3. The Festival of Britain 1951 and the Coronation 1953

Available for over a year

75 years after the Festival of Britain offered a tonic to a Blitz-hit nation, Neil MacGregor, former director of the British Museum, returns to Radio 4 with a three-part series, examining how celebrations of British identity and togetherness over the past century or so can help us better understand and define who we are now. "The question of who we are, of national identity, of the Union Jack itself, is now the subject of angry political debate," Neil says. "In these three programmes I want to take a step back – to look at six moments over the last hundred years when, as a country, we came together to assert a national purpose, to celebrate and to explore who we thought we were, and to consider our place in the world." "Asking 'who did we think we were then?' might help us answer the question - 'who do we think we are now?'. And to understand why – as a country – we have, for over a century, found that question so difficult to answer." This week he focuses on the 1951 Festival of Britain, with its emphasis on new design and technology, and the 1953 Coronation, with its emphasis on centuries of history - and he finds out how technology turned the Coronation into a global event. Producer Katy Hickman