Part 52: Q&A - November 3

And that's the lineup for today on BBC Radio 4. Before we start our regular programming, we'd like to take a few calls from our listeners. This is from Dr. Porter Stark of Oxford. You're on the air Dr. Stark.

Hello there, I was perusing the program by Professor David Stephenson on the Dutch wars of the 1700s. The pictures in the archives seem to have gaps in the progression of the Dutch Empire, and I was wondering why your coverage was not more definitive.

Currently, we are using only renditions of records, maps, and government documents for years in which significant change occur, focusing on the regions where those events took place. While the Dutch did keep records of acquisitions and tax information, they did not maintain all of these documents over the past three centuries, meaning some guesswork would be required in years where little of note occurred. While we could spend the time researching the documents that we can find to piece together a more complete picture, the flux of the states in Europe at the time would likely not be of any interest to the average viewer.

Our next call comes in from Rannos Baragan from Kent, go ahead Rannos.

Hi there, this is also about the Empire total war series. I wanted to know if those are the actual historians in the broadcast.

Due to scheduling constraints, we have hired several other Professors to portray Dr. Stephenson and his colleagues. While the portraits are of the actual doctors and professors who have written this series, the voices you hear are simply individuals portraying them. So no, that is not David Stephenson, Robert Lowe or Albert Andrews in the broadcast, even though the voices are of actual doctors. The exception of course being Anton Thatcher, who is a graduate student. As his schedule is different, he is voicing his own portion of the broadcast. As he's considerably younger, the style of his portrait picture is different from his older peers.

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And that's it for our phone in period, if you want to call in with your questions, we'll be taking some periodically every day. And now, we return to the news.