Neil MacGregor

For the past 140 years, Germany has been the central power in continental Europe. Thirty years ago a new German state came into being. How much do we really understand this new Germany, and how do its people now understand themselves?

In this major new BBC radio series, Neil MacGregor investigates the role and expression of shared beliefs through time and around the world. One of the central facts of human existence is that every society shares a set of beliefs and assumptions - a faith, an ideology, a religion - that goes far beyond the life of the individual.

These beliefs are an essential part of a shared identity. They have a unique power to define - and to divide - us, and are a driving force in the politics of much of the world today. Throughout history they have most often been, in the widest sense, religious. Yet this is not a history of religion, nor an argument in favour of faith. It is about the stories which give shape to our lives, and the different ways in which societies imagine their place in the world. Looking across history and around the globe, it interrogates objects, places and human activities to try to understand what shared beliefs can mean in the public life of a community or a nation, how they shape the relationship between the individual and the state, and how they help give us our sense of who we are. For in deciding how we live with our gods, we also decide how to live with each other.

Using specially selected objects from the British Museum and beyond, talking to experts from various disciplines and visiting key locations from the river Ganges to Jerusalem, he examines how rituals and systems of belief have shaped our societies. Looking at communities from the distant past to the present day, both in Europe and worldwide, his focus moves from the beginnings of belief and the elemental worship of fire, water and the sun, through festivals, pilgrimages and sacrifices, to power struggles and political battles between faiths and states.

Among the objects featured are the Lion Man, a small ivory sculpture which is about 40,000 years old; a 16th century ivory and gold qibla, used to find the direction of Mecca; and the Lampedusa Cross, made from pieces of a refugee boat wrecked off the Italian coast in 2013.

In 2010, the BBC and the British Museum embarked on an ambitious project: to tell the story of two million years of human history using one hundred objects selected from the Museum's vast and renowned collection. 

Presented by the British Museum's then Director Neil MacGregor, each episode focuses on a single object - from a Stone Age tool to a solar-powered lamp - and explains its significance in human history. A stone pillar tells us about a great Indian emperor preaching tolerance to his people; Spanish pieces of eight tell us about the beginning of a global currency; and an early Victorian tea-set speaks to us about the impact of empire. Music, interviews with specialists and quotations from written texts enrich the listener's experience.

With the United Kingdom on the brink of potentially momentous change, historian and broadcaster Neil MacGregor embarks on a worldwide voyage to discover how Britain is perceived from abroad. Visiting Germany, Egypt, Nigeria, Canada, India, Singapore, the United States, Spain, Australia and Poland - all countries with significant historical links to the UK - he talks to leading opinion formers to find out how they, as individuals and members of their wider communities, see Britain.

His interviewees reveal what they learnt about Britain at school, and how key events and cultural influences, as well as their own personal experiences, have shaped their impressions of the country now. Each has a defining image that symbolises the UK to them: from Shakespeare to Monty Python, the 1966 World Cup, the Suez Crisis, the Financial Times, '99' ice cream and The Crown. Throughout his travels, MacGregor uncovers tensions and frustrations, admiration and affection - along with an underlying sense of hope and a desire to retain close links with Britain as it prepares to reevaluate its relationship with Europe and the world.