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Hello and welcome to our monthly series history behind the headlines.

In each episode an expert panel will be exploring historical news stories that have caught their eye and the history that will help you make sense of what's going on in the world.

Each month I'll be joined by our two regular panelists.

I'm Hannah Skoda, I'm fellow and tutor at St John's College in Oxford and I work on late medieval history.

And I'm Rana Mitter. I'm the ST lead chair in US-Asia Relations at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and I research and teach modern Chinese history.

Thank you both so much for being here. We have our usual episode for you recorded in Oxford earlier in June,

but first we've regrouped to discuss the subject of apologies, which has been in the headlines in the

UK in recent weeks after Rishisunak apologized for leaving D-Day commemorations early.

Without getting into the contemporary politics, it seemed like a good opportunity to discuss historical

leaders who have made public apologies.

Hannah, did you want to kick off?

Yes, I thought it might be quite fun to start off by thinking about the etymology of apologies

and saying sorry because it's quite revealing in fact. so the etymology of the word apology comes

from the Greek apololia which originally means a speech in one's own defense so

it's got this very defensive kind of quality to it and of course that gives us the modern word apologetics as well.

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