Making History

Helen Castor is in the chair for a festive edition of the popular history magazine programme. She's joined by Professor Miri Rubin from Queen Mary, University of London and Tony Collins the Professor of Sport at De Montfort University in Leicester.

On this feast of Stephen, Tom visits Norwich to find out more about the character who met a violent death and became the first christian martyr. He talks to the choristers who will be singing Good King Wenceslas in the city's grand Norman cathedral over Christmas and the Bishop of Norwich the Rt Reverend Graham James.

Dr Hugh Doherty from the University of East Anglia takes the story of martyrdom on to the 12th century. In Norwich, a city which had no saint, a twelve year old boy called William was found dead just before the feast of Passover. Some pointed the finger of blame for this death at the city's growing Jewish community, accusing them of a ritual murder. Was William a martyr as some in Norwich tried to make him, or was this nothing more than a nasty anti-semitic medieval marketing campaign.

Boxing Day is a time for games and a feast of sport. A football match will be on many people's festive agenda. Journalist Paul Brown has traced festive football back to its Victorian and Edwardian roots and discovered that Everton FC once played no fewer than three games on Christmas Day and Boxing Day!

Finally, a new game - Top Town History. Two Making History listeners go head to head to prove that where they live is best for history. Today, Fort William meets Reading in a battle for the past.

Producer: Nick Patrick

Tom Holland with the last in the series, exploring new historical research and resonances.

We travel to Durham to examine the world's oldest piece of environmental legislation, the Charter of the Forest which was made law 800 years ago in 1217.

Tom reveals how travellers from Heathrow may well be taking off from one of the most important Iron Age sites in the UK.

We also hear memories of family holidays from a unique collection in Leicester and reveal how key figures in Russia's October revolution of 1917 met in the East End of London 10 years earlier.

Producer: Nick Patrick

Helen Castor takes the hot seat for the programme which shows why history matters.

Today, testimony about coming out before the decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1967 and what we know about the lives of gay people in Victoria's Britain.

Iszi Lawrence discovers that the 'gig' economy was widespread in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. And Tom Holland is on Tyneside to celebrate the history of a building which played host to an almost forgotten intellectual revolution.

Producer: Nick Patrick

Tom Holland travels north to mark the 1900th anniversary of Hadrian becoming Emperor, by examining the impact of his biggest legacy in Britain - Hadrian's Wall.

We also take-off for Heathrow to learn about its Iron Age origins and ask if a mound near a car park in Slough could really be a Saxon burial site.

Producer: Nick Patrick

Helen Castor is joined by Dr Sam Willis to discuss food shortages in the First World War, Silk Roads, the history of the duffle coat and Franklin's infamous last voyage.

Food blogger Jack Monroe heads for the National Archives to learn how the submarine war in 1917 presented a serious threat to food supplies. She discovers that the rationing put in place then was successfully used again in World War Two.

Tom Holland meets the author of the best-seller Silk Roads, Peter Frankopan, to ask whether China is trying to emulate a centuries old history of trade and influence through its Belt and Road policy.

Fashion historian Amber Butchart marks the passing of author Michael Bond to explain the history of Paddington Bear's iconic duffle coat.

And Sam Willis previews Death in the Ice, a new exhibition on Franklin's ill-fated journey to find the North West passage.

Producer: Nick Patrick

Helen Castor and her guests discuss the history stories that are alive today.

Seventy five years on from the first American bomber raid taking off from British soil to attack targets in Nazi-occupied Europe, poet Sugar Brown hears how the thousands of Yanks who arrived in the UK in 1942 were segregated by race - both when they were in uniform and when they were out on civvy street.

On the eve of the announcement of the Art Fund Museum of the Year, we hear from two retired ladies who, having completed a journey on every London bus route, are now visiting every museum in the capital. Iszi Lawrence asks them what makes a good museum.

Tom Holland meets with the author Peter Frankopan to hear how China's new Belt and Road initiative has its historical roots in the Silk Road which, for a millennium, connected the Korean peninsular and Japan to the Mediterranean Sea.

And as a new TGV line opens to Bordeaux we ask what's 'must-see' in that fabulous city for the historian.

Producer: Nick Patrick

Tom Holland is joined by Dr Dan Todman from Queen Mary University, London and Professor Lucy Robinson at the University of Sussex.

Britain's retreat from Dunkirk in 1940 was a precursor to the fall of France and a summer in which it looked like Britain too would be be overwhelmed by the Nazi war machine. The evacuation of thousands of troops from the beaches of Northern France in an armada of boats of all shapes and sizes has been spun into a defining moment when the plucky Brits snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. But Dunkirk was a disaster. So why don't we remember it as one? As a new film explores this moment of history, we explore the "Dunkirk spirit" and whether it really existed.

Helen Castor is in Norwich which, it was once said, had a pub for every day of the year and a church for every Sunday. In the Middle Ages, it also seemed to be teeming with anchoresses, anchorites and hermits - people who, with the blessing of the church, withdrew from everyday life but were still on hand to dish out advice to those who wanted it. How important were these people in medieval society and why are we less comfortable with loners and recluses today? Helen is joined at St Julian's in Norwich by Professor Carole Rawcliffe and Dr Tom Licence from the University of East Anglia.

There are archaeological artefacts from all eras. In Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, it is the sweet-wrappers, marbles and toy figures discarded by children in the 1950s and 60s that are adding to our knowledge of the past. In a housing estate that was designed by planners influenced by American ideas from the 1920's, a team from the University of Lincoln is working with the local community to see whether ideas about encouraging play in British housing estates really worked.

Producer: Nick Patrick

Tom Holland goes behind the headlines to look at the stories making history.

Helen Castor travels to Salisbury Plain to hear more about a growing row between archaeologists and our leading heritage organisations about plans to build a tunnel under Stonehenge. She discovers how, increasingly, it isn't iconic Stonehenge that is at the centre of researchers' thinking but the wider and even more historic landscape.

In Lincolnshire, Carenza Lewis and a team from the University of Lincoln are using archaeology for what some might describe as more pressing questions - how we can tackle the housing crisis and provide green space and places to play. A community project in Gainsborough has been evaluating the success of the 20th Century Garden City Movement by analysing artefacts from a post-war housing estate, to see if people actually exploited the space provided by urban planners.

Chinese President Xi Jinping's Belt and Road initiative is a multi-billion dollar infrastructure project that looks set to transform large swaths of Asia and the world beyond. But, as Tom Holland discovers from Silk Road historian Peter Frankopan, British explorers were eying up the economic possibilities of the isolated frontier near Pakistan, Afghanistan and Tajikistan more than 150 years ago.

Producer: Nick Patrick

Helen Castor presents the programme that goes behind the history headlines. Scottish medievalist Fiona Watson and landscape historian Francis Pryor join Helen to discuss medieval mutilations in North Yorkshire, illegal whisky distilling in nineteenth century Scotland and the news that human beings may have evolved in Africa 100,000 years earlier than we thought.

Tom Holland travels to North Yorkshire and the deserted medieval village at Wharram Percy which archaeologists now believe was the site of a gruesome practice of mutilation in the middle ages. Dr Simon Mays is a human skeletal biologist for Historic England and he noticed some odd marks on human bones recovered at Wharram Percy in the sixties. These bones were found in the middle of the deserted village - not in the churchyard. Simon thinks the marks on them were caused by severe blows made shortly after death - maybe to stop disruptive souls from tormenting villagers again.

Whisky writer Rachel McCormack takes us to another remote and deserted location, the Cabrach between Aberdeen and Inverness. This was the centre of a well-developed, but illegal, whisky distilling industry in the eighteenth century. Although the remote location kept these stills hidden from the revenue men it also made them commercially unviable when whisky production was licensed in the 1820s. The ruined farmsteads in this otherwise untouched environment are the only clues to this tumultuous past.

Dr Vanessa King and Dr Matthew Green show Helen a seedy and brutal history of a night out on London's South Bank, and Dr John McNabb responds to news that Homo Sapiens may be 100,000 older than we once thought.

Producer: Nick Patrick

Tom Holland returns with the history magazine that showcases the latest research and demonstrates the relevance of the past in the present day.

The Dutch Are Coming!

Domesday Uncovered.

The History of Political Constituencies.

Producer: Nick Patrick