Hello and welcome to the History Hour podcast from the BBC World Service with me Max Pearson.

This week, 75 years of UNESCO and the struggle to protect the world's heritage.

We'll join the 1960s effort to save Egypt's treasures from the rising waters of the Aswan Dam.

Countries representing communism on one side, collaborating with people from Western countries as well.

From that same decade, the fight to protect the Great Barrier Reef.

The Queensland government of the day's attitude was that the reef was a nice pile of limestone that could be carted away to Southeast Asia and made into

cement.

And from 2001, despite appeals to save them, how the Taliban blew up the Bamiyan Buddhas.

When we were busy putting explosives under the statues, it was clear they were going to destroy

them any way they could.

We couldn't refuse their orders.

They would have killed us on the spot. That's coming up later in the podcast as we celebrate at the end of what's been a very grim year for so many,

the collective human endeavor to cherish some of the high points of civilization.

Key to this is UNESCO, the United Nations. cherish some of the high points of civilization.

Key to this is UNESCO, the United Nations Scientific Cultural and Educational body

which was set up 75 years ago in the aftermath of the Second World War.

It's probably best known for its work protecting

cultural monuments and areas of natural beauty and we'll be hearing about some of

those during the podcast. But first as Caroline Bailey reports its founders wanted UNESCO to promote peace and understanding.

Ignorance of each other's ways and lives has been a common cause throughout the history of mankind, of that suspicion and mistrust between the peoples

of the world through which their differences have all too often broken into war.

The fundamental vision of UNESCO was that it had an educational role to play in sustaining

...