Nick Crane is on the French coast to experience the secret life of hilltop monastery Mont St Michel and visits the historic walled citadel of St Malo, where a network of sea forts foiled repeated raids by the Royal Navy.

Neil Oliver investigates how the sinking of the troopship SS Mendi in 1917 became a potent symbol of racial inequality in post-apartheid South Africa,
while Mark Horton reveals how 18th-century French mapmakers unwittingly gave birth to Britain's Ordnance Survey.