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The History Hour
Banky's 'Dismaland' and the Paris climate agreement
The History Hour
Dec 13, 2025

We start with the street artist Banksy, and his 2015 dystopian 'bemusement park'.

Then, we talk to roller coaster enthusiast Megan MacCausland, from the European Coaster Club.

Plus, we go back through the BBC archives to tell the story of the coelacanth, a fish believed to have been extinct for 65 million years.

Next, South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, set up after the abolishment of apartheid in the 1990s. This programme contains contains harrowing testimony and graphic descriptions of human rights violations throughout.

Also, the six-day IRA siege on London's Balcombe Street in 1975, where a couple were taken hostage.

Finally, it's been 10 years since 193 countries and the European Union adopted the Paris climate agreement, in December 2015.

Our Sporting Witness programme this week looks at how an international skiing scene developed in the mountains of Bamiyan province, Afghanistan, in 2011.

Contributors:

Kurtis Young - steward at Dismaland. Megan MacCausland - European Coaster Club. Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer - South African museum curator (from archive). Sisi Khampepe - served on the Amnesty Committee. Steven Moysey - saw the Balcombe Street siege unfold. Christiana Figueres - head of climate negotiations at 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris. Alishah Farhang - Afghanistan skier.

(Photo: Dismaland in Weston Super-Mare. Credit: Kristian Buus/Getty Images)

More Episodes
Aug 15, 2026
The Mau Mau uprising and man-eating lions

Max Pearson presents a collection of the week's Witness History episodes focussing on Kenya.

We hear about Muthoni Kirima, one of the last Mau Mau fighters to come out of hiding and lay down her arms.

Caroline Elkins, Professor of History at Harvard University, discusses the brutality of the conflict between Kenya’s Land and Freedom Army, the British and Kenyan loyalists.

Next, when Princess Elizabeth became queen while staying at the Treetops Hotel, a lodge in the Aberdare National Park.

In 1997, scientists travelled to Kenya, in search of a cave believed to have been the den of the man-eating lions that terrorised railway workers in 1898.

Plus, we hear how Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki and his rival Raila Odinga signed an unprecedented power-sharing deal to end a wave of violence that left more than 1,200 people dead.

And the heartwarming story of the friendship between a baby hippo and a 130-year-old giant tortoise.

Finally for our Sporting Witness story, we head to the first Ultimate Frisbee World Championship in Gothenburg, Sweden in 1983.

Contributors: Caroline Elkins - Professor of History at Harvard University, and author of Britain's Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya. Muthoni Kirima - Field Marshall in the Kenya Land and Freedom Army. Frank Gillard - BBC correspondent. Thomas Gnoske - Scientist. Alan Patterson - British Lieutenant Colonel John Henry Patterson's grandson. Maina Kiai - Chair of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights in 2008. Maini Schildt - Swedish Ultimate Frisbee player.

(Photo: Mau Mau suspects are rounded up by police outside the camp in Manyani, Kenya, 1955. Credit: Getty Images/Authenticated News)


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Banky's 'Dismaland' and the Paris climate agreement

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