As Britain's 'special relationship' with the USA falters, we look back at a very relevant epislode from our archive. In this the author and journalist Philip Stephens takes us back to a crucial month in post-war British politics. December 1962, he explains, set Britain’s relationship with the rest of the world for the next half century.

Featuring in this episode is the elderly British prime minister, Harold Macmillan; the charismatic US president John F Kennedy; and the trenchant French statesman Charles de Gaulle. In this one month these three men would set out their contrasting visions of what kind of country Britain would be.

The scenes, characters and storylines in this episode of Travels Through Time all feature in Philip Stephen’s book, Britain Alone: the path from Suez to Brexit (Faber)

Scene One: 5 December 1962. Dean Acheson’s speech to the cadets of the Military Academy at West Point, New York.

Scene Two: 15 December. Macmillan's visit to Rambouillet to meet with Charles de Gaulle.

Scene Three: 19 December 1962. Macmillan travels to the Bahamas to meet President John F Kennedy.

Memento: The text for Dean Acheson’s ‘West Point Speech.’

Presenter: Peter Moore

Guest: Philip Stephens

Producers: Maria Nolan

The Netherlands is a small nation with a big history. But in the 1940s it suffered a series of disastrous events. First came the invasion of the Nazis in 1940. Then the very next year the Japanese attacked their old empire in the east. The horrors of World War Two were then followed by the Indonesian National Revolution and, by 1950, the Dutch were a 'pocket superpower' no longer.

In this episode the journalist and hiker Nicholas Walton takes us back to examine this challenging moment in Dutch history. It was a time of reckoning with the past but also a moment of bright new beginnings.

Nicholas Walton is the author of Orange Sky, Rising Water: The Remarkable Past and Uncertain Future of the Netherlands.

Scene One: 1 January 1950, The dining table of a typical Dutch family.

Scene Two: 12 January 1950, The Lloydkade in Rotterdam when troop ships like the SS Waterman, SS Grote Beer and SS Zuiderkruis all were bringing soldiers home to a freezing Netherlands.

Scene Three: 26 July 1950. A barracks in Indonesia. This was the official date that the KNIL, the Dutch colonial army, was officially dissolved.

Memento: A green/white temporary house as lived in by the Moluccans

Presenter: Peter Moore

Guest: Nicholas Walton

Production: Maria Nolan

Theme music: Firelight by Minka

The late eighteenth century history was a time in Europe when a brilliant old world collapsed and raucous new one rose to replace it. In this episode the biographer Veronica Buckley explains how the Hapsburgs, one of the great European families, responded to this revolutionary change.

It was a stern challenge but inspired by one of the great matriarchs in European history, Empress Maria Theresia, her son Emperor Joseph II, his successor Leopold and their sister, Marie Antoinette, reacted as best they could in that perilous year, 1790.

Veronica Buckley is the author of Seven Sisters: Captives and Rebels in Revolutionary Europe's First Family

Read an in-depth article about this story on Unseen Histories.

Scene One: 20 February 1790, Emperor Joseph II dies in Vienna

Scene Two: October 1790, The French revolutionary Comte de Mirabeau meets with Emperor Leopold II in Frankfurt to discuss a possible intervention in France.

Scene Three: November 1790, The Habsburg imperial family arrives in Pressburg for Leopold’s coronation as King of Hungary.

Memento: A piece of elegant jewellery belonging to Marie Christine.

Presenter: Peter Moore

Guest: Veronica Buckley

Production: Maria Nolan

Theme music: Firelight by Minka / Mozart - Piano Sonata in B-flat major, III. Allegretto Grazioso performed by Brendan Kinsella