Making History

Tom Holland is joined in the studio by Dr Marion Bowman from the Open University.

As more and more people become interested in making a pilgrimage, Tonderai Munyevu - the star of the play Black Men Walking - joins with members of the British Pilgrimage Trust for a day on the South Downs where they encounter pagans, priests and members of the public. Is a journey into the past a spritual wander or just an excuse for a nice walk?

The cricket season is in full swing and following on from a heavy defeat to the Scots, England now face the Aussies and India in a hectic summer when it seems every cricket playing nation is represented. It's only fifty years since the first overseas players came into the county game and Helen Castor has been meeting with two people who were at the vanguard of this sporting influx - the Barbardian Vanburn Holder and the legendary Indian wicketkeeper Farokh Engineer.

As the longest day passes and the night begin to lengthen again, Tom celebrates the solstice in the most unlikely place and finds out about the role of ancient people in the planning of Milton Keynes.

Producer: Nick Patrick

Helen Castor is joined in the studio by the historian of witchcraft, Professor Owen Davies.

Historian Tom Charlton travels to Manningtree in North Essex - the scene, in the 17th century, of a series of witch-trials instigated by the so-called Witchfinder General Matthew Hopkins. Hopkins has gained notoriety for these and other brutal acts against women but he is the one who is always remembered - not the victims. Now a local woman, Grace Carter, wants a #MeToo moment so that the women are not forgotten. Professor Alison Rowlands, who studies witchcraft across Europe, joins Tom to help Grace sort out fact from fiction as she plans a monument to this painful past.

The poison attack on the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal in Salisbury caused consternation around the world. Skripal and his daughter were in hospital for weeks and were lucky not to have been killed by the nerve agent used against them. Poisoning seems a very underhand act today but, back in the Middle Ages when knowledge of the natural world was more instinctive, it was commonplace. Indeed, as Iszi Lawrence found out, natural poisons were at the root of medieval medicine.

Our modern world, with its fast roads and industrial farmland, is no place for hedgehogs and their numbers are in serious decline. Perhaps it's the threat to their numbers or the affectionate portrayal of Mrs Tiggy Winkle by Beatrix Potter, but we seem to be very fond of this prickly mammal. Four hundred years ago, things were very different. Hedgehog numbers were healthy but people thought they were witches and hunted them. To find out why, Tom Holland has been spending the night spotting hedgehogs in an Oxfordshire garden with natural history writer Hugh Warwick.

Producer: Nick Patrick

Tom Holland is joined by Dr Matthew Green for a programme that's all at sea.

Helen Castor is in Great Yarmouth where local people voted overwhelmingly for Brexit. One of their major gripes with Brussels was the detrimental impact they thought EU quotas had on the town's fishing industry. Dr James Barrett is an archaeologist who researches the medieval fishing communities of Britain and he reveals that, 800 years ago, the fishermen of Gt Yarmouth worked closely with their counterparts across the North Sea to bring in unimaginable quantities of herring - along with Britain's main supply of wine.

Earlier this year and just a few miles north of Great Yarmouth, villagers living in chalets on the cliffs at Hemsby were evacuated as the so-called "Beast from the East" tore into the unstable, sandy cliffs. Several of these properties have since been demolished, while others have been the focus of a frantic attempt to protect them from the unforgiving sea. Such destruction is commonplace in the history of the East Coast. Geographer Sally Brown from the University of Southampton heads to East Yorkshire to meet Marcus Jecock from Historic England and find out how the North Sea has shaped the lives of people living nearby for centuries.

The British seaside resort has been an unloved place ever since package holidays took its clientele to sunnier climes overseas. Now funding bodies such as the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Arts Council have been investing in projects that seek to restore some of these places to their former glory. But how effective is this and does one seaside history fit every coastal resort? Guardian writer Tim Burrows goes home to Southend to ponder the death of the seaside.

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

Helen Castor presents the popular history magazine. She's joined by Dr Jane Hamlett from Royal Holloway University of London.

It's 140 years since the UK prison system was nationalised and Iszi Lawrence visits Shrewsbury with Professor Alyson Brown from Edge Hill University to discover why a change in organisation was needed. Today, paying customers are experiencing life here at Her Majesty's pleasure - and all over the world people seem to want to visit places which have a grim and troubling past. So what's the appeal and the purpose of so-called "dark tourism"? Tom Holland talks to Dr Philip Stone from the University of Central Lancashire.

The 2018 World Cup in Russia came at a time when President Putin's stock was high at home, but on the floor abroad. Not for the first time, football was seen as having the potential to offer a political leader a global platform. We go back to France '38 which was held against a backdrop of a growing global diplomatic crisis. Sports writer Julie Welch is joined by Professor Simon Martin and football journalist Jonathan Wilson to explain how, with civil war in Spain, the merging of the Austrian and German teams after the Nazi Anschluss and Mussolini promoting his brand of fascism through football, this really was a tournament with all to play for.

Council budget cuts, E-readers and on-line delivery are all presenting challenges to Britain's library service, and mobile libraries in particular have been badly affected. But when did the library van first start doing its rounds? Author of Mobile Library, David Whitehouse, heads back home to Nuneaton and the mobile library his mother used to clean.

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

Helen Castor is joined in the studio by Professor Lucy Robinson from the University of Sussex.

As concerns grow about fixed-odds betting machines on our high streets, Matthew Greent takes us back to a gambling crisis over 200 years ago in London.

Dr Rachael Attwood explores the dangerous, de-humanising world of nineteenth century human trafficking and, as the numbers of rough sleepers grows on Britain's streets, we find out about homelessness in the past.

And the last in our challenge to find the place that is top for history in the UK - Top Town History.

Producer: Nick Patrick

Tom Holland and guests highlight histories that help us understand more about the background to some of today's important issues.

Helen Castor visits Coventry where, in 1957, one of the last polio epidemics hit the city. Local people were furious that widespread vaccination wasn't brought in, but the fledgling NHS simply didn't have enough stocks and medical experts were concerned about an American trial that had gone wrong. We learn that the government of the day were worried that Britain was entering a high-tech world without the skills that other countries had and was reluctant to bring in costly medicines from overseas, preferring that we develop our own.

The last time Parliament sat outside Westminster was in 1681, when it went to Oxford for a week. Today, with the government yet to finalise plans for the restoration and repair of the Palace of Westminster, we ask whether history might be made and a decision taken to move the engine of our democracy out to the shires once again, on a temporary basis. What can we learn from that short relocation over 300 years ago.

Top Town History features the home of Magna Carta, Egham, and the former-industrial powerhouse of Bury in Lancashire.

Producer: Nick Patrick

Helen Castor and her guests take us back to moments in the past when social and economic change conspired to produce the historical forerunners of two of today's most pressing issues - technological change and housing.

Tom Holland visits a fruit-packing factory in Kent where, today, much of the work is done by robots. Their introduction hasn't threatened any jobs yet but, half an hour away, are the villages where, in 1830, rural farmworkers raged against new threshing machines they feared would take away much-needed work in the winter months. Professor Carl Griffin from the University of Sussex explains how the mythical Captain Swing shook the government of the day and terrified landowners in a series of machine-wrecking riots that swept South East England, Wiltshire and East Anglia.

Britain's housing issues have kick-started a boom in a type of home that came to the rescue in the dark days after World War Two, when prefabs offered accommodation for those who were bombed or living in slums. Thanks to a certain Swedish company, we all know about flat-packed furniture but, back in the late 1940s, it was Swedish flat-packed houses that were causing a stir. Architectural writer Jonathan Glancey gives us the low-down on a house that changed lives and is, in some places, still standing.

Producer: Nick Patrick

Tom Holland and his guests showcase the stories that are making history.

Helen Castor heads for Wales and new scientific research telling us much more about what the Romans ate and how far away they had to source their food to feed their armies. Helen's in Newport, not far from Caerleon which was one of only three permanent fortresses in Roman Britain. Here, archaeologists and scientists from Cardiff University are using dental palaeopathology to discover where the animals that were slaughtered for their meat came from. The results suggest that so-called supply chains were as long and involved as they are today.

Also, we cross the Bristol Channel for more food history as reporter Hester Cant tastes the city's vibrant street food culture and discovers just how long its been established in the UK.

Producer: Nick Patrick

Helen Castor is in the chair for this edition of the long-running history magazine programme. Today, she's joined by the historian of Victorian sex, suffrage and entertainment, Dr Fern Riddell - along with an expert on Victorian and Edwardian humour, Dr Bob Nicholson of Edge Hill University in Lancashire.

Making History reporter Hester Cant braves the streets of north London with Fern Riddell to dig into the nasty past of acid attacks on the capital's streets, and a nineteenth century scare that became actor murdering mania.

Iszi Lawrence takes to the jiu jitsu mat with historian Naomi Paxton to discover how and why the suffragettes embraced this martial art.

Tom Holland has a tale that's hot off the historical presses.

And the Cornwall village of Linkinhorne comes under the spotlight when it enters the jeux sans frontières of history competitions, Top Town History.

Producer: Nick Patrick

Tom Holland is joined by Dr Alice Taylor from King's College in London and the historian of pop culture, Travis Elborough.

Helen Castor charts the course of the Prague Spring, that period of liberalisation in Czechoslovakia brought in when Alexander Dubcek became leader in January 1968. She hears from those who were there and those who study that period now and asks whether people had any inkling what an extraordinary year it would be.

Alice Taylor introduces a new project which will celebrate the 700th anniversary of the Declaration of Arbroath in 2020. She explains how fact and fiction were brought together to create the notion of a Scottish nation and a document that would heavily influence the Constitution of the United States.

French Journalist Agnes Poirier leafs through the pages of Our Island Story, the 1905 children's book that some argue not only re-imagined English history but then shaped the world-view of some of our political leaders.

Fresh from the publication of his book of twentieth century diary extracts, Travis Elborough discusses if the diary is dead in the digital post-truth age.

And Iszi Lawrence enlists the help of the world wide web in her search for the origins of the expression "hair of the dog".

Producer: Nick Patrick