The Hillsborough disaster
Witness History
BBC
4.5 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 5 January 2026
⏱️ 11 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On 15 April 1989, there was a crowd crush at a football match in Sheffield, England, which led to the death of 97 fans.
It was the semi-final of the FA Cup between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest and the worst sporting disaster in UK history.
Rachel Naylor speaks to Jenni Hicks, whose daughters died in the disaster.
This programme contains distressing details.
Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there. For nine minutes every day, we take you back in time and all over the world, to examine wars, coups, scientific discoveries, cultural moments and much more. Recent episodes explore everything from the death of Adolf Hitler, the first spacewalk and the making of the movie Jaws, to celebrity tortoise Lonesome George, the Kobe earthquake and the invention of superglue. We look at the lives of some of the most famous leaders, artists, scientists and personalities in history, including: Eva Peron – Argentina’s Evita; President Ronald Reagan and his famous ‘tear down this wall’ speech; Thomas Keneally on why he wrote Schindler’s List; and Jacques Derrida, France’s ‘rock star’ philosopher. You can learn all about fascinating and surprising stories, such as the civil rights swimming protest; the disastrous D-Day rehearsal; and the death of one of the world’s oldest languages.
(Photo: Tributes laid in memory of those who died at Hillsborough. Credit: Liverpool FC via Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:43.2 | Hi, this is the Witness History podcast from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:44.1 | I'm Rachel Naylor. |
| 0:46.6 | If you're not new to us, you know the drill. |
| 0:47.9 | You can skip the next few seconds. |
| 0:51.1 | We're the podcast that brings history to life by hearing from those who are there. |
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| 1:01.0 | I'm taking you back to the 1980s and the UK's worst sporting disaster. |
| 1:03.8 | 97 fans died as a result of a crowd crush |
| 1:06.8 | during a football match at Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield. |
| 1:10.0 | Two of the people who died that day were Jenny Hicks's daughters. |
| 1:13.7 | She's been describing to me how the day unfolded, which includes distressing details. |
| 1:18.9 | It's the 15th of April, 1989. |
| 1:21.2 | Jenny Hicks, her husband Trevor and their daughter, Sarah, age 19, and Vicky, 15, |
... |
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