Do please listen to this, especially with regard to Jeffrey Burton Russell's The Myth of the Flat Earth.
The complete fiction that people used to believe that the Earth was flat is extraordinarily long-lived and deep-dyed, considering that it has no factual basis whatever. No one ever believed that, at least until the rise of modern Flat Earth Societies.
As set out here, the suggestion that this was the Medieval view can be dated precisely to January 1828, which saw the publication of The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus, as highly fictionalised an account as one would expect from its author, Washington Irving, who also gave the world those noted works of historical realism, Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, as well as popularising the use of "Gotham" to refer to New York.
Even the BBC is now stating the facts. So far, it has done so only in the dead of night on Radio Four. But a very long overdue start has at least and at last been made.
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