Celebrated historians and journalists, husband and wife duo Peter Snow and Ann MacMillan, are the perfect guides to take us through 4,000 years of history, delving into itspolitical, military, artistic, and scientific spheres to examine the significance of some extraordinary artefacts.

With awealth of experience on political, social, cultural and military history, and today’s current affairs between them, they talk here to David Perry about 50 pivotal documents that changed the course of history, brought leaps in technology, helped shape humanity, and reveal how some only survived by chance.

Anthony Sattin is a British writer and broadcaster who has been described as ‘a cross between Indiana Jones and a John Buchan hero’ and ‘one of the key influences on travel writing today.’  His most recent work, Young Lawrence, tells the story of T.E. Lawrence and the Middle East on the eve of World War I, and has been hailed a key work in the field. His award-winning journalism on travel and books has appeared regularly in the Sunday Times, Financial Times, Conde Nast Traveller and publications around the world.

Lewis Pugh’s decision to become an ocean advocate didn’t happen all at once. It began with the stories of exploration he loved as a child, and in the flights of imagination sparked by the world maps his father hung around their home. The oceans cover over 70% of the Earth’s surface. We rely on them entirely for our survival – and the amazing creatures that live in them now rely on us for protection.

Robert Twigger is a British author, poet and adventurer. After attending Oxford University he trained with the Tokyo Riot Police, which became the subject of his bestselling book Angry White Pyjamas. He is the author of eight books, both fiction and non-fiction, as well as several collections of poetry.

“Survival's about making the most of the opportunities and the moment, to enable you to get back to what you want to be doing, to what you'd rather be doing,” says John Hudson, discussing his must-read book with Julia Wheeler.

Such an iconic name for what was actually just a wooden shed. Even the name has a rather prosaic origin. But what Iain Macgregor gets does is get behind the icon and heads straight to the human costs and truth of what Checkpoint Charlie represented, through superb interviews with guards on both sides, escapees and more. 

Last week broadcaster, voice artist and Lockdown LitFest host Simeon Courtie interviewed illustrator and author Curtis Jobling. This week Sim takes the guest’s chair, from his lockdown bunker south of Banbury, Oxfordshire, telling Paul Blezard about his own writing career. 

One of our foremost Shakespeareans, Jonathan Bate has always been fascinated by the forces that shape writers, and by the reasons why great writers’ work endures. In his latest biography, Radical Wordsworth, he explains how the revered Romantic poet changed the world by changing the way we see it, influencing everything from our appreciation of nature (he conceived the very notion of national parks) to our understanding of the formative power of childhoods. A fluent masterclass from a brilliant educator.

Paula Byrne joins us from under the ‘wide open skies of Arizona’ to delve into the transatlantic life of Kathleen ‘Kick’ Kennedy – American ‘royalty’ transplanted into English aristocracy – and to tell us about her latest book, historical novel Mirror Mirror, based on the life of Marlene Dietrich. Byrne also talks about bibliotherapy, the ancient art of book healing for mental health, as promoted and practised by her charity ReLit.

Known for his award-winning books and TV series, the soldier-turned-explorer explains why it’s his journeys on foot that are the most involving and challenging. Lev talks us through his latest adventure (linked to his role as an ambassador for conservation charity, Tusk), a 650-mile expedition following the migration of the African Elephant across Botswana, as documented in the Channel 4 (UK) TV show Walking With Elephants and his new book The Last Giants: The Rise and Fall of the African Elephant.

Charles Spencer is riding out lockdown in the comfy, if not cosy, confines of home on his estate, Althorp in Northamptonshire. Charles believes a house steeped in history should be shared with the community – in part through the literary festival he hosts there. With that interrupted, he has turned Althorp’s ample kitchens over to a local chef to prepare meals for local NHS workers. He tells Paul Blezard that even those facing gruesome executions in his English Civil War history books, Killers Of The King and To Catch A King, would find reasons to be sanguine in the days before their deaths.

Kate Mosse is a number one international bestselling novelist, playwright and non-fiction writer.

The author of six novels and short-story collections – including the multimillion-selling Languedoc Trilogy (Labyrinth, Sepulchre and Citadel) and Gothic novels The Winter Ghosts and The Taxidermist’s Daughter, which she is adapting for the stage – her books have been translated into thirty-seven languages and published in more than forty countries.

She is the Founder Director of the Women’s Prize for Fiction and a regular interviewer for theatre and fiction events. Kate divides her time between Chichester in West Sussex and Carcassonne in south-west France.

Actor, comedian and number one bestselling author Robert Webb discusses his debut novel, Come Again, with Paul Blezard.

Tom Holland doesn’t shy away from the big questions. In his book on the early history of Islam, In The Shadow of the Sword, he questioned the foundation myths of the religion. Many Muslims said he’d never do the same with his own beliefs. Well, now he has. He explains how researching Dominion led him to conclude that the culture of the Western world – even of its secular humanists and its Greco-Roman classicists – is as rooted in Christianity as other cultures are in their own founding religions.