Mao's China, The Berlin Wall and WWII Egypt: Witnessing History with Peter Snow
Dan Snow's History Hit
History Hit
4.7 • 13.7K Ratings
🗓️ 16 April 2024
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As a foreign correspondent for ITN in the 70s, Peter Snow remembers handing tins of film to strangers on airport runways, hoping they would take it back to Britain to hand over to his colleagues on the other side. It was a tough and thrilling job as a travelling reporter before the internet, and Dan remembers hearing his dad's travel stories as a child - witnessing the Fall of the Berlin Wall, meeting presidents in the West Wing and being given exclusive access to Communist China.
In this special episode sponsored by British Airways, Peter joins Dan to share his incredible stories as a witness to some of the most important history of the late 20th century and the adventures that shaped his career as one of Britain's most respected journalists. They also reminisce about the trip that shaped Dan's whole life - the first TV documentary he ever presented about the Battle of El Alamein in Egypt, with Peter.
This is a bonus episode of the podcast sponsored by British Airways.
Produced by Mariana Des Forges and edited by Dougal Patmore.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi everybody, welcome to this very special episode of Dan Snow's history hit. |
| 0:04.4 | It's brought to you by British Airways, so this episode is about travel, it's about |
| 0:09.1 | adventure, and I've got the perfect guest who fits the bill. |
| 0:13.0 | Many of you will know that I have followed in the footsteps of my dad, |
| 0:18.0 | Peter Snow, who some of you will recognize from Newsnight or his days as diplomatic correspondent for ITN. |
| 0:24.8 | That I've been on many times talking about historical events, Kings and Queens, the Battle of Waterloo, |
| 0:29.2 | but I never really had him on to talk about his career, some of the history that he's witnessed. Now I grew up hearing his incredible stories about traveling through Africa and the Middle East and the Americas and Asia. He's witnessed some of those monumental events in 20th century history, from wars in the Middle East |
| 0:45.4 | to meeting presidents in the West Wing at the White House, to everyday life under Mao in Communist |
| 0:51.0 | China. |
| 0:52.0 | When I saw him living like that, I also wanted to live like that. I also |
| 0:56.6 | wanted to travel to explore, to better understand what was going on in our world, particularly |
| 1:02.1 | its history. And what I learned as he learned before me, |
| 1:05.8 | nothing beats going somewhere if you want to understand the past to walk along the trails built |
| 1:10.9 | by the Inca across the Andes to arrive at Machu Picchu and get a sense of the majesty of its setting that was so sacred to the Inca. |
| 1:19.5 | It's only when you go to the Valley of the Kings and you see those unobtrusive little holes in the cliff, |
| 1:24.6 | you enter them and realize there's some of the most spectacular engineering and artistic feats |
| 1:29.6 | of the ancient world, the tombs of the Pharaoh's the new kingdom. |
| 1:33.3 | You cannot get a sense of that unless you're there. |
| 1:36.4 | Travel is a huge part of my life and I know it will be the same for many of you listening |
| 1:39.2 | as well. |
| 1:40.2 | So what we're doing in this episode is celebrate the power of travel to impact us as people. |
| 1:44.0 | For most of us, it's not just a case of getting from one place to another. |
... |
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