At its height, the Aksumite Empire extended across the northern Ethiopian and Eritrean highlands, and even included parts of Sudan, Somalia and modern-day Yemen. From the first century BC to the seventh or eighth centuries AD it was one of the most important trading hubs in north-east Africa. It was also one of the earliest states in the world to adopt Christianity. In fact the Persian prophet Mani named the Aksumite Empire as one of the “four great kingdoms on Earth” together with Persia, Rome and China. But despite its power and reputation, we’re only now beginning to understand more about the lives of the people who lived there.

Joining Bridget Kendall to discuss the Aksumite Empire and its legacy are Helina Solomon Woldekiros, Assistant Professor of Archaeology at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri; Felege-Selam Solomon Yirga, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Tennessee; and Dr. Niall Finneran, Reader in Historical Archaeology and Heritage Studies at the University of Winchester in the UK. He is author of The Archaeology of Ethiopia.

Produced by Jo Impey for BBC World Service.

Image: 4th century stelae in Aksum, Ethiopia

Umm Kulthum’s powerful voice and talent for communicating poetry was spotted early, when she accompanied her family to perform at weddings and special occasions. It wasn’t long before she was performing in the elite salons of early 20th-century Cairo, although her father dressed her as a boy to protect her from any unwelcome interactions with strangers.

In the Egyptian capital she quickly associated herself with the most talented musicians of the day, and from then on she never looked back. She explored the major Arabic song forms of the period, collaborating with composers and poets. She dabbled in film, negotiated record deals, and when public service broadcasting began in the 1930s, she secured herself a monthly slot on national radio. In awe of her talent and mesmerising presence, the Arab world practically came to a standstill whenever she was heard on the airwaves.

Joining Bridget Kendall to explore Umm Kulthum’s life are Virginia Danielson, author of The Voice of Egypt: Umm Kulthum, Arabic Song and Egyptian Society in the 20th Century; Salwa el-Shawan Castelo-Branco, professor of ethnomusicology at the New University of Lisbon and president of the International Council for Traditional Music; and Yara Salahiddeen, whose current research at the University of Oxford focuses on music-making in 19th and early 20th century urban Egyptian society.

[Image: Umm Kulthum performs on Nov 16 1967 at the Olympia concert hall, Paris. Credit: STRINGER, AFP via Getty Images]

The word 'swashbuckling' is often used to describe the novels of Alexandre Dumas the Elder, the creator of D’Artagnan and the Three Musketeers, the Count of Monte Cristo and the Man in the Iron Mask. But Dumas himself led a life as colourful as many of his gallery of rogues, villains and heroes. Having grown up in poverty, he found employment in the household of a future king of France. He was prolific on the page and pretty active away from it. At first with a series of highly successful plays and then with serialised novels, his production house churned out hundreds of thousands of pages of gripping narrative. He had pet projects like building a mansion and theatre, he had countless mistresses and he frequently found himself in legal disputes and on the run from debt collectors.

In the 150th anniversary year of Dumas’ death Rajan Datar explores the writer's life and work with Claudie Bernard, professor of French Literature, Thought and Culture at New York University; Daniel Desormeaux, professor of Arts and Sciences at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore; Sylvain Ledda, professor of 19th Century Literature at Rouen University in France; and Anne O'Neil-Henry, associate professor of French and Francophone Studies at Georgetown University in Washington.

[Image: Alexandre Dumas the Elder. Credit: The Print Collector/Getty Images]

Cuneiform is an ancient writing system distinguished by wedge-shaped marks made into clay. It developed over 5,000 years ago in Ancient Mesopotamia. At its height it was used to write languages across the ancient Middle East, from Iran to Syria to Anatolia in Turkey. But cuneiform writing fell out of use about 2,000 years ago in favour of alphabetic scripts. When scholars in the 19th century finally managed to redecipher it, they discovered fascinating insights into the culture and rituals of people living in the ancient Middle East, unlocking texts that have changed our understanding of history, including The Epic of Gilgamesh, the Code of Hammurabi and The Amarna Letters of Ancient Egypt. And cuneiform has even seen something of a revival in modern-day Iraqi visual culture.

Image: Cuneiform writing of the ancient Sumerian or Assyrian civilisation in Iraq

When the fifteenth century German entrepreneur Johannes Gutenberg pioneered the printing press, he made an indelible mark on the history of communication. Here was a way to print pages in high quality and high quantities, using methods more efficient than had ever been seen before.

Rajan Datar and guests explore the story of how the printing press was born, and how it changed our world - from the birth of the modern book to the rise of the information society, and the transformation of fields including scholarship and religion.

Rajan is joined by art historian Hala Auji, publisher Michael Bhaskar, scholar Cristina Dondi and the writer John Man.

[Image: A bas-relief of Johannes Gutenberg checking his work while his assistant turns the press, c.1450. Credit: by Hulton Archive/Getty Images]

The story of a young mother who unwittingly left behind a vast medical legacy. Henrietta Lacks died of cancer in Baltimore in 1951 and though she never gave consent to her tissue being used for research, doctors at the time found that her unusually virulent tumour had extraordinary properties. As her cells multiplied in labs around the world, they helped make possible all sorts of medical breakthroughs, from the polio vaccine to cancer drugs and IVF treatment. But it took the Lacks family decades to discover what was going on, and the story raises questions for all of us – about medical ethics, institutional racism, and our right to privacy.

Joining Bridget Kendall to discuss this remarkable story are: Henrietta Lacks' grandson David Lacks Jnr who's on the board of the HeLa Genome Access Working Group; the award-winning science writer, Rebecca Skloot, whose book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks brought the story to the world's attention a decade ago; and Sir John Burn, Professor of Clinical Genetics at Newcastle University.

Produced by Jo Impey for BBC World Service

Image: Henrietta Lacks

Teaching not by rote but through play? That's credited to the 17th-century Czech pastor and thinker called Jan Amos Comenius. Splitting schoolchildren up into year groups? That's Comenius. Universal education for all, rich and poor? That's down to him too. Nearly four centuries ago, Comenius came up with principles of modern education but they were only implemented hundreds of years after his death. That these ideas are now so widely accepted obscures the fact that they were ground-breaking - indeed too radical - in his day.

[Image: Portrait of Comenius by Jurgen Ovens, painted c. 1650 - 1670. Credit: Sepia Times/Universal Images Group via Getty Images]

A Phoenician princess, who fled into exile to escape the cruel king of Tyre, sailed across the Mediterranean Sea to North Africa, where she founded the great city of Carthage in the ninth century BC. Well, that is one story about Dido, or Elissa, as she is known in today's Lebanon and Tunisia.

(Image: A drawing of Dido and Aeneas hunting deer. Credit: Bettmann/Getty Images)

The multi-talented Paul Robeson could have turned his hand to pretty much anything he set his mind to: lawyer, athlete and linguist were just some of the career paths he could have taken. But he chose to become an actor and singer, and in doing so reached into the lives of huge numbers of people as one of the most popular American entertainers of his time.

Outspoken on the issues of racism, colonialism and the rights of workers, he used his popularity to campaign against the injustice he saw in many countries across the world – not just injustice suffered by his fellow African Americans.

During the Cold War, his support for Soviet-style communism was deemed unacceptable by the American establishment, and some set out to destroy his career.

Joining Bridget Kendall to examine Paul Robeson’s life are Dr Gerald Horne, the Moores Professor of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston and the author of Paul Robeson: The Artist as Revolutionary; Dr Shana L Redmond, Professor of Musicology and African American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the author of Everything Man: The Form and Function of Paul Robeson; and Tayo Aluko whose one-man play Call Mr Robeson has won numerous awards and toured countries around the world since its premiere in 2007.

Photo: Paul Robeson

Many of us can find the time of day quickly and accurately but where did the idea of time keeping originate and how did our ancestors manage without the instant access we take for granted today?

From ancient shadow and water clocks to the latest super accurate optical clocks, Bridget Kendal explores time keeping with the Curator of the Royal Observatory in London, Dr Louise Devoy; the Director of the Museum of the History of Science in Oxford, Dr Silke Ackermann; and watch and clock expert Grégory Gardinetti from the Fondation de la Haute Horlogerie in Geneva.

Photo: World Clocks (Credit: EyeWire, Inc.)