Hello and welcome back to our new monthly series, History Behind the Headlines.

In each episode, our expert panel will be exploring the 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'm joined by our two regular panelists.

I'm a tutor in late medieval history at St John's College in Oxford.

And I'm Ron Amitter. I'm the ST Lee Chair in US-Asia Relations at the Harvard Kennedy School and I work on Modern China.

Hello to you both and thank you so much as always for being here.

We're doing something a bit different on today's episode because I'm really pleased to say

we're joined by award-winning journalist, broadcaster and producer

Kavita Puri, whose most recent radio series, 3 million, explores the devastating

1943 famine that claim the lives of millions of people in the Indian province of Bengal.

This series, which launched on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds back in February, has caused quite a stir,

so we wanted to talk more to Kavita about making the series and about some of the wider issues of tackling complex subjects

such as famine, which as a look at today's headlines will attest, is still a problem that's very

much with us. This is also a subject that's controversial due to Britain's Second World War

story and the role of Prime Minister

Winston Churchill. And as you're here, it's a story with connections to regular panellist

RAN Amita. Kavita, thank you so much for being here today. Before we go any further and get

into some of the wider issues relating to your series, could you just briefly talk through

for listeners

who haven't yet had the chance to hear it, what it covers? So, 3 million covers the famine in Bengal

that happened in 1943. Three million refers to the number, estimated number of people that

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