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 shock election defeat of Winston Churchill at the end of the Second World War.

Soon as he heard the figures, he knew there had been a landslide and that his government would be defeated.

But he stuck out his chin and he said,

We have no right to feel hurt this is democracy this is

what we've been fighting for also the first women to be admitted to America's

West Point Military Academy he actually learned how to drive tanks, how to shoot a weapon, how to throw a grenade, artillery

weapons.

We were actually out in front of the rest of the military of the integration of women.

And Nixon and Kristjov come face to face during the 1959 so-called kitchen debate.

The Vice President good-naturedly replies to a Khrushchev reference to their taking legal sides.

All that I can say from the way you talk and the way you dominate the conversation, you would have made a good lawyer yourself.

That's all coming up later in the podcast.

But we begin with the history of Zimbabwe where right now the people are preparing for the first elections

since independence in 1980 that will not feature Robert Mugabe. His grip on power

was only loosened as recently as November last year, but Zimbabwe has a rich history

stretching back many centuries to long before the era of colonial and then white minority rule. In the early 1980s when Mugabe first came to power

there was a conscious effort to redefine that earlier history by looking to its ancient past for

inspiration.

However, as Rebecca Kessby has been hearing, history can be contentious.

It was a great moment for us and we thought the world was at our feet.

I was responsible, so I was right in the center of these exciting moments.

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