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The birth of (synthetic) dyeing
History & The Arts

The birth of (synthetic) dyeing

...course, from coal tar. Although the structure of anthracene itself was not known at the time, a starting material for the laboratory synthesis of alizarin was now available. In June 1869, Perkin and the German dye company, BASF, filed patents for the same synthetic route to alizarin just one day apart. As a result, the industry producing the natural dye was killed off...
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Article 10 mins
Ian Kershaw on Hitler's Place In History: The Lecture Podcast
History & The Arts

Ian Kershaw on Hitler's Place In History: The Lecture Podcast

...course, that the anti-German alliance would split. He’d dreamt that one last victory would concentrate the minds of the west on the need to join Germany in the fight against Bolshevism. He said he’d only negotiate from strength. Such hopes were ever more illusory. But his loss of grip on reality wasn’t such that he was blind to that. He wasn’t so stupid that he...
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Audio 45 mins
Christmas at war: 1916 - Festivities at the front
History & The Arts

Christmas at war: 1916 - Festivities at the front

...Germans, and al fresco celebrations in front-line trenches, they are looking forward tonight to a day of genuine good cheer, and you will find the true Christmas spirit tomorrow in the dug-outs and billets behind the British front. I saw many evidence of this holiday atmosphere in Picardy today as I motored for many miles through the area behind the Somme battlefield....
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Article 5 mins
From old English to modern English
History & The Arts

From old English to modern English

...Germanic settlers (Angles, Saxons and Jutes) in southern Britain. They brought with them dialects closely related to the continental language varieties which would produce modern German, Dutch and Frisian. This Germanic basis for English can be seen in much of our everyday vocabulary – compare heart (OE heorte), come (OE cuman) and old (OE eald) with German Herz, kommen...
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Article 10 mins
The Great Fall: A personal perspective, before and after
Languages

The Great Fall: A personal perspective, before and after

...German Jewish émigré family of musicians but I first visited East Germany in 1982 when we went on a camping holiday, a group of ten of us, including children. We arrived at a campsite in Werder, near Potsdam at 3am and blundered about noisily setting up our tents on the playground, but no-one seemed too bothered. This was the first of a comedy of errors throughout the...
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Article 5 mins
The Olympic torch: the truth
History & The Arts

The Olympic torch: the truth

...German Reich (Hitler, for instance, claimed that the Dorian tribe which had migrated into Greece from the north was of German origin and Goebbels referred to the Acropolis as the cradle of Germanic culture). Germany was keen to use the Olympics as a tool to lend credence to these phony historical theories. The 1936 Games, and in particular all the fanfare that surrounded...
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Article 10 mins
What's in store for Angela Merkel's fourth term?
Society, Politics & Law

What's in store for Angela Merkel's fourth term?

...German Presidential election. But challenges from the edges of politics suggests this isn't going to be an easy few years for her. Patricia Hogwood explains why. ...[Angela Merkel] Angela Merkel Angela Merkel will continue as chancellor of Germany. But following an election that saw the rise of smaller parties – most notably the far right – her fourth term will...
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Article 5 mins
A reader's guide to Midnight's Children
History & The Arts

A reader's guide to Midnight's Children

...German critic called Franz Roh, in the 1920s. He was describing art which was realist but which, at the same time, had a strange, supernatural quality, and the term was applied to the work of a school of artists. Later, in Latin America, ‘magic realism’ became associated with a literary style. Subsequent exponents of the genre have included Peter Carey, Angela Carter,...
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Audio 5 mins