing under Cuba's Communist regime. But this month Haptic and Hue's Travels with Textiles considers both, and also takes a look at the forgotten French couturier who helped to rescue women from corsets in the early 20th century

Was Marie Antoinette a fashion victim who came to a nasty end or was she one of most important style icons the world has ever seen? A new exhibition in London, called Marie Antoinette Style, makes a strong case for her being one of fashion's most enduring figures. It includes not just clothes she commissioned and wore, but some of the extraordinary creations that have taken inspiration from her style in the long years after her death

We also hear from a woman who lived and suffered under 30 years of Cuban clothes rationing, putting US and UK wartime rationing in the shade, and we are off to Paris to see an exhibition about the man who is credited with inventing the brassiere.

Danish Design is globally famous and has been exported around the world. But what about Danish textiles? For the first time the renowned Danish Design Museum in Copenhagen has an exhibition devoted to the textile designers of the past 100 years who contributed so much so the Danish design movement. We talk to the curator as she tells us why these largely female designers produced work that was so different from their British and American counterparts.

We also investigate Bog Fashion, a new book that tells you not just how to craft your own Bronze and Iron Age clothes but also how to make the bone needles and the thorn pins that our ancestors would have used thousands of years ago. This was the age when woven and dyed fabrics took over from skin and fur and when our clothes became routinely made from cut and sewn fabrics.

The Edinburgh Street Stitchers have become a familiar sight in the Scottish capital but now to spread the mending word Mary Morton and Jeanna Wigger have written a handbook of repair which takes you right from threading a needle to the successful conclusion of a mend. It's for anyone who has been afraid of a hole in their favourite garment. Find out more in this month's episode of Friends of Haptic & Hue, along with a chance to win some very special textile gifts from Venice.

Five thousand years ago, weavers in southern Egypt were given one of the oddest commissions they must ever have received. Please make a linen shroud for an elephant. Why were they asked to do this, and how long did it take them? This is just one of the themes that we are exploring in this month's episode of Travels with Textiles, which comes from the wonderful Centre for Textile Research in Copenhagen.

There are just a handful of textile research centres around the world, and most of them are geared to industry, but CTR in Denmark is one of the very few to focus on historic textiles and textile archaeology. Jo and Bill went to Copenhagen to see their work.

In this episode, we hear stories from the academics and students who come to study at the Centre for Textile Research. Their work casts a new light on the lives of different people who have worked with textiles in the past. As well as what we know about burying an elephant in ancient Egypt, there is research about how Zoroastrian mothers use silk weaving to mourn their children, how Danish society in the 1600s saw women who made their living as weavers, and unexpected details about what the sex workers of ancient Greece did in their spare time.

A new project is just getting underway in Western Norway to document the craft skills of the Arctic peoples that enabled them, down the centuries, to create beautiful handstitched clothing perfectly fitted to the environment. The University of Bergen is working in collaboration with people from the European Arctic, Greenland, and Western Canada to analyse and understand some of the incredible skills that go into making clothing that can withstand some of the harshest environments on earth.

For this episode, Jo and Bill travelled to Bergen to see the University's extraordinary arctic clothing collection which is housed in a special low-oxygen store deep below the mountains. It includes handmade sealskin and polar bear trousers, waterproof bird feather pouches, coveralls made from bear guts, handstitched leather anoraks with walrus toggles, fur boots, red woollen hats, and woven bands.

In an episode that encompasses clothing that stretches back to the time of Eric the Red, who settled in Greenland over a thousand years ago, we talk to Hana Lukesova, one of Europe's leading textile scientists, and Knut Rio, who is an anthropologist at the University of Bergen. Come with us to a completely different northern world where every stitch could help you survive.

UNESCO has just announced that it is adding an old quilting practice to the list of crafts that have intangible cultural heritage status. Quilting in a flat frame with a rocking stitch has a history that stretches back certainly to the 16th century and maybe much further. This is one of the original forms of quilting on cloth, creating beautiful and complex patterns as it is done. This technique often produces a style of quilting known as whole cloth quilts.

Hand quilting in a frame is being placed on the Red List of Endangered Crafts by the Heritage Crafts Council as the number of elderly practitioners of this skill, mainly in Wales, Northern England and the Scottish Borders continues to dwindle and quilting frames disappear.

But this month we talk to two quilters who are seeking to reverse that by recognising, protecting and reviving whole cloth quilting, and the tools needed to carry it out, not just in Britain, but much more widely as well.

Mary Schoeser is one of the world's great authorities on textiles. She has devoted her life to understanding textiles and the extraordinary stories behind them. Now the Fashion and Textile Museum in London has just opened a new exhibition curated by her. In this month's Friends of Haptic & Hue we have a special interview with Mary where she talks to us about the exhibition and how she put it together.

Last week the Dublin-based textile archaeologist, Elizabeth Wincott Heckett, died after a long illness. She was a remarkable thinker about textiles, writing about the clothes worn by the famous Lewis chessmen and defining the little caps that were worn by Viking women and girls in Dublin and York. Her death came shortly after a beautiful new book was published of her work called Textiles of Ireland, edited by Mary Ann Williams. We hear from May Ann and we have a special discount enabling you to get 20% off the book in the notes for this episode.