Edward Stourton

For many, the enduring images of the Balkans are of unimaginable atrocities which deter exploration. However, in conversation with Edward Stourton, Nicholas Allan will explain how he followed in the footsteps of the writer Rebecca West and encountered amongst the scars of conflict, a magnificent landscape, a welcoming population, and the cultural heritage of a region that was repeatedly redivided by Catholicism, Islam and Orthodoxy. In the land where the First World War began and ended as the imperial map was redrawn, he will reveal new angles on received knowledge - from the birthplace of Mother Teresa and the training academy of Ataturk to the spot where Anna Karenina's lover breathed his last.