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BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced BBC Home Service.

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Making History podcast compressed

Making History

Factual: Life Stories

Factual: History

Popular history series where the past connects with the present.

Making History: 07/06/2011

07/06/2011

BBC Radio 4 - Making History, 07/06/2011

Helen Castor presents the programme that reflects listeners' passion for the past.

Helen Castor presents the popular history series. Recruiting troops in the English Civil War, the last days of witchcraft and the power of plants in history.

Helen Castor talks to Professor Mark Stoyle of the University of Southampton about the moment that the reality of the civil war hit home for the English in 1642 and people had to chose between King or Parliament. Forced out of London, King Charles 1st uses Commissions of Array to recruit supporters but as Mark Stoyle explains there were many places where these simply did not work. 

Reporter Lizz Pearson meets listener Eileen Fardon who has come across letters from the Bloomfield family in Coney Weston in Suffolk to a son serving in France in 1918. Within the letters is the revelation that the boys' mother travels to Abbeyville in France by herself after receiving a telegram that says he's been wounded. 
When was the last trial of a witch in England? 

Professor Owen Davies tells Helen Castor about the trial of Jane Wenham in 1712 and how a belief in witchcraft continued for more than 200 years despite laws that outlawed and further prosecutions.

In our 'Double Top Domesday' series, Professor Ian Rotherham at the University of Sheffield Hallam throws a dart and ends up near Barnsley where his reading of the local vegetation reveals a surprisingly wet landscape history. 


Producer: Nick Patrick
A Pier Production for BBC Radio 4.

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

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07/06/2011

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