For her final leg across Salisbury Plain, Rosemary Hill is joined by folklorist Jeremy Harte to look at the many groups and stories that have emerged throughout the 20th century to challenge the narratives about Stonehenge presented by archaeologists. From astro-archaeology to the Earth Mysteries Movement, they look out how colonial models of Stonehenge’s history have been overturned and the whole notion of public ownership repeatedly tested, sometimes with violent consequences, since the stone circle was gifted to the nation in 1918, and why it (almost) always comes back to druids.

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For the third episode in her short series on Stonehenge, Rosemary Hill is joined by Seamus Perry to experience the stone circle through the mind and eyes of a Romantic, with the likes of Wordsworth, Blake, Turner and Constable. For these poets and artists, Salisbury Plain took on a gloomy and richly psychological presence, lit with intense personal and political drama, and animated with revolutionary thought.

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Kevin Okoth and Jeremy Harding join Tom to discuss two recent books reassessing decolonisation. Textbook histories used to describe African independence as more or less complete by the mid-1960s, but millions of people were fighting white minority rule into the 1970s and 1980s, while Cold War rivalry between the US, the Soviet Union and China played out across the continent, often with catastrophic consequences. As countries continue to vie for Africa’s natural resources, its postcolonial future remains, at best, unresolved.

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In the second episode of her short series looking at why Stonehenge has occupied such an important place in the story of Britain, Rosemary Hill talks to Kate Bennett about the two antiquarians, John Aubrey and William Stukeley, who first treated the stone circle as a material object whose secrets could be revealed through careful measurement, observation and comparison, and so pioneered many of the practices of modern archaeology.

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Following the Turkish president’s success in the run-off election on Sunday, Izzy Finkel and Tom Stevenson join Tom to discuss whether Erdoğan’s victory was ever in doubt, why the recent devastating earthquakes and economic turmoil seem to have had so little impact on his support, the challenges faced by the opposition, and the growing importance of xenophobia in Turkey’s politics.

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Rosemary Hill begins a new four-part series looking at what people have thought about Stonehenge over the past few hundred years, and why it’s come to matter so much in the story of Britain. In the first episode she talks to architectural historian Vaughan Hart about how Inigo Jones and John Wood were inspired by Stonehenge in their designs for Covent Garden and Bath, and how those in turn had an enormous influence on the way British towns and cities look today, from squares and circuses to oversized acorns and the idea of architecture itself.

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Vaughan Hart is the author of numerous books on the history of architecture, including Inigo Jones: the Architect of Kings; Christopher Wren: In Search of Eastern Antiquity and Nicholas Hawksmoor: Rebuilding Ancient Wonders.

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Rory Scothorne joins Tom to discuss the evolution of Scottish politics over the past century or so, and how best to understand a country that’s shifted from a centre right electoral majority in the 1950s to a Labour stronghold in the 1980s, to being governed by the SNP since 2007. Is Scotland’s left-wing tradition a myth? And with the loss of Nicola Sturgeon as SNP leader, and the recent scandals hitting the party, what are the prospects for Scottish independence?

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Spotify, a company worth $23 billion, has come out on top of the streaming wars, and yet it’s never made a profit. Daniel Cohen joins Malin to discuss the history of the platform and how it's changed the way music is made and listened to, and the strangeness of streaming culture, rife with ethical dilemmas.

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Accused of ‘the largest con in corporate history’, Indian magnate Gautam Adani has lost half his net worth and the indulgence of financial journalists. As Adani comes under increasing scrutiny, so do his troubling political connections – not least with India's prime minister, Narendra Modi. Pankaj Mishra joins Tom to discuss Adani and Modi’s intertwined careers, and their shared role in shaping an increasingly ethnonationalist, plutocratic India.

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Two worlds collide in this Close Readings fusion episode in which Mary Wellesley talks to Mark Ford about the medieval in Thomas Hardy and the wider Victorian imagination. They discuss why Hardy liked to present himself as an Arthurian knight, his satirisation of the chivalric ideal in his novel A Pair of Blue Eyes, and the way his training as an architect influenced his devotion to poetic spontaneity and experimentation.

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