The Forum

When Alexandre Yersin discovered one of the most lethal bacteria in human history, the tiny bacillus of the plague that over the centuries had killed tens of millions of people, he earned his place in the history books. Working in a straw hut in Hong Kong, armed with just a microscope, Yersin’s methodical mind worked out within just a few days where in human body to look for the plague bacteria. A...

There have been so many, probably hundreds, different styles and types of hat in history that a question inevitably arises: why? Why did something that began as a simple protection against inclement weather take on such varied forms and social meanings? Bridget Kendall and guests explore not just how hats were made, and by whom, but also how their function has evolved over centuries and across cul...

Azerbaijan’s strategic location along the old Silk Road and its wealth of natural resources has made it a prime target for warring empires over centuries. The conquests and the invasions by Turkic and Persian peoples find echoes in the traditional art music of Azerbaijan known as mugham. The influence of the Russian and then Soviet empire also brought change for mugham, the effects of which are st...

At its height, the Aksumite Empire extended across the northern Ethiopian and Eritrean highlands, and even included parts of Sudan, Somalia and modern-day Yemen. From the first century BC to the seventh or eighth centuries AD it was one of the most important trading hubs in north-east Africa. It was also one of the earliest states in the world to adopt Christianity. In fact the Persian prophet Man...

Umm Kulthum’s powerful voice and talent for communicating poetry was spotted early, when she accompanied her family to perform at weddings and special occasions. It wasn’t long before she was performing in the elite salons of early 20th-century Cairo, although her father dressed her as a boy to protect her from any unwelcome interactions with strangers. In the Egyptian capital she quickly associat...

The word 'swashbuckling' is often used to describe the novels of Alexandre Dumas the Elder, the creator of D’Artagnan and the Three Musketeers, the Count of Monte Cristo and the Man in the Iron Mask. But Dumas himself led a life as colourful as many of his gallery of rogues, villains and heroes. Having grown up in poverty, he found employment in the household of a future king of France. He was pro...

Cuneiform is an ancient writing system distinguished by wedge-shaped marks made into clay. It developed over 5,000 years ago in Ancient Mesopotamia. At its height it was used to write languages across the ancient Middle East, from Iran to Syria to Anatolia in Turkey. But cuneiform writing fell out of use about 2,000 years ago in favour of alphabetic scripts. When scholars in the 19th century final...

When the fifteenth century German entrepreneur Johannes Gutenberg pioneered the printing press, he made an indelible mark on the history of communication. Here was a way to print pages in high quality and high quantities, using methods more efficient than had ever been seen before. Rajan Datar and guests explore the story of how the printing press was born, and how it changed our world - from the...

The story of a young mother who unwittingly left behind a vast medical legacy. Henrietta Lacks died of cancer in Baltimore in 1951 and though she never gave consent to her tissue being used for research, doctors at the time found that her unusually virulent tumour had extraordinary properties. As her cells multiplied in labs around the world, they helped make possible all sorts of medical breakthr...

Teaching not by rote but through play? That's credited to the 17th-century Czech pastor and thinker called Jan Amos Comenius. Splitting schoolchildren up into year groups? That's Comenius. Universal education for all, rich and poor? That's down to him too. Nearly four centuries ago, Comenius came up with principles of modern education but they were only implemented hundreds of years after his deat...

A Phoenician princess, who fled into exile to escape the cruel king of Tyre, sailed across the Mediterranean Sea to North Africa, where she founded the great city of Carthage in the ninth century BC. Well, that is one story about Dido, or Elissa, as she is known in today's Lebanon and Tunisia. Another, from the Roman poet Virgil, puts her at the centre of a tragic love story: first entranced, then...

The multi-talented Paul Robeson could have turned his hand to pretty much anything he set his mind to: lawyer, athlete and linguist were just some of the career paths he could have taken. But he chose to become an actor and singer, and in doing so reached into the lives of huge numbers of people as one of the most popular American entertainers of his time. Outspoken on the issues of racism, coloni...

Many of us can find the time of day quickly and accurately but where did the idea of time keeping originate and how did our ancestors manage without the instant access we take for granted today? From ancient shadow and water clocks to the latest super accurate optical clocks, Bridget Kendal explores time keeping with the Curator of the Royal Observatory in London, Dr Louise Devoy; the Director of...

‘We accept reality so readily - perhaps because we sense that nothing is real.' A typically paradoxical quote from the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges whose works have become classics and an influence not just on many Latin American novelists but on countless authors around the world. Yet although he is one of the most analysed figures in literature, even his greatest fans struggle fully to e...

Life behind bars in English prisons in the early nineteenth century was, to put it mildly, grim. Prisons at the time were often damp, dirty and over-crowded. Common punishments included shipping convicts to colonies like Australia - and many crimes carried the death penalty. And the poor suffered most of all, because they couldn’t buy privileges like extra food rations. Into all this walked a woma...

Greenwood was an African American success story: a thriving, wealthy district of Tulsa. Over the course of two days at the end of May 1921 it was the scene of looting, rioting and murder. After 18 hours the area was razed to the ground by vigilantes. One eye witness said it looked like the world was coming to an end with bullets. Nobody to this day has been able to establish the true number of dea...

Queen Tamar was one of Georgia’s most iconic and colourful rulers, a powerful medieval sovereign who controlled large parts of the Caucasus and the eastern side of the Black Sea and forged strong cultural links with both the Byzantine West and the Persian South. Her influence extended beyond the battlefield: she presided over the last phase of the Georgian ‘Golden Age’ which saw the building of cl...

The Huguenots gave the word 'refugee' to the English language - they were French protestants escaping religious persecution, who fled from France to neighbouring states between the 16th and 18th centuries. Despite their early experience of violence and religious upheaval, they are widely celebrated for their contribution as migrants, famously as silk weavers and silversmiths, traders and teachers....

As scientists around the world look for ways to combat COVID-19, the only human disease ever to be eradicated by vaccination could provide us with some insights. Since 1979 the world has been free from smallpox. But before the WHO’s concerted effort to eradicate the disease, it claimed millions of victims every year. It’s estimated that 300 million people died from it in the 20th century alone, an...

There is a great deal of mystery surrounding the poems attributed to the female Kashmiri poet, mystic and sage known as Lal Ded or Lalla. There are no records of her life but what is beyond doubt is the vitality, wisdom and endurance of her work. Her poems, usually just four lines long, have been around for centuries and remain so popular that some of them have passed into everyday speech in Kashm...

The Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt is one of the greatest wonders of the ancient world. It is the largest pyramid ever built and even today, with advanced satellite and thermal imaging and other high tech science, we don’t know everything about the pyramid- exactly what’s inside or how it was built. To explore the history of The Great Pyramid - also known as the Pyramid of Khufu, after the Pharaoh...

”People ask me to predict the future, when all I want to do is prevent it.” Ray Bradbury has been acclaimed as the writer most responsible for bringing modern science fiction into the literary mainstream but, as the quote above shows, he regarded himself as the author of modern philosophical fables, rather than a sci-fi writer. In his dystopian works, such as Fahrenheit 451, he holds up a mirror t...

In 476, the last of the Roman emperors in the West was deposed; in 1776, historian Edward Gibbon wrote “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, and Rome’s fate became a major point of comparison for all empires. In Gibbon's view, instead of inquiring why the Roman empire was destroyed precisely 1300 years before, we should rather be surprised that it had subsisted so long. Ever s...

Pablo Picasso is commonly regarded as one of the most influential artists of the 20th Century, changing our way of seeing with his radical innovation and revolutionary approach. As pioneer of Cubism, godfather to the Surrealists, and creator of the enduring anti-war painting Guernica, he produced thousands of paintings in his lifetime, not to mention his sculptures, ceramics, stage designs, poetry...

'War and Peace' by the Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy charts the story of Russia during the Napoleonic wars of the early 19th century, covering the pandemonium and brutality of the battlefield, as well as the equally intense dramas and loves of several families. It is a monumental novel, tracking the fortunes of dozens of brilliantly drawn individuals, with a cast of more than six hundred characters...