At one point Britain alone had an Empire on which the sun never set. How did Europe as it was, conquer and colonise most of the known world? Technology certainly played a part, but how did the narrative of the cultural inheritance of the West and it increasingly racialised definitions contribute? The clever diplomacy of Njinga of Angola, ideological wranglings of founding father Joseph Warren and sheer life and skill of poetess Phillis Wheatley have some light to shed.

Is 'Plato to Nato' actually true? How has the myth of the West and its exclusively European origins been built and maintained? A brilliant and rigorous interpretation of history that reflects the diversity of ideas and figures in the West.

Using the lives of historical figures from ancient Greece to present day, historian Naoise Mac Sweeney interrogates the idea of the West and its claims to Greco-Roman lineage.

Read by Nina Sosanya
Written by Naoise Mac Sweeney
Abridged by Patricia Cumper
Produced by Naomi Walmsley Show less