Dr William Rowlandson, from the Department of Modern Languages, was interviewed on The History Hour on the BBC World Service on Monday 11 January 2016.
The BBC World Service is the world’s largest international broadcaster, broadcasting in 29 languages to an average of 210 million people a week. The History Hour looks at history from World War II to the Arab Spring as told by the people who were there.
This episode called ‘Castro Takes Havana’ hears from one man who, as a 15-year-old boy, watched Castro and his men sweep into power in 1959. William discusses Fidel Castro’s revolution in Cuba and whether Castro was a communist, with presenter Max Pearson. William argues: ‘Castro wasn’t always a communist. What he really wanted was to overturn the system that had been keeping Cuban people in dependency; in particular with regards the US control over everything Cuban, over the economy, over the culture and over the political system.’
You can listen to the programme on the BBC’s iPlayer at: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03dg4bl. William’s interview appears 9 minutes into the programme.