15. 21st Century

Available for over a year

Lord West concludes his history of the Royal Navy in the 20th century. Since the end of the Cold War, major changes in Britain have taken place in military, technological and social terms. How have these changes affected the Navy? Visiting HMS Queen Elizabeth, the Royal Navy's future aircraft carrier, Lord West explores recent changes onboard - women being integrated into the service and gay people being welcomed. He describes rapidly changing technology, which has dramatically shrunk the number of people required to operate even very large ships. And he looks at the many actions and conflicts which the Navy has taken part in since 1991, from the extraordinary and untold story of the departure from Hong Kong in 1997, to the war in Afghanistan. Producer: Giles Edwards First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in June 2014.