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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: 10/09/2013

10/09/2013

BBC Radio 4 - Making History, 10/09/2013

Helen Castor and guests discuss the role of China in WWII, and the British Black Panthers.

Helen Castor and guests discuss the stories that are making history, including the role of China in World War II, and the British Black Panthers.

Helen Castor is joined in the Making History studio by Rana Mitter, Professor of the History and Politics of Modern China at the University of Oxford and, from Salford, by Dr Andrew Fearnley a historian of Modern America at the University of Manchester.

The programme begins with the little acknowledged role that China played in World War 2 and its war with Japan which began in 1937. We hear how a poor and divided country desperately fought off the Japanese and, in so doing, tied up troops which would otherwise have been turned on the Allies in the Pacific theatre of war. Helen asks why this history is so little known.

Fifty years after Martin Luther King made his iconic "I have a dream speech" speech in front of the Lincoln memorial in Washington, we find out about the black power movement that turned its back on King and the organisation that grew out of this. We may think of the Black Panthers as an American organisation, but a new photography and oral history project in Brixton reveals the story of the British Black Panthers.

Finally, Tom Holland heads off to the beautiful north Somerset coast at the village of Kilve to discover the past use of a decaying brick building. To his surprise, he hears that this might well have become home to the British oil shale industry if prospectors had been successful back in the 1920s.

Contact the programme: making.history@bbc.co.uk

Produced by Nick Patrick
A Pier production for BBC Radio 4.

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