Travels Through Time

An unholy rush: the cavalier, chaotic and catastrophic sequence of events surrounding Indian Independence in the summer of 1947

In the immediate aftermath of World War Two it became clear that the British Raj was no longer sustainable. But how should the British leave the Indian subcontinent after such a long period of colonial rule? Should the territory be divided? How could this be done?

The long-contested answers to these questions were finally delivered between June and August of 1947. In this episode of Travels Through Time the writer and artist Aanchal Malhotra ventures back to the bewildering and traumatic events of that summer. We meet British officials like Sir Cyril Radcliffe, the man responsible for drawing the border line between India and Pakistan, and many of the individuals whose lives were altered irrevocably by his decisions.

Scene One: 3 June, 1947 India – the announcement of Indian independence and subsequent Partition called the Independence of India Act, 1947 or the Mountbatten Plan. 

Scene Two: 8 July, 1947, arrival of Sir Cyril Radcliffe, who goes on to draw the "Radcliffe Line".

Scene Three: The days of Partition – roughly, the middle of August, 1947. The northern belt of present-day India and Pakistan.

Follow Aanchal’s work on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aanch_m

Or get your copy of Aanchal’s book: Remnants of Partition https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/remnants-of-partition/

Presenter: Peter Moore

Guest: Aanchal Malhotra

Producer: Maria Nolan

The philosopher who changed the way we think about the world and the woman who changed him

Bertrand Russell wrote that ‘the achievements of Athens in the time of Pericles are perhaps the most astonishing thing in all history.’ And of all Athens’s great figures at this time, few are better remembered than Socrates. Commonly acknowledged as the founder of Western philosophy, he pioneered a new method of constant questioning, famously arguing that ‘the unexamined life' is not worth living at all.

In this episode of Travels Through Time we venture back to meet Socrates with the Oxford academic Professor Armand D’Angour. We meet Socrates as the young son of a stonemason, as the intelligent scholar and as the wise old philosopher. Most of all Armand introduces us to a revolutionary new figure into the story of Socrates’s younger life. This is the lover and partner of the statesman Pericles: Aspasia.

Scene One: Ancient Athens in 450 BCE when Aspasia, aged 20, arrives from Miletus.

Scene Two: The Temple of Apollo at Delphi in 445 BCE, when Socrates visited and was told by the prophetess that no one was wiser than him.

Scene Three: The Symposium in 416 BCE when Socrates and his friends discuss the meaning of love.

More about Armand D’Angour at his website: https://www.armand-dangour.com/

Armand’s book: “Socrates in Love” https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/socrates-in-love-9781408883914/

Presenter: Peter Moore

Guest: Professor Armand D’Angour

Producer: Maria Nolan

A Botanical Odyssey: the (mis)adventures of the plant hunter George Forrest

In this episode of Travels Through Time writer, gardener and panellist on Gardeners' Question Time Matt Biggs travels back to 1905 to see the plant hunter George Forrest as he begins an ill-omened expedition into the mountains of Yunnan. For centuries plant hunters like Forrest had been tempted out into the margins of the landscape in search of prize new specimens. They often travelled at significant personal risk through hostile environments and contested political spaces. George Forrest's 1905 expedition was one of the most fraught of them all. In this episode we watch Forrest in three scenes as the drama of his story unfolds.

More about Matt Biggs at his website: http://matthewbiggs.com/

Matt's book: "Secrets of Great Botanists" https://www.amazon.co.uk/RHS-Secrets-Great-Botanists-Gardening/dp/1784724971

Presenter: Peter Moore

Guest: Matt Biggs

Producer: Maria Nolan

The Magical Mathematician: Sir Isaac Newton and the Principia Mathematica

On a frozen January day in 1684 three friends – Christopher Wren, Robert Hooke and Edmond Halley - met at a London coffee house to confront one of the great questions in knowledge: planetary motion. Their conversation and speculations led, in a few months, to Isaac Newton’s chambers at Trinity College in Cambridge and initiated one of the most thrilling episodes in the entire history of science. In this fourth episode of Travels Through Time, Professor Simon Schaffer of the University of Cambridge takes us to three scenes in the year 1684, and to the genesis of that paradigm-shattering book, the Principia Mathematica.

Presenter: Peter Moore

Guest: Professor Simon Schaffer

Producer: Maria Nolan

Worlds Colliding: the Warrior, the Voyager and the Artist

In this episode of Travels Through Time the Australian historian Dr Kate Fullagar travels back to 10 December 1776. She visits Old Somerset House on the Strand in London to watch the painter Joshua Reynolds delivering his annual lecture to the Royal Academy; she crosses the Atlantic to the home of the diplomat Ostenaco in Cherokee Country; and she steps aboard HMS Resolution in the mid-Indian Ocean, as the much-travelled Pacific Islander Mai heads home on Captain Cook’s third great voyage. Set just months after the Declaration of Independence, Kate’s is a panoramic travel at a time of empire and great political and social change.

More about the book: https://katefullagar.com/faces-of-empire/

Presenter: Peter Moore

Guest: Dr Kate Fullagar

Producer: Maria Nolan

Radical Resistance: the rise of the suffragettes, 1914

1914 is a year most commonly associated with the beginning of a world-changing war. But as hostilities broke out on Continental Europe, in the towns and cities of Britain a different kind of conflict was already well-underway. In this podcast Dr Diane Atkinson takes us from the squares of England’s industrial towns to the gates of Buckingham Palace, following in the footsteps of Britain’s radical suffragettes as they squared up to the establishment.

March of the Women by Ethel Smyth is performed by the University of Glasgow Chapel Choir, conducted by Katy Lavinia Cooper, and is used with permission.

Presenter: Peter Moore

Guest: Dr Diane Atkinson

From Pole to Pole: Sir Michael Palin and HMS Erebus 1841-1848

The 1840s were crucial years in the history of British exploration with speculative voyages towards the North and South Pole. One ship, HMS Erebus, made the journey to both ends of the earth. Here the explorer, writer and ex-Python Michael Palin travels back to join the officers on HMS Erebus’s quarterdeck to witness the action at first-hand.

Presenter: Peter Moore

Guest: Michael Palin