How to Invent a Country travels east to tell the story of China - although some may dispute this and say the Middle Kingdom is at the very centre of the world. Show more

How did the world's greatest civilisation find itself dragged into two Opium Wars and a century of humiliation? Misha Glenny heads to Hong Kong to find out. Show more

When the last emperor, a boy called Puyi, was forced to abdicate in 1912, two millennia of imperial rule came to an end. What followed was chaos. Show more

Born in 1893, Mao lived through the end of the Qing, the birth of the republic, two World Wars, one Long March, civil war, the Korean War with the US, famine, failure, revolution Show more