Legacy

Who decided that the sea — cold, dangerous and full of smugglers — was somewhere you went for fun?

What kind of doctor prescribes plunging into the Channel naked in the dead of winter, and then drinking it?

And how did the towns Britain built to enjoy itself end up among the most deprived places in the country?

The holiday — the whole idea ...

Why does every dictator, sooner or later, want to host the World Cup?

What did a military junta that never wanted the tournament discover once the goals started going in?

And when a hundred thousand people are dancing in the street, who is that actually working for?

Peter Frankopan sits down with investigative journalist Karim Zidan, who ha...

What happened when the people written out of the Grand Tour wrote their own account of it?

What did an eighteenth-century Bengali diplomat see in London that made him call the British a conceited race?

And how did a man from Bihar end up as shampooing surgeon to the King of England?

Afua Hirsch and Peter Frankopan follow the travellers the ...

What's a garnet mined in Sri Lanka two and a half thousand years ago doing in a silver hairpin dug up near Bruges? Why are the Duke of Burgundy and the conqueror of Constantinople staring each other down for the first time in history? And, how did most of Belgium forget that its own counts once sat on the throne of Constantinople?

Afua turns interviewer as Peter o...

What actually turned a teenage aristocrat into a "finished" gentleman in the 1700s? Why did one incredibly long, incredibly expensive holiday end up inventing the whole idea of "the West"? And why can you still trace a straight line from that holiday to Frankenstein, the contents of half of Britain's country houses, and this year's tenth anniversary of the Brexit vote?