explore words discover worlds

Updated: 15 Oct 2025 • 132 episodes
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Expand your horizons with 'explore words discover worlds', the podcast that brings the world of Bradford Literature Festival to your ears. From the classics to the cutting edge, we'll introduce you to the most exciting and thought-provoking authors, poets, and thinkers.

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Join historian and author, Manu S. Pillai and Saeed Khan, for an illuminating talk on his latest book, Gods, Guns and Missionaries. Drawing on rich historical research, Pillai explores the complex interplay of religion, colonial power, and armed conflict in shaping the Indian subcontinent’s past. Through compelling nar

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For millennia, Syria has stood at the heart of global history — from the Bronze Age cities of Ebla and Ugarit to Roman Antioch and Umayyad Damascus. A land of prophets, poets, and empires, it was shaped by Persian, Greek, Roman, Islamic, and Ottoman rule. This talk explores Syria’s extraordinary past: a centre of faith

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Join writer and researcher Madeline Potter for a deeply personal and timely conversation about her acclaimed book The Roma, a powerful portrait of Europe’s Romani communities, past and present. Blending memoir, reportage, and historical investigation, Potter sheds new light on a people too often excluded from mainstrea

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Long before it became a flashpoint in today’s geopolitics, Crimea was the site of one of the 19th century’s most consequential wars. This event revisits the Crimean War — a clash of empires, religion, and ambition that saw Britain and the Ottoman Empire allied against an expansionist Russia. While Florence Nightingale

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Professor Abdullah Alkadi shares the remarkable story of Al-Qaswāʾ, the beloved she-camel of the Prophet Muhammad. ﷺ Faithfully accompanying the Prophet across the Hijaz, the western region of the Arabian Peninsula, Al-Qaswāʾ is mentioned numerous times in hadith literature, from the Hijrah to the Farewell Hajj. Joinin

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Jeremy Corbyn and Len McCluskey share a passionate belief in a fairer, more equal Britain, encapsulated in Labour’s 2017 election slogan ‘For the many, not the few’. This slogan, inspired by Shelley’s famous poem The Masque of Anarchy, points to something else the two men have in common: a lifelong enthusiasm for poetr

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