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Hello every year in the fourth Thursday in November

Americans go home to their families and sit down to a meal called

Thanksgiving. It echoes a meal that took place nearly 400 years ago when a group of

English religious exile sat down after a brutal winter to celebrate their first

harvest having crossed over into what was called the new world.

They celebrated in company with American Indians who had helped them survive.

These settlers are called the Pilgrim Fathers and and although they were not the first,

and certainly not the largest of the early settlements, they retain a hold on the American imagination

far out of proportion to their historical significance.

With me to discuss the Pilgrim Fathers, at Tim Lockley, Associate Professor of History at the University of Warwick,

Harry Bennett, reader in history and head of humanities at the University of Plymouth,

and Kathleen Burke, Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at University College, London.

Kettlin Burke, the Pilgrim fathers arrived in Plymouth in America in 1620.

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