Summary: Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the celebrated Venetian explorer Marco Polo. In 1271 Polo set off on an epic journey through Asia and he was away for more than twenty years. When he returned, he told extraordinary tales of his adventures. The Travels of Marco Polo was one of the most popular books produced in the age before printing. For centuries it was seen as the first and best account of life in the mysterious East, but today the accuracy and even truth of Marco Polo's work is often disputed. Melvyn Bragg is joined by Frances Wood, Lead Curator of Chinese Collections at the British Library; Joan Pau Rubies, Reader in International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science and Debra Higgs Strickland, Senior Lecturer in the History of Art at the University of Glasgow.
