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Podcast: Arts & Ideas
Episode: Africa Babel China
Description: West Africa has a fundamental place in the shaping of the modern world and its story is told in a new history by Toby Green. He joins Rana Mitter in the Free Thinking studio alongside Xue Xinran who explores China's recent history through the lives and relationships of one family and Dennis Duncan of the Bodleian Library muses on why the English needed English dictionaries and the desirability of a universal language.
A Fistful of Shells: West Africa from the Rise of the Slave trrade to the Age of Revolution by Toby Green is out now
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