This week's episode takes us to Paris in La Belle Époque. There, among all the splendour and sophistication, we watch the great Impressionist, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, painting one of his great portraits.

But there is more to this history than first meets the eye. As our guest Catherine Ostler explains, the year 1881 was a critical one in Jewish history. By that point in time Jewish communities were thriving in Paris, where they sought to consolidate their position in society. But a dramatic event in Russia was poised to change everything.

The scenes, characters and storylines in this episode of Travels Through Time all feature in Catherine Ostler's book, The Renoir Girls: A Hidden History of Art, War and Betrayal. 

Scene One: 19 January 1881. The wedding of Leopold de Rothschild and Marie Perugia in London.

Scene Two: January–March 1881. Renoir paints Alice and Elisabeth at the Cahen d'Anvers family house in Paris.

Scene Three: 13 March 1881. Tsar Alexander II is assassinated in St Petersburg.

Memento: Renoir's Pink and Blue painting.

Presenter: Peter Moore 

Guest: Catherine Ostler

Producers: Maria Nolan

Theme music: Firelight by Minka

As Britain's 'special relationship' with the USA falters, we look back at a very relevant epislode from our archive. In this the author and journalist Philip Stephens takes us back to a crucial month in post-war British politics. December 1962, he explains, set Britain’s relationship with the rest of the world for the next half century.

Featuring in this episode is the elderly British prime minister, Harold Macmillan; the charismatic US president John F Kennedy; and the trenchant French statesman Charles de Gaulle. In this one month these three men would set out their contrasting visions of what kind of country Britain would be.

The scenes, characters and storylines in this episode of Travels Through Time all feature in Philip Stephen’s book, Britain Alone: the path from Suez to Brexit (Faber)

Scene One: 5 December 1962. Dean Acheson’s speech to the cadets of the Military Academy at West Point, New York.

Scene Two: 15 December. Macmillan's visit to Rambouillet to meet with Charles de Gaulle.

Scene Three: 19 December 1962. Macmillan travels to the Bahamas to meet President John F Kennedy.

Memento: The text for Dean Acheson’s ‘West Point Speech.’

Presenter: Peter Moore

Guest: Philip Stephens

Producers: Maria Nolan

The Netherlands is a small nation with a big history. But in the 1940s it suffered a series of disastrous events. First came the invasion of the Nazis in 1940. Then the very next year the Japanese attacked their old empire in the east. The horrors of World War Two were then followed by the Indonesian National Revolution and, by 1950, the Dutch were a 'pocket superpower' no longer.

In this episode the journalist and hiker Nicholas Walton takes us back to examine this challenging moment in Dutch history. It was a time of reckoning with the past but also a moment of bright new beginnings.

Nicholas Walton is the author of Orange Sky, Rising Water: The Remarkable Past and Uncertain Future of the Netherlands.

Scene One: 1 January 1950, The dining table of a typical Dutch family.

Scene Two: 12 January 1950, The Lloydkade in Rotterdam when troop ships like the SS Waterman, SS Grote Beer and SS Zuiderkruis all were bringing soldiers home to a freezing Netherlands.

Scene Three: 26 July 1950. A barracks in Indonesia. This was the official date that the KNIL, the Dutch colonial army, was officially dissolved.

Memento: A green/white temporary house as lived in by the Moluccans

Presenter: Peter Moore

Guest: Nicholas Walton

Production: Maria Nolan

Theme music: Firelight by Minka

The late eighteenth century history was a time in Europe when a brilliant old world collapsed and raucous new one rose to replace it. In this episode the biographer Veronica Buckley explains how the Hapsburgs, one of the great European families, responded to this revolutionary change.

It was a stern challenge but inspired by one of the great matriarchs in European history, Empress Maria Theresia, her son Emperor Joseph II, his successor Leopold and their sister, Marie Antoinette, reacted as best they could in that perilous year, 1790.

Veronica Buckley is the author of Seven Sisters: Captives and Rebels in Revolutionary Europe's First Family

Read an in-depth article about this story on Unseen Histories.

Scene One: 20 February 1790, Emperor Joseph II dies in Vienna

Scene Two: October 1790, The French revolutionary Comte de Mirabeau meets with Emperor Leopold II in Frankfurt to discuss a possible intervention in France.

Scene Three: November 1790, The Habsburg imperial family arrives in Pressburg for Leopold’s coronation as King of Hungary.

Memento: A piece of elegant jewellery belonging to Marie Christine.

Presenter: Peter Moore

Guest: Veronica Buckley

Production: Maria Nolan

Theme music: Firelight by Minka / Mozart - Piano Sonata in B-flat major, III. Allegretto Grazioso performed by Brendan Kinsella

Most people know Daniel Defoe as one of the great writers in the history of English literature. But the author of Robinson Crusoe was much more than that. A rabble rousing pamphleteer and erratic entrepreneur, in the early years of the eighteenth century Defoe also became an undercover political operative.

Defoe's career as a spy intersected with a huge moment in British history when the Act of Union between England and Scotland was being planned in 1706. Today's guest, the historian Marc Mierowsky, revisits this time in today's episode – analysing a series of events that were crucial to the genesis of Great Britain 

Marc Mierowsky is the author of A Spy Amongst Us. 

Scene One: July 1706. The Cockpit in Whitehall. The Scottish and the English commissioners finally settle on the terms of the treaty for the Act of Union.

Scene Two: 23 October 1706. Edinburgh. The treaty has been sent north - it is being debated in the Scottish parliament -- and a riot breaks out. Defoe is a witness to the disorder.

Scene Three: December 1706. The west of Scotland. Defoe deploys agent John Pierce to infiltrate the Hebronites.

Memento: Daniel Defoe's familiar letters.

Presenter: Peter Moore

Guest: Marc Mierowsky

Production: Maria Nolan

Theme music: Firelight by Minka

Today’s guest, Sean Cunningham, takes us back to a particularly perilous year in the eventful reign of King Henry VII. He explains that 1497 was a year of brinkmanship, battles, plots and disasters that very nearly resulted in the fall of the House of Tudor.

Sean Cunningham is Head of Collections, Medieval, Early Modern and Legal, at the National Archives in Kew. He is one of the leading authorities on the life and times of Henry VII – the first of the Tudor monarchs.

Often overshadowed by his attention-hogging son (he of the six wives), Henry VII was a formidable operator: wily, quicksilver, determined, restless. He needed all these qualities to survive the multiple threats to his rule.

Sean Cunningham is the author of Henry VII: Treason and Trust. 

Read an accompanying article about Henry VII at Unseen Histories.

Scene One: August 1497. King James IV of Scotland challenges the Earl of Surrey to single combat.

Scene Two: October 1497. Henry VII interviews Perkin Warbeck in Taunton Castle.

Scene Three: December 1497. The fire at Sheen Palace.

Memento: The original manuscript of Perkin Warbeck's confession.

Presenter: Peter Moore

Guest: Sean Cunningham

Production: Maria Nolan

Theme music: Firelight by Minka

Given the scandal surrounding Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, we thought we'd examine an eerily familiar moment in British history. In January 1809 the Duke of York became the subject of a huge and embarrassing news story. It was a story of sex, power, money and corruption right at the heart of British politics. One of the stars of the affair was a woman of no rank, title or fortune. Her name was Mary Anne Clarke.

Scene One: 27 January 1809. Colonel Wardle stands up in the House of Commons.

Scene Two: 1 February 1809, Mary Anne Clarke gives evidence before the House of Commons.

Scene Three: 20 March 1809, Spencer Percival announces the Duke of York's resignation as Commander in Chief to the House of Commons.

Memento: Mrs Clarke's coat.

Presenters: Peter Moore

Production: Maria Nolan

Our guest today is the New York Times bestselling historian Charles King, the author of Every Valley: The Desperate Lives and Troubled Times that Made Handel's Messiah.

The Messiah is one of the best known pieces of all classical music and, as King suggests at the beginning of this conversation, it 'may be the world's greatest monument to the possibility of hope'.

To tell us more about how such an extraordinary piece was written, as well as to take us along to its premiere in Dublin in April 1742, King sat down with us for a travel back through time just the other day.

Charles King is the author of Every Valley: The Desperate Lives and Troubled Times that Made Handel's Messiah

Scene One: 13 April, 1742. The words 'Comfort ye/Every Valley' at the premiere of the Messiah in Dublin.

Scene Two: 13 April, 1742. The words 'He Was Despised' at the premiere of the Messiah in Dublin.

Scene Three: 13 April, 1742. The Hallelujah chorus at the premiere of the Messiah in Dublin.

Memento: The original manuscript of Handel's Messiah.

Presenters: Peter Moore and Min Kym

Guest: Charles King

Production: Maria Nolan

Our guest today is Tharik Hussain, a travel writer turned historian who has recently produced  an enchanting study of Europe's Islamic history. To investigate this at close quarters, in this episode he takes us back to Córdoba in the year 929 – the greatest city in Europe at the time, a place of wealth and splendour with a population of around 100,000.

By 929 Córdoba was emerging as a rival power base to Baghdad. At a Friday prayers, early in the year, its ruler Abdul Rahman III declared himself Caliph of the Caliphate of Cordoba, Al Andalus. This was a decisive political move.

Tharik takes us into the Grand Mosque to see this happen and he then guides us on a tour of two more equally intriguing sites.

Tharik Hussain is the author Muslim Europe: A Journey in Search of a Fourteen Hundred Year History

Scene One: Friday Prayers in the Great Mosque of Córdoba. 17 January 929.

Scene Two: Inside a Córdoban hospital, or 'maristan'.

Scene Three: One of the great synagogues of Cordoba in search of a young Jewish boy called Hasdai Ibn Shaprut.

Memento: The plans that were drawn up for AR III’s Caliphate City – Madinah az Zahra. 

Presenter: Peter Moore

Guest: Tharik Hussain

Production: Maria Nolan

Theme music: Firelight by Minka

Our guest today is Sarah Wise, an author known for her incisive social studies of nineteenth century history. In this episode Wise takes us back to a more recent year, 1947, so she can investigate the moment when the British public began to turn against the Mental Deficiency Act of 1913.

The Mental Deficiency Act was a terrifying piece of legislation that resulted in the imprisonment of tens of thousands of vulnerable people. As Wise explains, many of its victims were young, working class women who were deemed incurable 'moral imbeciles'. As such they were locked away with no hope of release. In 1947 this began to change.

Sarah Wise is the author The Undesirables: The Law that Locked Away a Generation.

Scene One: George Scott Rimmington's bungalow in Newton Abbot (September 1947)

Scene Two: Publication of The News of the World's expose of Margery X (1947)

Scene Three: Cambridgeshire MP stands up in the Commons and asks Aneurin "Nye" Bevan a question (30 January 1947)

Memento: A pencil written letter from 'Christine' to her mother. 

Presenter: Peter Moore

Guest: Sarah Wise

Production: Maria Nolan

Theme music: Firelight by Minka