As I've mentioned audio and visual takes on the Berlin Wall recently, it's time for some good old fashioned text. We have an introduction to the subject, but if you want to take your reading further, how about this interview from Stanford University. It features a question and answer session with James Sheehan, a history professor, and Amir Eshel, a German Studies professor. Questions include 'Which facets of Cold War history do you find most compelling?' and 'From the perspective of your research, what do you feel are the most lasting implications of the Berlin Wall today?'

 Last week I spoke about a podcast on the rise and fall of the Berlin Wall. This week I'd like to talk about a project in a different media. Flickr is a file hosting and sharing website and a new project has been started on it called 'Experience History: Berlin 1961 - 1989'. It asks you to submit photographs you have of Berlin during that period, when the wall divided the city. Not just pictures of the wall, although those would certainly be evocative, but any life in the city. While I'm partly interested in this because of the chance to see history - there's a good photo of the kind of signs used to divide the different sectors - a post on their dedicated blog had a particular resonance: "If you were living or visiting Berlin at that time, this is a wonderful excuse to rediscover your old slides and dust off those photo-filled shoe boxes that are lurking under your bed." My father travelled behind the 'Iron Curtain' as a child, and has boxes of slides, although none of Berlin. If you have something to show, or just want to look, this is the blog with the details.

The widespread reputation for France as a country which loves wine and produces many wine varieties might be something of a cliché if it wasn't also largely true. Now Professor Paul Cartledge is hoping to settle the debate about who first introduced wine into France, by arguing it was Greek traders in 600 BC, not Etruscans or Romans. A press release from his university (Cambridge) summarises his points: "two...swing the argument firmly in the Greeks' favour. First, the Greeks had to marry and mix with the local Ligurians to ensure that Massalia survived, suggesting that they also swapped goods and ideas. Second, they left behind copious amounts of archaeological evidence of their wine trade (unlike the Etruscans and long before the Romans), much of which has been found on Celtic sites." The settlement of Massalia is present day Marseille. It does sound convincing...

I've been convinced of the educational value of the podcast for several years now, and was interested to hear of a new set of files devoted to the Berlin Wall by iMinds. Unlike the other podcasts I've spoken about on here, you have to pay for it, but having listened to them I think they're worth it for the right person. Basically, it's a set of six thematically linked podcasts commemorating and explaining the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Each is a little over eight minutes long. The wall itself is well covered, and there's a fair examination of the differences between east and west.

The material is introductory: there's nothing for those already familiar with the subject, but plenty for newcomers. There's a lot of repetition between the segments - for instance, much of the first three minutes of the eight minute 'Fall of the Berlin Wall' is covered elsewhere - but if you're learning about it for the first time this is useful reinforcement. Of course, it can be slightly off putting if you're listening to them all in one go, but one strength is that this isn't a lecture you need a full hour for, but something split into short segments you can spread over a week.

The facts and interpretations are good, and I only had two minor problems: the background music will be a matter of taste, but I found it intrusive. Equally problematic is it's unclear - at least in my package - in what order you should listen to the podcasts for optimum understanding. Those problems aside, I was very pleased with it, even more so by the fact the package of six costs $3.99, which is only just a small step above free. Overall, I think it's good for the beginner and priced accordingly. I hope future sets will have more of a consistent flow between the units, but I also hope this model is more widely adopted; there are students who would benefit greatly from hearing this. iMinds cover other areas of European history, and other - sometimes very esoteric - subjects, but I haven't heard those and can't comment. You can find them at the iMinds site.