How do you hear the testimony of someone who has been terrorised and tortured? How do you listen as a perpetrator defends their crimes? How can two peoples who have hated and killed each other throughout history learn to live in peace?

These are the questions unsung hero Helen Bamber asked herself when she travelled to Belsen at the end of WW2 and bore witness to untold stories when she engaged survivors in conversation. She would spend her whole life working with victims of genocide, torture and human trafficking and her questions are as vital today as they were 80 years ago as we try rebooting history.

Tune in for a riveting conversation as the broadcaster and author Nihal Arthanayake joins Oswin, Carla and MK for our season opener on why we need to have this conversation, why listening is as important as talking and why connection is our only hope for the future.

Our new season kicks off proper next week with an enthralling episode where the broadcaster Nihal Arthanayake helps us tell the story of the woman who listened – the great Helen Bamber. And we’ll be taking you all the way through the summer till it starts getting cold again – introducing you to the tragic tale of the first singer-songwriter alongside the Communards’ Sarah-Jane Morris, the first female bodybuilding world champion with Jet from Gladiators, a story of love among the ruins of the concentration camps with the historian Gwen Strauss and the rollicking tale of genius and self-deception with the author Helen Lewis.

But to whet your appetite . . . we are absolutely delighted to give you this wonderful taster from the brilliant Astrid & Chinny, the brains behind the award-winning It’s A Continent Podcast. Which uncovers key moments in African history, one nation at a time. It is bite-sized history, it is accessible history and it is history which will deepen and broaden all of our understanding. So I strongly recommend seeking them out on apple, spotify, wherever you listen to stuff, right after you’ve listened to this episode.

Which we particularly want to share because Astrid and Chinny got there before us! I really think that this person is someone we should all know about and carry his name in our hearts. He is Patrice Lumumba, and he was a distinguished Pan-African politician who served as the first Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo after the country gained independence. Patrice was well-connected but as he became more politically active and vocal, calling for an end to Belgium's rule and advocating for his country's independence, he became a target of both the Belgian and American governments.

To such a point that we need to give you a trigger warning: there is a graphic depiction of death at the 29 minute mark.

In the meantime, sit back, enjoy the ride and make sure you’re back here from 1st July for the rest of Trapped History’s summer season.

Welcome back after our mid-season break! And what a return – with (drum roll) the mysteries, magic and mayhem of The Amazing Randi. He had everything a conjuror should have – the baffling genius, the cape, the beard, the mortal enemies – but more than anything, he had a mission: to uncover and expose cheats and frauds.

Join Carla and Oswin as Goldsmith's Professor Chris French takes us on a rollercoaster journey of psychics and charlatans, secrecy and snake-oil salesmen – and above all else, of doubt and belief. Hold onto your hats – there might be a rabbit in it . . .

Every episode, we ask our guest to nominate someone for the Trapped History Hall of Fame. Usually, it's someone we've never heard of but really should have. But sometimes, just sometimes, it's someone we think we know all about.

In the historian Kim Wagner's nominee, prepare to find out something new about someone you thought you knew.

It's October 1961. The Beatles are in Hamburg, JFK in the White House, Yuri Gagarin has just shot into space. And a state-sponsored killing spree is going down on the streets of a capital city. But this isn't Rio, Washington or Johannesburg. This isn't Moscow or Port-au-Prince or Saigon. This is Paris, the City of LIght, and by the month's end, over 200 north Africans will have been murdered by the city police.

Rewind a further 60 years and the same thing is playing out in the hills and forests of the Philippines, as the Moro resistance is being wiped out by the American army in the infamous Bud Dajo massacre.

Does history teach us anything? Looking around the world today, can we say that we have learnt from the past? This is a tough and harrowing episode of Trapped History, but it is an important one too.

So join Oswin and Carla as we try to make sense of atrocity in the company of one of the great historians of our times, Kim Wagner.

Join Oswin and Carla as we go back – way back – to a time before podcasts and instagram, before radio and photographs. Join us as we journey back to the 18th century and meet the people who made monarchy work.

And they're not the people you might expect to meet. At a time when Britain's kings and queens barely spoke the language, please let us introduce you to Mehmet and Mustapha, two Turkish men who ran the life of George I. And what about Abdullah, who brought a caracal from India all the way to the King's Menagerie at the Tower of London? Or Bridget Holmes, Frances Talbot and Grace Tosier – without whom, life would have been just a bit less tolerable for the Stuart and Georgian rulers.

So tune in to Dr Mishka Sinha, co-curator of Kensington Palace's wonderful exhibition 'Untold Lives', as we lift the curtain and peer into the machinery of monarchy.

We ask all our guests to nominate someone for the Trapped History Hall of Fame. Someone we've not heard of but should have.

In this Season Four opener, please meet Mishal Husain's nominee: Fatima Jinnah, known as Madr-e-Millat or 'Mother of the Nation', a woman who broke the rules and the barriers as Pakistan emerged from the chaos of Partition. She became the conscience of Pakistan, who as opposition leader and presidential candidate, constantly reminded people about the founding principles of the new nation.

It's a great introduction to our new season.

Mishal Husain joins Oswin and Carla for a truly special Season 4 opener, telling the tale of her family's journey through the stormy waters of Indian and Pakistani independence. It's a story of joy and freedom, but also one of fear, loss and terror.

Shahid, Tahirah, Mumtaz and Mary live through Empire, world war, independence and partition. They meet the people who will shape their future, men like Mountbatten and Jinnah - but they also find themselves unable to meet the people who really matter to them, the friends and family they grew up with but who end up on the other side of an embattled border.

It is a truly powerful episode, reminding us that we all have 'history' big and small within our grasp, within our family.

With Jeremy Corbyn announcing that he’s standing as an independent in the upcoming general election, we thought we should revisit his time in the Trapped History studio.

This all-new ‘director’s cut’ contains golden nuggets on the French and American Revolutions and on Charlotte’s campaigning for animal rights. It’s a real treat!

On top of that, the former leader of the Labour Party was really excited to be part of this episode – Charlotte is one of his all-time greats – and he tells us a thing or two about finding and losing tribes, how injustice can move people to great deeds, and how we all need a Charlotte to inspire us.

It’s a fascinating story so please join us for this wonderful repeat.

Guitars, light shows, psychedelia . . . Any idea who might unexpectedly be making their way into the Hall of Fame?

Tune in to hear Martin Gutmann's nominee. We guarantee you'll have heard of them before but not necessarily for Martin's reasons. It's a truly fascinating listen which might change the way you think about bands, friends and music.

He's the greatest explorer the world has ever known – the first to navigate the fabled North-West Passage, the first to reach the South Pole, the first to the impossible North. But how much do we really know about Roald Amundsen?

More precisely, how much do we want to know? Surely, the tangled heroics of Scott of the Antarctic and of Ernest Shackleton make for more exciting reading than the careful, boring tales of Amundsen? They faced crises with fortitude, didn't they – while he simply, well, succeeded?

That is, perhaps, the point. So join Oswin and Carla on our enthralling season finale as we dissect 'The Hero's Journey' and the 'Action Fallacy' in the company of Professor Martin Gutmann – and find out why we all deserve to know more about Amundsen and his unseen leadership.

We ask all our guests to nominate someone for the Trapped History Hall of Fame. Someone we've not heard of but should have.

Most of our nominees are long gone – but Dee Jarrett-Macauley follows in the footsteps of Pete Paphides and nominates someone who is well and truly alive and kicking: the great publisher and writer Margaret Busby, whose Daughters Of Africa anthologies changed the way poetry was published in Britain.

Poet, playwright, publisher. Campaigner, broadcaster, journalist. Six people in one, but if we've heard of Una Marson, it's usually because of her brief shining moment during the Second World War when she became the voice and face of the Caribbean through her pioneering work at the BBC.

Tune in to hear about the six lives of Una Marson as Oswin and Carla are joined by her biographer and Orwell Prize winner, Dee Jarrett-Macauley. It's a tale of a young woman who came to represent a whole region, a whole continent even – and who sometimes found that burden too heavy to shake off.

It's an inspirational story, it's a sad one too. But it's a story of our times – when the personal and the political become one.

We ask all our guests to nominate someone for the Trapped History Hall of Fame. Someone we've not heard of but should have.

Most guests nominate someone who's, well, dead. But Pete Paphides joins Polly Vacher in nominating a living legend. In this case, the mesmeric Paolo Conte, Italy's answer to Tom Waits.

Listen to Pete's nomination exclusively here.

See if you can join the dots – Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel, Nick Drake, Sandy Denny, The Beatles. Well, there’s one man who sits at the centre of it all, and it’s more than likely that you won’t have heard of him: Jackson C Frank.

A damaged, wounded singer-songwriter who wowed the British folk scene and presaged psychedelia and punk, Jackson only produced one album – but its influence can still be heard today in the work of artists like Laura Marling, Counting Crows, even Daft Punk.

Oswin and Carla are delighted to be joined by the music journalist Pete Paphides to discuss Blues Run The Game, how hurt and pain can drive creativity and the transformative power of music.

Every episode, we ask our guest to nominate someone for the Trapped History Hall of Fame: someone we haven't heard of but really should have.

Today, it's the turn of @that.spitfire.bird, instagram's very own Jo Rogers. We take a quick detour into Tilly Shilling's orifice – no, really! – before finding out what a Messerschmitt 108 turned up when it taxied into Jo's life.

Find all about the magnificent Elly Beinhorn, a German aviatrix who rivalled Amy Johnson, fell in love with a dashing racing driver and turned her nose up at the Nazis who tried to control her life.

The Battle of Britain is at its height. Spitfires and Hurricanes urgently need to get from the factories to the airfields and into the hands of ‘the Few’. Step forward Pauline Gower, a pioneering pilot of the 1930s, who alongside the 168 women who she brought into the Air Transport Auxiliary, would help ferry over 300,000 planes from where they were built to where they were needed.

Tune in to hear Pauline’s story as Oswin and Carla are joined – buckled up inside a Dakota troop carrier – by Jo Rogers, AKA instagram’s magnificent @that.spitfire.bird. It’s a tale of bravery, tragedy, grit and sheer bloody-minded determination in the face of slack-jawed armchair generals. There are appearances from the great Amy Johnson and Jacqueline Cochran, so strap in and prepare to be inspired.

Every episode, we ask our guest to nominate someone for the Trapped History Hall of Fame: someone we haven't heard of but really should have.

As it's the holiday season, today we have a twofer for you: first, there's Peter's light-hearted nomination of the explorer Richard Burton, in all his magnificent messiness. And then, hear about the courageous Father Stanley Rother, a missionary among the Tz'utujil people of Guatemala in the 1970s, who famously wrote, "The shepherd cannot run at the first sign of danger" and was murdered by paramilitary forces in 1981.

It's a moving tale which deserves a full listen.

In 1880, the SS Jeddah was steaming across the Indian Ocean when her captain abandoned ship. He told his rescuers the 1,000 passengers had mutinied and that the ship had sunk. But this was a lie and the case became a cause celebre of British disregard – because the Jeddah’s passengers weren’t any ordinary passengers. They were Indonesian and Malaysian pilgrims – Muslims on their way to Mecca to perform the Hajj.

Join Oswin and Carla and the great writer on religion, Peter Stanford, as we try to understand the mechanics, the money-making and the magic of pilgrimage.

It’s a tale of technology, of power, of disease and migration. It truly is a tale of our times.

Every episode, we ask our guest to nominate someone for the Trapped History Hall of Fame: someone we haven't heard of but really should have.

Tune in this week to hear Jeremy Corbyn's nomination – the quite brilliant Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, a Mexican writer, poet and philosopher from four centuries ago, variously known as The Phoenix of America and The Tenth Muse. Her's was an astonishing life and this is a great nominee.

She was a super-rich romantic novelist, sister to one of the most famous men in late-Victorian England. And then, out of nowhere, Charlotte Despard suddenly finds her true calling. Over the next 40 years, she is a suffragette, a socialist, a peace campaigner, an animal rights activist and an Irish nationalist.

So who better to help Oswin and Carla tell her story than the Charlotte Despard of the 21st century – Jeremy Corbyn. The former leader of the Labour Party was so excited to be part of this episode – Charlotte is one of his all-time greats – and he tells us a thing or two about finding and losing tribes, how injustice can move people to great deeds, and how we all need a Charlotte to inspire us.

Hers is a fascinating story so please join us for this wonderful episode.

Evelyn Dunbar was the only full-time female war artist in World War II. She recorded an almost exclusively female experience of war, painting Land Girls and members of the Women's Auxiliary Air Force going about their work. Meticulously, quietly and with an air of supreme concentration.

Join Oswin, Carla and the art historian Frances Spalding as we delve into Evelyn's life and art, understand life in the 1930s and what being a woman artist means today.

You can find the paintings we're talking about on the Trapped History website, trappedhistory.com, and on our instagram page @trappedhistory

We've spent so long asking our guests who they'd like to see in the Trapped History Hall of Fame, that for our 30th episode we thought we'd do something a bit different.

And so Carla, MK and Oswin have each brought along someone they'd like to see honoured in the Hall of Fame. Tune in for a whistle-stop tour through the lives of a First World War heroine, a couple who fought for freedom in South Africa and a union leader who was a conscientious objector.

Three different stories, four hidden heroes and forgotten stories, but we hope you will agree, they led some of the fullest and most compelling lives you will hear of.

We want to hear your own nominations for the Hall of Fame, so be inspired and head over to trappedhistory.com to send us your own nominees.

He was a war hero but never felt that he was. Ben Ferencz was sickened to the core by his experience of battling through Europe in 1945 – and of uncovering horrific evidence of war crimes, atrocities and genocide. And so he decided to do something about it.

Tune in to hear the compelling story of the last of the Nuremberg prosecutors in the company of the great historian of our post-war world, Keith Lowe. History is fascinating and exciting but it can also be complex, murky and compromised. Ben's story is the story of our times.

John La Rose is one of the most important – and most overlooked – cultural icons of the last 60 years. Helping to forge a Black British identity, he set up dozens of political, cultural and community organisations and campaigned for justice for the victims of police brutality and of the New Cross Fire.

So earlier this year, it seemed obvious – and right – to name a street in his honour. But the furore over the renaming of Black Boy Lane threw John and everything he stood for back into the cultural and political spotlight.

Join Oswin, Carla and our very special guest the cultural commentator Joris Lechene as we celebrate John's life and try to understand how a simple street renaming can ignite racism and intolerance.

You're falling through the sky above Belgium after your bomber has been hit. It's August 1941 and you're an RAF front gunner. Who will save you when you land? Who will look after you, hide you, keep you safe? Who will get you home?

Meet the women of the Resistance, Dédée, Tante Go and countless others – the women of the Comet Line.

Join Carla, Oswin and our special guest the historian Anne Sebba who last year made the journey which hundreds of downed aircrew took, over the Pyrenees and into neutral Spain. Hear about her crossing and about the fear and the danger which Dédée had to conquer.

Meet Cornelia Sorabji, an Indian woman who broke through barriers – the first woman at an Indian university, the first woman to study law anywhere, the first woman to plead a criminal case in a British-run court.

And yet, Cornelia was also an arch-imperialist, extolling the British Empire, castigating Gandhi and dismissing the Indian independence movement.

Join Oswin, Carla and our very special guest Sathnam Sanghera as we try to understand what drove someone like Cornelia – and why 'empire' still resonates more than 75 years after India gained its independence.

With Eurovision upon us, join Oswin and Carla in a special episode of Trapped History as we take a look back at the song contest's history and lift the Iron Curtain on Eurovision's big brother: Intervision and the incredible Sopot Song Festival.

Tune in to hear the Northern Soul Legend Sam Jones tell us all about the time she won Sopot – and what John Lennon, Frank Sinatra and others thought about her. It's a great listen!

Thrill to the story of the boys and girls who took on the richest men in America: and won. It's 1899, we're in New York and the 'newsies' – the boys and girls who sell papers on the city's streets – have had enough.

Join Oswin, Carla and six young people from today as we time travel 125 years to find out about Kid Blink, Joseph Pulitzer and how news has changed – or remained the same . . .

And listen in to hear who Shane, Dillon, Dalani, Elijah, Marley and Maya agree on for their Hall of Fame nominee.

Tune in to hear Clare Mulley's nomination for the Trapped History Hall of Fame.

In earlier episodes, we have featured women who have flown the world and men who have flown for freedom. But what about the courageous, pioneering women who powered the Nazi war machine?

Join Oswin and Carla as we learn about the troubled and troubling lives of Hanna Reitsch and Melitta von Stauffenberg. The acclaimed historian, Clare Mulley, guides us through this knotty moral, ethical and historical challenge – a story which will open your eyes and your ears to the very nature of history, memory and truth.

It's Hall of Fame time! Tune in to hear an extended nomination from Sums of Anarchy's wonderful Dominique Miranda. This has everything: revolution, freedom and poetry, with a smattering of maths thrown in . . .

Trapped History reveals the hidden stories of unsung heroes. In this episode, we find out about Emmy Noether, the greatest mathematician of the 20th century.

Emmy fought multiple prejudices all her life – she was a woman, she was Jewish and she came from a left-wing family. And this was Germany before the Nazis, already one of the most conservative places on earth. And yet, her pioneering work in abstract algebra and her proofs of Einstein's theory of relativity still stand today and are the basis of so much of our modern world.

Join Oswin and Carla as we explore Emmy's world and try to understand a bit about the barriers she dealt with every day. And if you're lucky, you might pick up some of the maths too from Sums Of Anarchy's brilliant Dominique Miranda – with a side order of Einstein!

Tune in also to hear the fascinating story of Dominique's nominee for the Trapped History Hall of Fame.

Polly Vacher's nomination for the Trapped History Hall of Fame is a true hero of our time.

Trapped History reveals the hidden stories of unsung heroes. In this episode, we find out about Richarda Morrow-Tait, the first woman to fly around the world.

Richarda was a bored and lonely young woman in post-war Britain. But she had a dream and she knew that she was the only person who could make it happen.

Join Oswin and Carla and the legendary circumnavigator Polly Vacher MBE as we try to understand what drives someone to climb into a cockpit and set off on a year-long journey. Just like Richarda, Polly did it too – as the first woman to fly solo around the world via the polar regions – and she shares her secrets of success.

Tune in also to hear the fascinating story of Polly's nominee for the Trapped History Hall of Fame.

Trapped History reveals the hidden stories of unsung heroes. But as we hit mid-season, we thought we'd do something slightly different: look at a whole bunch of unsung heroes. The Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice in fact.

Join us as we leave the studio and venture out into wintery London to find out about this fascinating place. It's Victorian, but not as you know it – there's no pomp, there's no circumstance. Instead, this is a memorial to ordinary people who did extraordinary things.

The artist and sculptor Ian Wolter leads us through the complex world of memorialisation and remembrance as we learn about the man behind the Memorial, the people on it and what it teaches us about memory today.

Tune in also to hear the powerful story of Ian's nominee for the Trapped History Hall of Fame.

Trapped History reveals the hidden stories of unsung heroes. In this episode, we explore the world of Johnny Smythe – four heroes in one, across three continents.

Sierra Leonean Johnny was an RAF bomber navigator, a Prisoner of War, his country's top lawyer and the mastermind behind the Windrush.

In this special episode, Oswin and Carla are joined by Trevor Edwards, who flew for the RAF for a decade and who clues us in about the fear, the nerves, the pain, the racism and the ignorance he and Johnny would have faced every time they climbed into a plane.

Tune in also to hear the astonishing story of Trevor's nominee for the Trapped History Hall of Fame.

Trapped History reveals the hidden stories of unsung heroes. In this episode, we explore the world of Adelaide Hall, the greatest singer we’d never heard of.

Ella Fitzgerald called her the first lady of jazz. She was the first to dance the Charleston, one of the richest Black women in America, the highest paid female entertainer in Britain during the war – so whatever happened to Adelaide Hall?

Join Oswin and Carla as we hear Adelaide sing and find out from the great Stephen Bourne all about Adelaide's life, the Cotton Club, the Harlem Renaissance, the Blitz, music halls and why we should know more about her.

Trapped History shares the hidden stories of unsung heroes. In this episode, we explore the world of Peter Stevens, a complex courageous man who speaks to our age more than anyone we've come across before.

Peter is a chancer, a thief, a scrounger and a fraudster. But he's also a genuine war hero. And one of the most complicated, hidden and secretive people you'll ever meet.

Join Oswin and Carla and the military historian Joshua Levine as we try to understand the tangled world of Peter Stevens – and to make sense of how war can free people to be whoever or whatever they want to be.

Trapped History shares the hidden stories of unsung heroes. In this episode, we explore the world of Nellie Bly, one of the greatest people we've never heard of . . .

Nellie was born in the 19th century but she is a 21st century woman. An investigative journalist before the job existed, a travel writer before people knew what to write about, an anthropologist before people wanted to understand different cultures – and an entrepreneur at the dawn of a new age. You really want to hear about Nellie . . . you really need to.

Join Oswin and Carla as we delve into Nellie's life and hear from Rosemary Brown, a historian who followed Nellie on her greatest adventure: to beat Jules Verne at his own game and travel around the world in under 80 days.

Roll up, roll up for the Season Four closer — as we take a trip to the circus!

At Trapped History, we look at lives and stories which have been forgotten or ignored, and there is one community in Britain which is still shrouded in mystery even in the 21st century: that of the circus people. So who better to lift the curtain than the King of the Ring himself, Zippo the Clown — or just plain Martin Burton to us.

Not only does Martin shine a light on the lure of the circus but he also joins us on a journey back in time, when America was in thrall to the greatest showman of all — Frank Bostock, the Animal King from Darlington. Frank's is an astonishing story and an amazing life, which tells us so much about the glory years at the turn of the 20th century when technology, travel and theatre collided to create the magical potion of 'Spectacle'.

Join Oswin and Carla for this moving Hall of Fame from historian Clare Mulley as she remembers wartime nurses, Dorothy Field and Mollie Evershed. They are the only women among over 22,000 men to be remembered on the Normandy Memorial in Bayeux.

It is a story of courage and selflessness. Prepare to have your heart broken.

history, ww2 history, inspiration, heroes, forgotten history, hidden heroes, podcast

She is one of the most important women of the Second World War — a fighter, a secret agent, a government envoy and a commando. But have we heard of her? Can we sing her name? If not, you've come to the right place.

Tune in to hear the astounding story of Elżbieta Zawacka, AKA Agent Zo. It's a tale which takes us from Warsaw and Berlin to Paris and London, a tale of hope and fear, of courage and terror. Above all else, it is the tale of a young woman who won't take no for an answer when the call comes.

Oswin and Carla are joined today by the historian Clare Mulley, whose excellent new book tells the legend that is Zo. It is a wonderful story and a wonderful life. We're honoured to be able to help tell it.

Tune in to a fascinating Hall of Fame as Professor Chris French nominates Ellizabeth Loftus, a psychologist famed for her work on false, recovered and repressed memory.

It's not just Elizabeth's life story here — Chris fills us in on the theory of false memory (remember getting lost in a supermarket?) and the controversies around recovered and repressed childhood memories which she researched and challenged.

It makes for a powerful nomination and we believe this longer format justifies Elizabeth's inclusion in the Hall of Fame.

We might have heard of Amelia Earhart or even Amy Johnson, but who remembers Richarda Morrow-Tait, the first woman to fly around the world?

Well, someone does because on 19th August this year, a blue plaque was unveiled at Cambridge Airport to mark the 75th anniversary of her truly momentous achievement.

We featured Dikki in our first ever season and we couldn't pass up the chance to celebrate her once more. So Oswin travelled to Cambridge to see the blue plaque, catch up with old friends and meet some of Dikki's family to try to find out more about the woman behind the record.

This all-new ‘director’s cut’ of our original episode tells Dikki's story alongside the incomparable Polly Vacher, herself a record-breaker. But we've also got new interviews with Polly as well as with Amanda Harrison, another female pilot inspired by her forebears, and we get to hear from Dikki's relatives about what drove her.

It’s a fascinating story so please join us for this wonderful repeat.

Nihal Arthanayake's nomination for the Trapped History Hall of Fame is a great one. The lost, forgotten and overlooked Sri Lankan hidden hero of architecture Minnette de Silva.

She was the first Asian woman elected to the Royal Institute of British Architects and a friend of Le Corbusier and Picasso. But she's been overshadowed by those men of architecture and cultural history.

So tune in to hear her architecture story and why she means so much to Nihal.

We have a wonderful season opener for you – as wildlife TV legend Michaela Strachan joins Trapped History to help us tell the tale of the woman who fought for nature. Her name was a bit of a mouthful – Ethel Haythornthwaite – but we know her as the defender of Britain’s National Parks and the Green Belt. She even has nearly 100 hills named after her (don’t worry, they’re ‘Ethels’ not ‘Haythornthwaites’!).

It's a delightful episode, full of passion, joy and hope as Michaela shares her love of nature, walking and conservation. She even persuades Oswin to pull on his boots . . .

Please put your hands together for Sarah-Jane Morris' Hall of Fame nominee, music's hidden hero Mary Margaret O'Hara. So many of our nominees are lost in the mists of history. They are part of our forgotten history, our hidden history. But Mary Margaret O'Hara is very much still with us.

She is loved and admired by other music industry greats, such as Michael Stipe, Tom Waits, Rickie Lee Jones and Everything But The Girl.

Mary makes music magic and Sarah-Jane thinks we should love her too. And we think she's right!

A decade before Dylan, there was Connie Converse – arguably the very first singer-songwriter with inner-city tales of loss and longing. But have you heard of her? Have you heard her music?

Connie's story is the epitome of forgotten history, hidden history. But her name deserves to be shouted from the rooftops.

Oswin and Carla are joined today by the singer Sarah-Jane Morris to help us understand the joy and sorrow of Connie’s short life, the pressures on women in the music industry then and now and how luck, time and place can conspire to sweep unsung heroes away – even as their music still remains.

Join us for Helen Lewis' nominee for the Trapped History Hall of Fame: Constance Bulwer-Lytton, daughter of a Viceroy, sister to an Earl – but one of the bravest suffragettes of them all.

In changing women's history, she was imprisoned four times for campaigning for the vote, carved "V" for votes on her breast, went on hunger strike and was force-fed by prison guards.

In Constance's own words, which can stand for so much political action:

"People say, what does this hunger strike mean? Surely it is all folly. If it is not hysteria, at least it is unreasonable. They will not realise that we are like an army, that we are deputed to fight for a cause, and for other people, and in any struggle or any fight, weapons must be used . . . These women have chosen the weapon of self-hurt to make their protest, and this hunger strike . . . involves grave hurt and tremendous sacrifice, but this is on the part of the women only, and does not physically injure their enemies. Can that be called violence and hooliganism?"

Constance celebrated women winning the vote in 1918, a milestone in women's history – but she did not live to see women wield the vote in true equality with men. Because it was only at the 1929 general election that men and women aged 21 and over entered the voting booth as equals. But Constance, fatally weakened by her treatment in prison, had already died six years earlier in 1923, at the age of 54.

Hers was a bright short life in women's history: forgotten, unsung and hidden – but it is one captured beautifully by Helen here.