The Invention Of... Folgen

Fintan O'Toole talks to Misha Glenny about Catholics, Protestants, and Top of the Pops.

Back in the deep, dark depths of winter, we met a Scottish photographer on the top of a Glasgow multi-storey car park. "The English think I am a nationalist," he tells Misha Glenny, "but you can be British and wave the saltire, the Saint Andrew's Cross." Which suggests the word British is still alive and kicking, despite the tendency to think we are about to fragment.In this final episode, the programme travels to Scotland, Wales and Ireland to discover what binds us, and what divides us. Recording on location in a mid-Wales snowstorm and a Dublin rugby match, the presenter teases out the mystery of what Britain was historically, particularly in the days of empire. It also asks why the republic of Ireland decided to break loose. With contributions from Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert of Document Scotland, Fiona Watson, Murray Pittock, Tom Devine, Mike Parker, Fintan O'Toole, playwright Rosemary Jenkinson, and historian Patrick Geoghegan, currently on attachment to the Taoiseach Leo Varadkar.Presenter Misha Glenny is a Sony award winning reporter and the author of McMafia. Miles Warde is series producer of the How to Invent a Country podcast which has now travelled to Germany, Spain, Brazil, Italy, the Netherlands and the USA.

In 1992 workers on the new link road between Dover and Folkestone made an amazing discovery - a Bronze Age boat, perhaps the oldest ocean going vessel in the world. Travelling to see this amazing artefact, presenter Misha Glenny starts to wonder about our island peoples, and the role the sea has played in the invention of Britain. Insecure, open to invasion, and determined to maintain its borders at all costs. This was as true in Dover as in other parts of this Atlantic archipelago - particularly in Ireland, Catholic Ireland.In the third episode of the Invention of Britain, you'll hear what made our rulers feel insecure, and why Ireland was so often the Achilles heel, from the siege of Kildare in 1601 to the rebellion of the United Irishmen in 1798. With contributions from Roy Foster, Joan Redmond, Tom Devine, Fintan O'Toole and Jon Iveson of the Dover Museum.Presenter Misha Glenny is a Sony award-winning reporter and the author of McMafia. Miles Warde produces the How to Invent a Country series which has now travelled to Germany, Spain, Brazil, Italy, the Netherlands and the USA.