16/02/2016

Available for over a year

Helen Castor takes the chair for the programme which showcases new historical research and the people doing it. Today, Tom Holland is on the Dorset/Wiltshire border where a farmer has dug up a Bronze Age body. Remarkably, as Dr Tom Booth from the University of Sheffield explains, this is far from unique. Indeed, just when the Pharaohs were building the pyramids to house them forever, Bronze Age Britons were busy mummifying their dead too. With Bridge of Spies and now Deutschland '83, Helen Castor finds out why the Cold War has become such a hot topic with historians as well as TV viewers. And Dan Snow takes us back to the year when the British Museum opened its doors for the first time, Wedgwood started production, Kew Gardens was founded and Britain swept almost everyone away on battlefields and seas across the globe. Is 1759 the most important date in history? Producer: Nick Patrick A Pier production for BBC Radio 4.