Modern History Cluster event - Narrating Difficult Histories to a Broad Audience: the BBC Radio 4 podcast ‘Three Million’

Award-winning journalists Kavita Puri and Ant Adeane will be interviewed by Dr Diya Gupta about the making of their acclaimed BBC Radio 4 podcast ‘Three Million’ on the 80th anniversary of the 1943 Bengal Famine, where over three million people lost their lives in British India during the Second World War.

"The best history podcast I've heard in years." - The Sunday Times.

"Three million is great radio... and needs to be heard." - The Observer.

During the Second World War, at least three million Indian people, who were British subjects, died in the Bengal Famine. It was one of the largest losses of civilian life on the Allied side. But there is no memorial to them anywhere in the world - not even a plaque. Can three million people disappear from public memory?

From the award-winning creator and presenter of Partition Voices and Three Pounds in My Pocket, this is the story of the 1943 Bengal Famine in British India - the forgotten story of World War Two. For the first time it is told by those who were there - farmers and fishermen, artists and writers, colonial British and everyday citizens. Nearly all of the testimony in the series has never been broadcast before.

Eighty years on, those who lived through it are a vanishing generation. Time is running out to record their memories.

We thank the BBC for their permission to use the image above. All copyright accredited to the BBC.