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

the past brought to life by those who were there.

This week the downside of peace, a former rebel fighter from El Salvador's brutal civil war

recalls the challenges of returning home when the peace deal was done.

The hardest part was remaking the relationship with my son, coming back to find a teenager after leaving

a two-year-old.

That was complicated.

Plus, a firsthand account from inside the world's largest refugee camp, a murder in Turkey which threw the relationship

between Turks and Armenians into the harshest possible light.

While I was trying to get into the building I stepped on his blood. This is the most horrifying thing I've ever lived in my life. I stepped on my friend's blood.

And how a rudimentary role play game in the 1970s can be seen as the birth of today's gaming industry.

We're at the dawn of Dungeons and Dragons.

From the outside, it's a bunch of people sitting around a table talking and they have sheets of paper and sometimes they throw dice.

From inside the game you're exploring this old ruined dungeon.

That's all to come later in the podcast.

But first, it is 40 years now since one of the most influential miniseries of all time hit American TV screens.

In January 1977, Roots, an epic drama about African American slaves, was broadcast

for the first time. The story, tracing the roots of an African American family, has since been seen as an important moment in the history of America's understanding of its past.

Ashley Byrne has been speaking to the actor and singer Leslie Uggms, who was one of the stars of roots. It was January the 23rd, 1977 and the American ABC Network had just started broadcasting routes, a story shown over eight consecutive

nights about an African family sold into slavery in America.

The most really moving document to me was the diary of Anne Frank. And so I said I'm going to try

to pivot this book around one person, like all of us, a vulnerable human human being and that was Kunta

...