Making History - 31/08/2010

Vanessa Collingridge and the team follow up more questions and research sent in by listeners that help us to understand some of the bigger stories from our past. Today, the little known secret army of 'coders' who were trained to listen to Russian military radio communications. Such was the secrecy surrounding these operations that those taking part had little idea just how big an operation they were involved in and that it was all organised by the fledgling GCHQ. We travel back to 16th century Warwickshire and the weeks after the birth of world-famous playwright William Shakespeare to ask why his mother didn't attend his christening and what this tells us about the place of women and their role in the family at this time. We continue our journey to Cresswell Crags near Worksop in Nottinghamshire to find out how to identify flint tools and there's news of a new on-line archive which wants people to submit material they might have on Anglo-Saxon Britain. Producer: Nick Patrick A Pier production for BBC Radio 4.