In this episode, the 125th anniversary of the birth of Brendan Bracken, the Irish born adventurer who became Winston Churchill's greatest supporter, with biographer Charles Lysaght; the 400 year fight to end slavery in the Americas, with historian Carrie Gibson; and treasure and ghosts in the London clay, with author Victoria Shepherd.

We're looking at the life and legacy of one of the American Revolution's greatest villains, Benedict Arnold, and we'll find out how his name became synonymous with treachery and betrayal. Featuring: Dr Eliga Gould, Harmsworth Professor of American History at Oxford; Dr Tom Sebrell, history lecturer at University College London; Dr Charlene Boyer-Lewis, professor of history and director of American Studies at Kalamazoo College, Michigan, and author of the upcoming ‘Traitor, Wife: Peggy Shippen Arnold and Revolutionary America’; and Emma Parry, author of the upcoming novel ‘Mrs Benedict Arnold’.

In this episode, we find out about the first staging of Seán O'Casey's play The Plough and The Stars 100 years ago and why it provoked such furious debate and even riots. Our panel features: Dr Ciara Murphy, Lecturer in Drama at TU Dublin and Vice President of the Irish Society of Theatre Research; Mairéad Delaney, Archivist at the Abbey Theatre Archive; Dr Bess Rowen, assistant professor of theatre and a theatre theorist and historian at Villanova University, Pennsylvania, and an expert on Seán O’Casey’s work and the 1926 riot; and Prof Nicholas Grene, Fellow Emeritus in English Literature at Trinity College Dublin.