Witness History

Sonny Roberts, a Jamaican carpenter, arrived in Britain in the 1950s. It was a time of racial disharmony, including the Notting Hill riots and the murder of Kelso Cochrane. In this tense atmosphere, black musicians struggled to make a name for themselves. Then in 1961, Roberts set up the UK’s first black-owned music studio, Planetone, in a basement in Kilburn. The studio gave the Caribbean communi...

In 2004, the Kenyan ecologist Wangari Maathai became the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Wangari Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement in 1977, a grass-roots organisation empowering local women to plant trees. It spread to other African countries and contributed to the planting of over 30 million trees. In 2016, Alex Last spoke to her daughter, Wanjira. Eye-witness accounts bro...

In 1958, the British oil tanker, SS San Flaviano, was sunk in the harbour of Balikpapan, Indonesia, while a rebellion was underway against President Ahmed Sukarno. It’s reported the bomb was dropped by a CIA pilot authorised to aid the rebels, but confirming their involvement has required some investigating. Megan Jones has been looking into it and speaking to Joseph McCorry who was forced to evac...

The first Moomins story about a family of nature-loving white round trolls was published in 1945 during World War Two. The Moomins and the Great Flood was created by writer and artist Tove Jansson as a source of comfort during bleak times. It highlighted the struggles of those who’d been displaced by war introducing readers into the lives of Moomintroll, Moominmamma and Moominpappa. Tove's tales a...

In 1995, a single 30-something woman with big knickers and blue soup first appeared in a weekly column, published by British newspaper The Independent. Initially written anonymously by journalist Helen Fielding, Bridget Jones quickly became a cultural icon, as she tried to make sense of life and love. The book, Bridget Jones’s Diary, became a best-seller in 1996 and the character has gone on to fe...

In 1965, two writers were accused of publishing anti-Soviet material abroad. The arrest of Yuli Daniel and Andrei Sinyavsky was seen as symbolic of the new era in the Soviet Union. The liberal leader Nikita Khrushchev had been ousted in favour of hardliner Leonid Brezhnev, and dissenting political views were being cracked down on. In a moment considered the start of the dissident movement in the S...

In 1961, the Argentine poet and short story writer Jorge Luis Borges won the Formentor Prize for literature. Borges’ stories were characterised by mind-bending plots often featuring labyrinths, dreams and fables. Following his recognition in 1961, his reputation grew to such an extent that he is regarded as one of the most influential Latin American writers in history, as Ben Henderson reveals usi...

Published in 1991, Faceless Killers was the first of Henning Mankell’s crime novels featuring police inspector Kurt Wallander. The series changed the world of crime writing, introducing gritty social realism. The Wallander novels helped establish Scandinavia as the epicentre of crime fiction. Henning Mankell’s former agent Anneli Høier speaks to Ben Henderson about the rise of Nordic Noir. Extract...

In 2001, a few months after 9/11, economist Jim O’Neill was working at Goldman Sachs when he wrote a report about which countries might become big players in the world economy. That’s when he came up with the name BRIC - short for Brazil, Russia, India and China. At first, nothing much happened. But in 2009, those countries took his idea and ran with it, holding their first summit. Since then, the...

Eighty years ago, in the autumn of 1945, World War II surrender ceremonies took place across the Japanese Empire. The one in China was held at the Forbidden City in Beijing bringing an end to eight years of occupation. Thousands of people watched the incredible moment Japanese generals handed over their swords. The United States, China, Russia and the United Kingdom were all represented. John Stan...

On 10 October 1961, a volcanic eruption threatened the population of Tristan da Cunha, a British Overseas Territory in the South Atlantic, and all 264 islanders were evacuated to the UK. Two years later, the majority voted to return. In an interview she gave to the BBC in 1961, Mary Swain describes what it was like to survive the preceding earthquake and landside and be relocated to the other side...

In 2009, the Indian government launched a national competition to find a design for the Indian rupee. With more than 3,000 entries and five finalists, the winning design was announced on 15 July 2010. The designer was by Udaya Kumar Dharmalingam, a student at the Industrial Design Centre at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. He speaks to Surya Elango. Eye-witness accounts brought to life b...

Before streaming and catch-up TV, owning a video recorder was one of the only ways to watch on-demand entertainment. In 1975 Sony launched Betamax with its half-inch-wide tape capable of recording 60 minutes of television. It was the length of most American shows - the perfect run-time. But in 1977, JVC released its VHS: it was bigger and bulkier, but capable of taping a full two-hour movie. That...

It’s 30 years since American football star OJ Simpson was acquitted of murdering his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman. Ron Shipp was a close friend of OJ Simpson's and also a police officer, he decided to testify against him in the criminal trial. In 2017, Ron spoke to Rebecca Kesby about why he wanted to testify. Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness H...

On 2 October 1963, American photographer Stanley Tretick took the best picture of his life – a photo of President John F Kennedy working at the Resolute Desk in the White House, with his two-year-old son ‘John-John’ peeking out a secret door underneath. The photo was published in Look magazine a month later, days after the President was assassinated. Rachel Naylor uses the transcript of an intervi...

In September 2015, thousands of women tea pickers went on strike at one of India’s biggest tea producers. They had picked more tea than ever that year but were furious that wages remained low and managers were proposing to cut their bonus. Their action was unprecedented, with the low-caste women protesting in the streets for nine days, against both the multinational company employing them and thei...

In September 1985, Microsoft introduced Excel, an electronic spreadsheet program that revolutionised the way we organise and analyse data. With its grid of rows and columns, it allows users to sort information, do calculations, and make charts with ease. Today it is used worldwide. Spreadsheets might have a reputation for being dull, but this story features space tourists, knitting, and crazy comp...

On 27 June 1985, four anti-apartheid activists from the rural town of Cradock in South Africa’s Eastern Cape were abducted at a roadblock. Their bodies were later found mutilated and burnt. Known as the Cradock Four, their murders became one of the most notorious cases of apartheid brutality. Fort Calata’s son, Lukhanyo, was just three years old when his father was killed. He tells Dan Hardoon abo...

On 28 September 2009, around 50,000 people took part in a rally to protest reported plans by military leader Moussa Dadis Camara to stand in the presidential election. It started peacefully, until troops, under Camara’s rule entered the stadium and opened fire, killing more than 150 people. Many others were left scarred, and women raped. Asmaou Diallo’s son Aly was one of those killed that day, sh...

In the 1950s, secretary Bette Graham from Texas was struggling to cope with her new electric typewriter. “My fingers would hang heavy on the sensitive keyboard and the first thing I'd know, I'd have a mistake with a deposit of carbon which I simply couldn't erase,” she said. A budding artist, she wondered if there was a way she could paint over her typos. At home, in her kitchen, the single mum co...

Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, the ultimate Bollywood romance was released to critical acclaim in October 1995, becoming the longest-running movie in Indian cinema history. The premiere was held at the Maratha Mandir cinema in Mumbai, since then it’s been screened there every day for the past 27 years, stopping only briefly during the Covid pandemic. Actress Kajol, who played Simran, starred opposit...

In 1971, 13 men sat down in a Paris office to launch what would become one of the world’s best known humanitarian organisations: Médecins Sans Frontières, or Doctors without Borders. The men were among hundreds of volunteers responding to an appeal by the French medical journal, Tonus, after a major cyclone devastated East Pakistan. The campaign sparked the idea for the charity. The 13 founders –...

In the early 1900s, while serving in the British Army, Lord Robert Baden-Powell laid the foundations for what would become one of the largest international youth movements, Scouting. His vision was to create an organisation that would build friendships, experiences, and skills for life. Gill Kearsley used archive to trace the origins of the movement through Baden-Powell’s own words. Eye-witness ac...

In 1962, Egyptian actor Omar Sharif made his Hollywood debut in Lawrence of Arabia, a sweeping epic that would become one of cinema’s most popular films. Using archive recordings, Gill Kearsley tells the story of the movie legend’s transformation into the enigmatic Sherif Ali and brings to life the moment he stepped into the desert and onto the world stage. Eye-witness accounts brought to life by...

In the early 1960s, Unesco appealed for scientists to go to Egypt to save antiquities that were threatened by the construction of one of the largest dams in the world, the Aswan High Dam on the River Nile. Professor Herman Bell answered that call from the UN. He spoke to Louise Hidalgo in 2020. Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by the past. We...