History TV and radio in the UK: what's on our screens this week?
Can't decide which shows to watch or listen to this week? Here are the latest history radio and TV programmes airing in the UK that you won't want to miss
Drama: Chicken Soup With Barley
Radio 4
Saturday 4th May, 3pm
Covering the years from 1936-56 and beginning with protests against Oswald Moseley’s march down Cable Street, Arnold Wesker’s semi-autobiographical state-of-the-nation play was first performed in 1958. It’s a story of a left-wing East End family growing more distant and, as Soviet tanks roll into Hungary, politically disillusioned.
Bettany Hughes’s Treasures Of The World
Channel 4
Saturday 4th May, 7pm
The classicist heads for Azerbaijan. Here, she sees evidence the Romans headed much further into the Caucasus mountains than previously realised. She also explores the life and work of Nizami Ganjavi (c1141–1209), a poet who has been dubbed the Shakespeare of the East.
Spy/Master
BBC Four
Saturday 4th May, 9pm & 9.50pm
Set during the height of the Cold War, this six-part drama takes us to the dark heart of Nicolae Ceausescu’s Romania. Here, the dictator’s security advisor, Victor Godeanu, finds himself in huge danger as, hoping to defect, he manoeuvres in the orbit of his increasingly paranoid boss.
The Invention Of China
Radio 4
Bank Holiday Monday 6th May, 11am
Misha Glenny charts the end of the Qing dynasty, a time when the relationship between those ruling from the Forbidden City and those living in other parts of China had utterly broken down. What should happen next? Dr Sun Yat-sen (1866–1925), republican revolutionary, had some ideas.
Great Lives
Radio 4
Bank Holiday Monday 6th May, 3pm
Professor Alice Roberts selects Queen Emma (c954–1052) as a figure who should be celebrated. Married first to Æthelred the Unready and then the Danish king, Cnut the Great, she was a central figure in English political life. Historian Professor Janina Ramirez and novelist Patricia Bracewell are on hand to offer their perspectives on Emma’s life.
Being Roman With Mary Beard
Radio 4
Tuesday 7th May, 9am
The series in which the classicist pieces together the evidence to offer her perspective on individual Romans returns. She begins with Gaius Julius Classicianu, a finance officer who arrived in Britannia in the wake of Boudicca’s rebellion, and soon realised that ongoing reprisals against the local population were making a bad situation worse.
The Invention Of Surgery
PBS America
Wednesday 8th May, 8.35pm
How did we come to allow doctors to operate on our bodies? It’s a story told here in sometimes gory detail over two episodes, the first of which covers such topics as the history of anatomy and the role of France’s Louis XIV in getting surgery recognised as a science. Concludes Thursday.
Secrets And Spies: A Nuclear Game – pick of the week
BBC Two
Wednesday 8th May, 9pm
Even as the Cold War reached its conclusion, there was a constant risk of a misstep leading to nuclear war. Over three episodes, this excellent documentary series takes us back to the 1980s, and a world of espionage and subterfuge that calls to mind the work of John Le Carré.
Screenshot
Radio 4
Friday 10th May, 7.15pm
As Mr Bates Vs The Post Office proved, screen dramas can sometimes succeed where campaigning and legal action fail. Are there precedents for this happening in the past? Yes, say Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode, in a show that considers how abortion has been depicted on screen down the years.
Hidden Treasures Of The National Trust
BBC Two
Friday 10th May, 9pm
The fly-on-the-wall series going behind the scenes at Europe’s largest conservation charity returns. In the first of six new episodes, experts set to work on a seashell-lined gallery at A La Ronde in Devon, a 16-sided house commissioned by cousins Jane and Mary Parminter at the end of the 18th century.
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