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Timewatch is a long-running British television series showing documentaries on historical subjects, spanning all human history. It was first broadcast on 29 September 1982 and is produced by the BBC, the Timewatch brandname is used as a banner title in the UK, but many of the individual documentaries can be found on US cable channels without the branding.
1982
WINDSORS' WAR: The continuing controversy surrounding the war-time role of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Victims of a bad press, they remained tactfully silent, but now answer back through Maitre Blum, their lawyer, who gives her first television interview. OPERATION HURRICANE: Britain's first atomic test took place 30 years ago. Film of that secret explosion has been specially declassified by the Ministry of Defence for Timewatch. CHATHAM DOCKYARD: Now under threat of Government closure, the story of its contribution to naval history from the Armada to HMS Victory, to the Falklands.
THE CHINA OF THE MANCHU EMPERORS and the signing of the treaties which gave Britain Hong Kong. Why do the Chinese regard these treaties as unequal? SCOTLAND AND THE GREAT WITCH HUNT OF THE 17TH CENTURY: A thousand women were strangled or burnt. Was this persecution a political act by James VI which got out of hand? Why was it directed at women? The recently discovered diary of a Lancashire weaver JOHN O'NEIL who, a century ago, recorded his experiences as an early trades union leader in the recession of the 1860s. New research on the founding father of the Irish Republic, EAMON DE VALERA. Was he as committed to a united Ireland as was always believed, or was he prepared to compromise?
'IF THE SPANISH ARMADA HAD LANDED ...' What would have happened if on Monday 7 August 1558 a Spanish Army had marched on London from the invasion beaches of Margate? Timewatch re-examines the fate of the 16th-century Spanish task force and asks how close did it come to success? WHAT MAKES BEGIN TICK? Vladimir Jabotinsky was the philosopher behind the fighting Jew and is the man whom Menachem Begin considers his mentor. Timewatch examines the vision of Jabotinsky and its influence on Begin both in his early life and in his years as Britain's most wanted terrorist. LLYWELYN AP GRUFFYDD - THE FIRST AND LAST INDEPENDENT PRINCE OF WALES: Simon Winchester tells his story and assesses his important place in Welsh nationalism today.
Film 1: Sir Thomas More, the Tudor statesman who lost his head on the scaffold in 1535, was made a saint in 1937; now the heroic reputation of the 'man for all seasons' is under attack. Film 2: Unemployment in Britain 150 years ago when the workhouse became the symbol of oppression and poverty that lasted over a century. Bernard Clark investigates the Poor Law of 1834, designed to cut spending on the poor and unemployed and which left bitter memories for generations. Film 3: The Russian spy scare of 1927 when the British Cabinet unwittingly betrayed to Moscow the code-breaking secrets of British intelligence.
1983
HOW DO YOU DEMOCRATISE A NAZI? On the 50th anniversary of Hitler's elevation to the chancellorship of the Third Reich Simon Winchester reports from Washington and Nuremberg on how America in 1945 tried to remake a nation in its own image through a process of forced re-education. THE VENERABLE BEDE - BRITAIN'S FIRST HISTORIAN: Who was he? Where and how did he live? Why is he so important? The story of a remarkable man who, over a thousand years ago, could have travelled from Northumbria to Rome. THE LEVELLERS: three months ago in Putney church Michael Foot and other members of the Labour Party associated themselves with the men of the 'New Model Army' who spoke there 300 years before. Who were these men who, in their radicalism, saw Cromwell as the modern equivalent of establishment and right wing? How does the philosophy of these Levellers find echoes in the Labour Party today?
In a new edition of THE DIARY OF SAMUEL PEPYS, editor Robert Latham has uncovered previously unknown details of Pepys's life. THE WEEDERS: Are civil servants destroying vital historical evidence when they decide Government records should not be kept? THE HISTORICAL CLEOPATRA: As the BBC drama series ["The Cleopatras"] approaches its climax, Timewatch asks, "Was Cleopatra's reputation as a lustful tyrant really deserved?"
THE PEACE MOVEMENT IN THE 1930s AND TODAY: Fifty years ago, British politics was dominated by campaigns for peace. What are the parallels with the 1980s? THE LAST MUGGLETONIAN: In 1652, the Muggletonians were a radical sect in Revolutionary England. Simon Winchester traces their secret survival until the death of the last Muggletonian in 1979. THE VICTORIAN POLICE: What sort of force was the Police intended to be? With a new Police Bill before Parliament, Bernard Clark returns to their original beat.
THE LOVED AND HATED KING: Richard III - hunchback murderer of the princes in the Tower, or victim of Tudor propaganda? On the 500th anniversary of his coronation, historians go into battle again over his reputation. THE SILENT YEARS OF TELEVISION: In 1950 politics were not allowed on British television. By the end of the decade television dominated the political scene. As an election approaches John Bowman asks how television has changed British political history. ANIMALS AND MEN: Throughout history man has used animals for food, companions and labour. John Tusa talks to Keith Thomas about his new history of Man and the Natural World -the background to today's concern for animal liberation and ecology.
FRANCE AND THE NAZIS: Following the arrest of Klaus Barbie, butcher of Lyon, memories of Nazi collaboration have again returned to haunt a generation of Frenchmen. Dr Christopher Andrew goes to Drancy, the Paris housing estate turned in 1940 into a transit camp for Auschwitz and uncovers the ghost of Marshall Petain's Vichy Government. He talks to stout supporters of the 84-year-old Marshall, such as tennis champion Jean Borotra. FAKING HISTORY: The Hitler diaries are just the latest in a long line of historical forgeries. The Drake Plate found near San Francisco in 1936 and which claimed California for Queen Elizabeth I was shown to be fake in 1977. The Vinland Map was bought in 1959 for ~£100,000 as the first map to show the North American Continent. Instead it was shown to be a forgery in 1967. Are there other fake historical documents masquerading as genuine? Can any fake survive today's scientific analysis? Timewatch talks to the experts.
BATTLE OF THE RIVER PLATE: During the Falklands war, the Argentinians made great capital of the last time they'd fought the British - and won, in 1806. SIMON Winchester reports. BODYLINE BOWLING: Was the England captain, Douglas Jardine, aware of the political implications when he said that he would regain the Ashes but lose a dominion? Timewatch talks to cricket veteran Gubby Allen. DEATH ON THE DOLE: In a time of high unemployment John Bauman looks back at how the health of the unemployed was damaged in the 1930s. LOUIS XIV: The story of the 'Sun King' of France, who was the first 'politician' deliberately to mould his own favourable image by setting up the 17th-century equivalent of Saatchi and Saatchi.
SHADOW OF THE GALLOWS: After Parliament's vote on hanging, an investigation into the history of Tyburn and the mass public executions in the 18th century. Did hanging deter? SPYING FOR RUSSIA: Christopher Andrew investigates why the British Secret Service failed to detect Blunt, Burgess and Maclean and he uncovers their Soviet 'control'. He talks for the first time to an Oxford mole who was recruited by Moscow in the 30s. THE FORGOTTEN WARRIOR KING: William Rufus, son of William the Conqueror, is a king of whom little is known but legend. David Drew reports on new research that throws fresh light on a formidable ruler of England.
A special programme devoted to the life and historical reputation of Prince Albert, husband to Queen Victoria. From Osborne House on the Isle of Wight, designed by Albert for his family, the many different sides of his remarkable character are brought into focus. Albert the foreigner - his upbringing in Coburg, the tiny German principality where he was born. Albert the reformer - his belief in improving public services. Albert the instigator of the Great Exhibition - the biggest triumph of his life. Albert the politician - his huge and controversial influence on British politics. Historians Asa Briggs-Robert, Rhodes James, and David Cannadine reassess one of the most important figures of Victorian Britain. (Re-aired 9 December 1983 as a standalone program titled 'Albert The Early Years')
THE BATTLE FOR MARTIN LUTHER: Martin Luther, the German priest who split the Catholic church and began the Reformation, was born 500 years ago. Today, East and West Germany both struggle to claim him. From East Germany, Bernard Clark reports on how the Marxist government has tried to transform Luther into a revolutionary hero. LEBANON - CRUSADER BATTLEFIELD: The Christian and Muslim militia, who have been fighting around Beirut, trace their enmity back to the first Crusades. How does the history of the Crusades still affect the Middle East power struggle today?
BEFORE THE NATIONAL HEALTH: A remarkable newly discovered archive of silent film reveals hospital life in the 1920s and 30s. How did people afford medical care in the days before the National Health? ROYALIST OXFORD: In 1642 King Charles I set up his capital in Oxford as the English Civil War began. Simon Winchester returns to Oxford to see what clues remain there to the character of the Cavaliers. MERRIE ENGLAND: An affectionate look at the days when history at school was about great men of sturdy British stock who made our island's story. Do you remember L. du Garde Peach, one of Britain's bestselling historians?
1984
In May 1945, British soldiers near the Austrian border town of Klagenfurt handed over 26,000 Yugoslav anti-Communist refugees to Tito's Communist partisans, who disarmed then machine-gunned them. Who was responsible? Timewatch has investigated the records and, for the first time, British officers and Yugoslav survivors describe what happened. In 1348, the Black Death killed one in three of the population. Until now we have always assumed it was an outbreak of bubonic plague. Now a zoologist suggests a far more fearsome disease was the cause. Christopher Andrew investigates.
PREVENTING THE THIRD WORLD WAR: 1984 opens amid the greatest fears of international tension and nuclear holocaust since the Cold War. Lord Bullock, biographer of British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin, talks about the foundation of NATO and how the West learnt to deal with the Soviet Union after the War. THE KITCHENER ENIGMA: In 1916 Lord Kitchener was drowned on his way to Russia. Now underwater pictures reveal clues as to how his ship, HMS Hampshire, was sunk. Will they lay to rest the rumour that still remains about the secrets surrounding the Imperial War Lord? THE LAST BATTLE IN ENGLAND: In 1745 the Stuarts had their last chance of being restored to the English throne. Bonnie Prince Charlie reached Derby but then retreated. If he had marched on towards London, could he have seized the crown?
THE LAST FÜHRER: Among the Nazi war leaders tried at Nuremberg, Hitler's successor Admiral Doenitz received the lightest sentence of all. Now new research suggests Doenitz was far more deeply implicated in the atrocities of the Third Reich than previously imagined. 'THEY BE EVIL PEOPLE': Such was how British newspapers described the Russians in the late 17th century. A cautionary tale of how Englishmen in the 1720s feared Tsar Peter the Great planned to conquer the world. THE CULT OF THE DEAD: How different were medieval attitudes towards death from our own today? The wills and funeral expenses of the 16th century help provide an answer.
THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE: A meeting with the man who met the men who charged with the Light Brigade. Now aged 97, he has devoted his life to tracing all those who took part in the most celebrated action in Victorian history. KOREA AND THE BOMB: Newly-released documents reveal the extent of American plans to use atomic weapons in the Korean War. The British feared they were being kept in the dark and risked being dragged into world war. SIR ARTHUR BRYANT: Britain's most famous popular historian celebrates his 85th birthday. His latest book celebrates the greatness of our past. But is it good history?
SEX AND THE VICTORIANS: Did Victorian wives really 'lie back and think of England'? New research suggests they enjoyed a far more liberated sex life than conventional image allows. GOD SAVE THE KING was first associated with George III. Why did the king who lost the American colonies become adored by his people, with the first royal souvenirs manufactured in his name? STALIN'S FAMINE: Fifty years after millions of Ukrainian peasants died in Stalin's collectivisation, survivors remember the tragedy the Soviet Union still ignores. Malcolm Muggeridge recalls reporting the suffering.
THE BRITISH EMPIRE EXHIBITION: In 1924, 28 million people visited the last of the great imperial exhibitions at Wembley - now it is almost forgotten. GOING MAD IN THE 19TH CENTURY: In 1807 there were 2,000 certified lunatics in England. By 1880 there were more than that in one institution. ROBERT OWEN: Celebrated as defender of the Tolpuddle Martyrs, founder of the Cooperative Movement and a father of British socialism; was Robert Owen in fact a Victorian capitalist, his social reforms designed for greater profits?
THE CASE FOR KING WILLIAM: Why did William of Normandy believe the Crown of England was his right? What do we know of the barons who stamped their authority on their newly-conquered possessions? THE SECRETS OF DOMESDAY: The Domesday Book is the greatest achievement of Norman government - it surveyed every acre of William's kingdom. Now a computerised study reveals details hidden for 900 years.
Two names that shaped Britain in two World Wars. SECRETS OF THE KAISER: The private papers of Germany's last Emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II, uncover his secret life. In public the figurehead of swaggering Prussian militarism, in private a manic personality obsessed with fantastical schemes for himself and Germany. Christopher Andrew reports. SIR WILLIAM BEVERIDGE: If D-Day was the moment victory over Hitler began, it was Beveridge who gave the vision of the new world for which Britain was fighting. His report established the system of social security in Britain. He was known as the father of the welfare state. In 1984, as the entire system comes under government scrutiny, John Tusa examines the most influential blueprint for Britain this century.
SIR WALTER RALEIGH: In North Carolina they are celebrating the 400th anniversary of the first settlement in North America. Colonisation of the New World was Walter Raleigh's most ambitious scheme, but what was its aim? THE RISE OF THE VICTORIAN TOWN HALL: With the future of the GLC at stake Mark Jones examines the spectacular growth of Victorian local government and the moment the Tory Government in 1898 tried to abolish the London County Council. THE LEAKING EMBASSIES: Christopher Andrew reports on the security leaks in the British embassies in Rome and Berlin in the 1930s. The Foreign Office was stunned by the sorry state of British security.
ELECTION 1784: It was the first modern General Election. Two parties, two national leaders - the King versus Parliament. With a computer analysis of the crucial results, Timewatch fights again the election that marked a watershed in English political history. 1914 - WAS GERMANY GUILTY? Seventy years on, the question remains: did Germany conspire to cause war in the summer of 1914? Norman Stone, Professor of Modern History at Oxford, untangles the evidence from the years of crisis, in the vanished empires of Tsarist Russia, the Kaiser's Germany, and Austria-Hungary.
THE FIRST FOOTBALL HOOLIGANS: How new is soccer violence? Christopher Andrew uncovers new evidence that pitch invasions, mob riots and attacks on rival supporters were at their height before 1914. THE FIRST OIL CRISIS: The Abadan oil crisis of 1951 brought Iran and Britain into open conflict. Then the British Government planned for an invasion; today the memory shadows Iranian suspicions of the West. Sir Anthony Parsons, former adviser to Mrs Thatcher and Ambassador to the Shah, assesses this turning-point in post-war Iranian history. CLIMATE OF TREASON: The plight of Catholics in Elizabethan England. With their allegiance divided between the Pope and their Queen, should they put their conscience or country first? Were they martyrs or traitors?
ABRAHAM LINCOLN: How true are historical novels? Gore Vidal's 'Lincoln' draws the political battlefield in Washington during the American Civil War. What does it add to our portrait of one of America's greatest presidents? THE RISE AND FALL OF THE ARISTOCRACY: The British landed Aristocracy held undisputed power and unparalleled property for over 300 years. How did they keep power for so long and why did their collapse come when it did? THE FIGHTING TEN: A tin trunk in Ascot reveals the forgotten history of one of the most celebrated families of the Victorian Raj: the story of the ten Battye brothers who fought for British India has been pieced together by their descendants.
THE LAST UPRISING: In 1839, 7,000 Welsh miners and ironworkers marched on Newport to demand their democratic rights. The result was the last mass treason trial in British history. Now new research suggests that it was planned as a prelude to a revolution. THE FALKLANDS AND THE MURDEROUS GAUCHO: The strange case of Antonio Rivero, who caused the Cabinet of 150 years ago serious doubts as to whether Britain had sovereignty over the Falklands or not. GOERING: Hermann Goering was portrayed by war-time propaganda as the fat buffoon of the Third Reich. A new study reveals him as the most effective political operator in Nazi Germany.
NELSON: Heroes inevitably suffer at the hands of those who worship them, few more so than one of the most popular of all, Nelson. Since his death in 1805, how have subsequent generations perceived him? THE TORIES AND THE WORKERS: Mrs Thatcher's election victory last year was unparalleled since Lord Salisbury in 1900. How does her electoral achievement compare with her 19th-century predecessors? Why do the working class consistently vote Conservative? WYCLIFFE: In 1428 the body of John Wycliffe was dug up, burnt and scattered to the wind. The Peasants' Revolt claimed him as their inspiration. Yet on the 600th anniversary of his death practically nothing is known of him.
1988
Three films examine the ways our historical record is under attack. In fireproof vaults, millions of feet of film shot on nitrate stock in the first half of this century are decomposing - their images in danger of being lost for ever. In publishing houses, the paper deliberately chosen to print the written word since the end of the last century is destroying itself at a steady rate. In dealers' galleries, maps and the historical record which accompanied them have been systematically separated to satisfy enthusiasts, collectors, and the demands of the marketplace. Where will the destruction lead?
The control of national television is seen by regimes the world over as a necessary adjunct to their survival today. Peter France presents two films about the control and effect of mass communications in other times. The first tells the story of the financial control of the political press by the establishment in early 19th-century Britain, and the second the psychological power of a dramatic radio broadcast in the USA 100 years later, when the young Orson Welles petrified a nation.
Henry Lincoln investigates the story of the 'Man in the Iron Mask' and - using evidence which only came to light last year - separates fact from romantic myth.
In September 1944, in retaliation for Dutch support of the Arnhem landings, the Nazis cut off all food supplies to the population of western Holland. Stocks fell through the following winter until by March 1945 the official ration was down to 500 calories a day. As four million people faced death from starvation, the only hope of relief lay in persuading the Germans to negotiate an unprecedented truce.
Christopher Andrew presents two stories from the darker and more secret side of British history over the past 150 years. THE DIARY OF A VERY ENGLISH SPY is an insight, based on a unique document, into the training and instruction given to secret agents at a British spy school during the First World War where elements of present spycraft were first perfected. '... AND ONE LAW FOR THE POOR': How the 1832 Anatomy Act denied the poor and the destitute the freedom to bury their dead but supplied anatomy schools - previously reliant on stealthy body snatchers - with a regular and legal supply of human cadavers.
How old is the Shroud of Turin? To millions of believers it's the burial cloth of Jesus, to sceptics it's a clever medieval fake. Recently the age of the shroud was finally determined by radiocarbon dating. A Timewatch team went to Turin to follow the preparation of the shroud for the scientists, and to Zurich to film the actual tests.
Bizarre theories have surrounded the unexplained killings in Whitechapel since they hit the headlines in 1888. This film dispels the grisly fiction, revealing for the first time the true contents of the police and Home Office files on the case, drawing on the expertise of historians and of those who have encountered today's killers - on the street or behind bars. Revisiting the sites of the crimes, piecing together evidence from Victorian locations across London, the invention of the legend becomes clear, as Christopher Frayling unravels the circumstances which turned a killer into a Gothic hero.
One hundred years after the matchgirls strike, this dramatised documentary looks at the life of Annie Besant, strike leader, pioneering 19th-century social reformer, and campaigner for the use of contraception who towards the end of her life turned towards theosophy.
Peter France examines the Glorious Revolution of 1688 from the perspective of William of Orange, unearthing the real motives behind his invasion.
Fifty years ago, Nikolai Bukharin, Lenin's right-hand man and favourite of the Bolsheviks, was shot by Stalin's henchmen after the last of the infamous show trials in Moscow. Mikhail Gorbachev recently proclaimed his death a travesty of justice and his trial a farce. Granted special permission to cover the story and the first interview with Bukharin's widow Anna, Timewatch accompanies Sir Fitzroy Maclean back to the city where he attended Bukharin's trial in 1938 to find Russians eager to talk for the first time about the terror of the '30s.
1985
REAGAN'S COWBOYS: Why have successive presidents celebrated the cowboy as all-American hero? THE AGE OF CHIVALRY IS DEAD: But did it ever flourish? How true is the picture painted of the knights in shining armour, enchanted castles and fabulous tournaments in medieval romance. THE HIDDEN HIPPOPOTAMUS: A hundred years ago the scramble for Africa by the European imperial powers began. Timewatch reconstructs a single incident between Christian missionary and African chieftain that suggests the dominance of European over African was not always as straightforward as might be thought.
TAFF VALE: In 1900 the railway workers of Taff Vale embarked on a strike which has political implications to this day. Timewatch examines the first great clash between the Trades Unions and the law. THE ISLAND AND ITS PAST: How the people of the Isle of Dogs in the Thames Estuary are rediscovering their past. SPECIAL BRANCH: At the height of her powers, Victorian Britain boasted that she didn't need a political police. After explosions in the Underground, the Tower of London and the Houses of Parliament, she changed her mind. Timewatch investigates the birth of the Special Branch.
'Let not poor Nellie starve.' With those words Charles II, the 'Merry Monarch', died 300 years ago. Of all British sovereigns, this womanising, yachting, horse-racing king has a fond place in popular myth. During his 25-year reign England returned from the horrors of civil war to peace and plenty. David Drew looks at some of the lasting achievements of the age of Charles II and at the man who, somewhat waywardly, presided over them.
CHURCHILL AND ROOSEVELT exchanged 2,000 letters during the Second World War. Collected for the first time, they reveal the tensions behind the friendship and Britain's collapse as a great superpower. A BLACK AND TERRIBLE TROOP was the name given to a gang of burglars and forgers who terrorised Westmorland 300 years ago. Timewatch traces their rise and fall through the private papers of the Justice who ran them to earth. RING A RING O' ROSES is the nursery rhyme everyone knows has its roots in the Great Plague. But does it? Iona Opie investigates its origins.
THE UNUSED WEAPON: By 1945 the Allies and the Nazis had stockpiled five times more chemical weapons than had been used throughout the First World War. They were never used. Why? Robert Harris reports. SUICIDE OF A CAVALIER: At the battle of Newbury in 1643, Lord Falkland charged headlong to his death. His friends thought it was suicide. Now a psychiatrist has reopened the case and offers an explanation. THE FORGOTTEN BRITISH EMPIRE: Who has heard of Carausius? Yet in the third century, he ruled Britain as his separate empire and defied the power of Rome. Timewatch uncovers the few traces of him that remain.
In April 1945, British and American troops were sweeping across Western Germany. Charles Wheeler was among them. They stopped 50 miles short of the German capital and Berlin became the prize of the Russian army. Forty years on. Charles Wheeler tells how the Soviet Union fought its bloodiest final battle and how the manner of its victory determined the future of Berlin, and Europe, in the postwar world. With previously unseen film of the battle and its aftermath, some in colour, the story is told by men and women veterans of the Russian forces, the Hitler Youth who defied them, and a man who was with Hitler in his final hours.
This month's programme comes from the centre of Oxford where Peter France introduces three stories which have their roots deep in the confused and bewildering fortunes of the Boer War. Film 1: Images of the later, tragic stages of the conflict were captured by the newly-invented Box Brownie camera, which went to war for the first time in the knapsack of the ordinary soldier. (Director: ROBERT MARSHALL) MASTERSPY: Christopher Andrew tells the still secret story of 'C', the first, eccentric head of the puny amateur organisation which was eventually to become the modern Secret Intelligence Service. (Director: JONATHAN DENT) Film 3: Extracts from the diaries of THE REV ANDREW CLARK reveal the way the momentous events of the First World War touched and changed daily life in his tiny Essex village of Great Leighs. (Director TONY TYLEY) Executive producer ROY DAVIES Editor BRUCE NORMAN
SUMMER OF THE HANGING JUDGE: An examination of the life and times of Judge George Jeffreys 300 years after he presided over the infamous Bloody Assizes which followed the Monmouth Rebellion. BIRTH OF THE EXPERT WITNESS: Christopher Andrew assesses the important developments in forensic evidence in the hands of medical experts in major trials during the 19th century. TWELVE GOOD MEN AND TRUE: Jennifer Brooks analyses events at the Old Bailey in September 1670 when 12 men established for all time the right of a jury to return an independent verdict after hearing a case involving William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania.
Film 1: As the world waits for Halley's Comet, a recently discovered diary written by a 17th-century merchant from Rye in Sussex reveals the feelings of a man caught up in a scientific revolution, when the new discipline of astronomy shouldered aside the age-old belief in astrology. Author Aubrey Burl, authority on stone circles, outlines new theories which suggest that the ancient peoples of Britain used the world's most famous circle as a lunar as well as a solar observatory. Film 2: A look back at events earlier this year when Stonehenge and the hill fort at Maiden Castle were at the centre of English Heritage's controversial plans to preserve our past - a controversy that still rages over who digs what and where, that has split the usually placid world of archaeology.
1987
Peter France presents three films which reflect the extent to which codes of 'honour', allegiance' and 'behaviour' have had their effect on British history. 1: Christopher Andrew examines the demise of duelling 100 years ago. 2: Ian Dear tells the story of the duplicity behind the victories which kept the America's Cup in New York for 130 years. 3: Phillip Knightley shows the process by which British Intelligence secrets have been leaked steadily since the end of the Second World War.
Views of Oliver Cromwell vary as much today as when Parliament asked him to become King in 1657: a tyrant, a repressed religious bigot who murdered a king; a patriot, civilised with a tremendous sense of humour, and conscience in matters of state and religion. How do modern historians view the parliamentarian who some have called the greatest Englishman?
Two stories showing how previous generations have dealt with the problems of pollution and disease: DEVONSHIRE COLIC: In Georgian times, a crippling illness struck thousands of cider drinkers in the west of England, who found mysterious relief only by taking the waters at Bath Spa. In Victorian England, prostitutes, seen as carriers of venereal disease, were forcibly detained and treated in hospitals until they were considered unlikely to infect the male population - particularly the lower ranks of the Army and Royal Navy.
Mary Queen of Scots has come down to us as a tragic heroine - but what kind of respect does she command as a 16th-century ruler? Anne Boleyn is usually seen either as a scheming predator or as a pathetic figure executed because she failed to produce a male heir for Henry VIII. Historians Jenny Wormald and Eric Ives set out to show that the popular images of Mary and Anne have to be radically reassessed, and Peter France sets their tragic stories into the context of the religious turmoil of the 16th century.
1: The last attempt by central government to impose educational benchmarks on the majority of British schools. 2: Disinherited Londoners recall the community spirit of a Notting Hill street torn down for redevelopment 25 years ago. 3: Cambridge don David Cannadine explores current attitudes toward British history.
Christopher Andrew and Gabriel Ronay investigate two political mysteries. THE ZINOVIEV LETTER led to the defeat of the first Labour Government in 1924. Was it genuine - or was it an early attempt to use 'red scare' tactics to bring down a democratically elected government? And if so, who sent it? THE PRINCE OF TRANSYLVANIA received a pension from Charles II and a magnificent burial in Rochester Cathedral. But was he a prince or a con-man - and why was he so hideously murdered?
What really happened in Russia in October 1917? How far can we rely on the vivid films from the period to give us a true picture of the Revolution and, of incidents such as the storming of the Winter Palace in St Petersburg? Christopher Andrew, in a critical examination of documentary evidence and the memories of Russian emigres who were eyewitnesses to the events of 1917, steers a path through the propaganda, censorship, carelessness and sheer misunderstanding that have distorted the historical record in Russia and the West for the past 70 years.
Two films examine the reality behind the ideal. When MANFRED VON RICHTHOFEN died in 1918 he had become a figure of myth; a knight of the air with 80 victories to his credit. But the legend of the Red Baron hid a quiet, aloof man whose aristocratic sense of honour drove him to his death. WILLIAM MARSHAL, 700 years earlier, was described as the greatest knight in the world. He was loyal, generous, and the champion of many battles. He used his reputation to drag himself up from obscure origins to become Regent of England and Protector of Henry III.
Explores the trial of Nazi officer Adolph Eichmann through a controversial book, 'Eichmann in Jerusalem' by Hannah Arendt. Many Jews read her reports from Jerusalem with a sense of deep hurt and outrage as she questioned the legality and political purpose of the trial, portraying Eichmann as 'banal rather than evil', and making sweeping comments on Jewish resistance and cooperation. Using archive film of the trial and interviews with friends, historians, and survivors of the camps in New York and Jerusalem, this documentary pieces together the different reactions to Arendt's arguments, and to the painful process of turning the Holocaust into history.
1986
Three films which reflect the way official records are preserved for future generations. Film 1: Christopher Andrew examines the extraordinary story of how the MS Automedon, entrusted with top secret documents, fell into enemy hands a year before the fall of Singapore and delivered to the Japanese priceless information which changed the course of the Second World War. Film 2: Peter Ibbotson reveals how the authorities decide which documents are thrown away and which are to be kept for future generations. Film 3: In a case which has parallels with modern phone-tapping scandals, Jeremy Black uses documents from Chancery Lane to show how the Foreign Office and the Post Office intercepted political mail in the early 18th century as Britain edged towards stable parliamentary democracy.
Two stories shed new light on the life and times of Henry Tudor, who took the throne of England from Richard III 500 years ago. Film 1: The problems facing Margaret Rule and her assistant Andrew Fielding as they put back into the hull of the Mary Rose the thousands of timbers and artefacts which have helped to give a picture of the men who manned the guns of the British Navy in the early 16th century. HENRY VII: Reassessing the life of Henry VII - the king who may well have commissioned the Mary Rose. David Starkey argues none of the glories of the Tudor dynasty would have been possible without the peace and prosperity which came from his astute control of finance and politics.
Three films presented from the British Museum reveal how visionaries and others dealt with the 'outsider' as they set out to perfect a society, a state and a national image at the turn of the 19th century. Film 1: English reformers constructed a new prison system - only to find that within 20 years it was a total failure. Film 2: The Brothers Grimm falsified their country's original folk tales to define behaviour 'acceptable to the architects ' of the new Germany. Film 3: Satirical cartoonists vilified the national characteristics of the Welsh, the Scots and the Irish to build up the concept of pure Englishness.
Three stories presented from the Virago bookshop in Covent Garden about the lives of women in worlds dominated by men. THE NINE DAY QUEEN: Lady Jane Grey was used by men of power when she was alive, and by male propagandists when she was dead. A new film about her life is to be released next month. What interpretation do its makers offer of the 16-year-old girl who was beheaded for treason more than 400 years ago? MOST DANGEROUS WOMEN shows how close the leaders of a women's international peace movement came to getting the most powerful men in the world to stop the Great War in the middle of 1915. THE WORLD OF MARY ELLEN BEST illustrates how one woman artist left a vivid record of the domestic surroundings of her time simply because she was denied the opportunities freely available to her male contemporaries.
In January 1943 lone British agent Henri Dericourt was dropped over occupied France. His mission was to organise the reception and departure of RAF flights crucial to the secret work of SOE - the Special Operations Executive. Dericourt quickly earned a stellar reputation, but within six months of his arrival, the SOE's largest network in France was wiped out and more than 400 French resistance workers arrested. Post-war investigations established that Dericourt had fed secrets to the Germans ever since he had begun his work in France. But Dericourt was no simple traitor. What then was his role in the disaster and for whom was he really working?
In 1936 'The Road to War' used newsreel to try to alert the American people to the mounting horror of war in China, Ethiopia, Italy, Germany, Austria and Spain. But America did not want to know and the film disappeared without trace until last year. Its rediscovery and the memories of the men who made it - Irving Allen and Herbert Bregstein - exposes American attitudes to Fascism as the world headed for war.
Peter France introduces three films exploring the backgrounds of historic items recently auctioned and the motivations of the bidders: - A Victoria Cross won at the battle of Rorke's Drift more than 100 years ago - Four pages from a medieval illuminated manuscript about the life of Saint Thomas Beckett, changing hands for the first time in nearly 500 years
The Domesday Book was completed 900 years ago, but it says little about the daily worries and concerns of the people whose land and animals are recorded in so much detail. Three films help evoke something of the real lives of those people. Film 1: Christopher Andrew learns from England rugby star Mark Bailey about the social and economic impact of the rabbit; Film 2: Patricia Morison explains some of the ways open to men and women of those times to cure their illness and complaints; Film 3: Norman Stone investigates why there has never been another Domesday Book - a register of just who owns this green and pleasant land. He has uncovered a story of centuries of privacy, secrecy and vested interests which has left England as the only country in Europe without a public and accessible register of land ownership.
Film 1: How a Bulgarian peasant farmer stumbled across the largest Thracian treasure ever discovered - more than 160 silver bowls and jugs, found while digging an irrigation ditch. THE MAN WHO MADE HISTORY: How an Italian who 'imitated the past' has become known as one of the greatest forgers of all time.
1989
During the Nazi occupation of eastern Poland, a small group of Jews in the city of Lvov tried to save themselves from the death camps by hiding in the sewers beneath the city for more than 14 months. Timewatch reunited four remaining survivors in 1988 to record their accounts. The oldest, Mundek Margulies, journeyed back to Lvov (now part of the Soviet Union) and with co-operation from local authorities, went down into the sewers and through the maze of tunnels to help describe this extraordinary episode of human courage and endurance from the Jewish Holocaust.
What effect did Charlie Chaplin have on the sale of tea? What first caused the sudden and surprising popularity of tennis and golf? And to what extent was the middle class of England responsible for changing an era of optimism and peace into the nightmare of the First World War? Eric Hobsbawm, one of Britain's leading historians, offers some insight into the 19th century and describes a world that was about to disappear for ever.
For nearly 50 years the world has been led to believe President Roosevelt's statement that the attack was a total surprise and completely unsuspected by the neutral Americans. But witnesses from all over the world are now coming forward to tell a different story - that Washington was repeatedly warned about the coming attack. Two men who certainly weren't told that they were the likely target for a Japanese air strike were the commanders responsible for the safety of the fleet at Pearl Harbor, 2,000 miles out into the Pacific. Here the whole story is told for the first time - beginning with the breaking of the vital Japanese Naval Code by the British more than two years before.
Two stories reflect the contribution made to history by non-professionals. BRITISH AND GUARANTEED: A look at those who re-create their childhood and the golden age of British engineering by collecting Frank Hornby's celebrated model trains. A BATCHELOR'S DELIGHT: Anne Batchelor has spent four years tracing her family line back to 1527. Among her ancestors is the Elizabethan lutenist, Daniel Bachiler.
Two eyewitness accounts of the past - 500 years apart. The 15th-century letters of Margaret Paston push aside people's misconceptions about medieval women as passive objects. Harriet Walter brings to life a woman of immense strength, resourcefulness, and courage. The second film provides startling testimony to a horrifying episode of post-war murder of Polish Jews, filmed secretly by a crew from the Polish trade union Solidarity. Few films from eastern Europe have raised such disturbing questions.
In July 1962, Harold Macmillan sacked a third of his Cabinet, including Chancellor of the Exchequer and some of his oldest political friends. Did the normally unflappable Macmillan panic? Was there, as Macmillan claimed, a plot to overthrow him and, if so, who was behind it? Rare archive film and interviews with Macmillan's closest confidants and victims of his purge offer new evidence for this unprecedented act of political butchery.
Did the atomic bombs that fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki really shorten the war and save Allied lives? Based on American archive records, this dramatic account of the decision to use the atomic bomb reveals the reality of power politics - and pinpoints the origins of the Cold War.
England's land was green but never pleasant. So why do villages and fields conjure up a happy, wholesome past? This film unravels the ironic tale of poverty in countryside and town which led to the invention of a rural fantasy in the years before the First World War. Glimpsing for the first time the new volume of Edith Holden's Country Diary, Timewatch asks why it was that these sweet Edwardian dreams finally came to hide the sour realities altogether.
Leon Trotsky was one of the architects of the Russian Revolution and creator of the Red Army. Brilliant and eloquent, and expected to succeed Lenin, he was forced into exile, airbrushed out of Soviet history and murdered in 1940 on the direct orders of Joseph Stalin. Today, as Stalin's terrible heritage is being slowly dismantled, this film, using archive footage and personal memoirs, looks at the life and ideas of the revolutionary who was the dictator's first and greatest enemy. (edited from the 1987 French miniseries 'Trotsky')
During the Second World War, Italian forces in Yugoslavia murdered hundreds of thousands of civilians. Historians have now exposed the startling political reasons why there was never an Italian equivalent of the Nuremberg Trials. Michael Bryant narrates the story of the implementation of Mussolini's policy of Italianisation in the Balkans. Part 1 of 2.
At the end of the Second World War, conclusive evidence of war crimes was presented against more than 1,200 high-ranking Italian Fascists. Yet despite constant protests from the governments of Yugoslavia, Greece and Ethiopia, not one Italian war criminal was ever extradited to stand trial for crimes committed during the Italian occupation of their countries. Michael Bryant tells the story of how, for political and military reasons, the British and American governments chose to block the extradition of any Italian war criminals, many of whom by then held key positions in the Italian government. Part 2 of 2.
1990
Was the last prisoner of Spandau Prison in Berlin really Rudolf Hess, one time deputy to Adolf Hitler, or a doppelganger put in his place by the Nazis before his incredible flight to Britain in 1941? Claims have been made in recent years that the body of the man who died in Spandau Prison in 1987 at the age of 93 bore none of the chest wounds suffered by the real Hess in the First World War. Christopher Andrew talks to wartime witnesses and forensic experts in a personal investigation to establish whether the strange case of Rudolf Hess is a genuine example of the conspiracy theory of history.
Timewatch explores the myth of the man who had a vision of a united Europe 175 years ago.
The Communist party of Hungary has been forced to surrender its monopoly on truth, but it still controls access to the official archives. Any truths about the past 40 years must, therefore, come from the people themselves: witnesses, participants and victims, whose accounts are being gathered by historians, sociologists and film-makers. The history they recall has already had its effect on the pace of reform.
In 1945 the German State and its army disappeared. Recently, harrowing tales from Germans who were prisoners in American camps at that time have begun to emerge. A Canadian author has alleged that nearly a million German soldiers died while prisoners of the Allies. His figures are disputed, but did the American authorities, with images of concentration camps fresh in their minds, set out to punish Germans?
In the USA it is becoming standard practice for police to call in archaeologists and anthropologists with their skills at excavation and bone analysis to help them unravel murder cases. Now a British police force is looking at what the academics can offer them.
In January 1987 a band of grave robbers broke into a royal tomb at Sipan in northern Peru. The treasure they plundered was worth millions. Within months it had been smuggled by way of London to Los Angeles. Timewatch examines the international trade in antiquities, and uncovers a tale of ancient gold and modern greed.
On the shore of Sabbathday Lake in Maine lives a religious community of nine men and women. They are the last practising Shakers - members of a sect once persecuted for its dissenting beliefs and celibate lifestyle. Granted unique access, Timewatch explores their struggle to maintain their religious and historic identity while furniture made by previous generations of Shakers breaks saleroom records around the world.
Seven hundred years ago tomorrow - on 1 November 1290 - the Jews were expelled from England. Christopher Andrew unfolds the extraordinary story of England's medieval Jews and discovers the English roots of European anti-Semitism.
In 1914-15 138,000 Indians fought on the Western Front. More than a quarter were casualties. We know what the ordinary soldier felt about the war in France because his letters home were translated and censored. The programme tells the story of those men who fought and died for a country whose language, culture and traditions were alien to them.
Charles Wheeler tells how the colonial policy of the post-war Labour government led to the start of a 30-year war in Vietnam.
On January 23 1915, black insurgents broke into a house on the biggest plantation in British colonial Nyasaland. The rebels killed the white manager, cut off his head and carried it home. The planter's name was William Livingstone. The rebel leader was the black Baptist pastor, John Chilembwe. Two men trapped by a clash of civilizations.
1992
In October 1834 the Houses of Parliament burned down. Which architectural style would best express Victorian values? Architects, politicians, and the general public took sides in a fierce debate between the Classic and the Gothic, echoed in today's battle between Classicists and Modernists.
Tells the full story of the "Death Railway", made famous by the 1957 film The Bridge on the River Kwai. In just 15 months, 26,000 allied PoWs who were forced to labour on the project died from ill treatment, malnutrition and disease. A quarter of a million Asian labourers were conscripted by the Japanese to work alongside the PoWs. As many as 100,000 of them may have died.
In late 1943 Winston Churchill made what he would later describe as one of the biggest mistakes of the war. On the advice of his special envoy to Yugoslavia, he transferred British weapons and support from the anti-communist resistance under General Draja Mihailovich to the communist partisans led by Marshal Josip Broz Tito. That decision effectively condemned Yugoslavia to 40 years of communist rule and destroyed the reputation of General Mihailovich, who ever since has been portrayed as a Nazi collaborator. Part 1 of 2.
When Marshal Tito imposed a communist dictatorship on Yugoslavia in 1945, the western allies regretted their support for the wartime resistance leader. But when, three years later, Tito fell out with Stalin, the west backed him once again. Timewatch examines how Tito was able to play east against west to his own advantage and leave behind him a legacy which haunts Yugoslavia to this day. Part 2 of 2.
Until now, the three-man Argentine junta which led the invasion of the Falkland Islands has kept its secrets. Tonight, for the first time, a junta member, Air Force General Basilio Lami Dozo, speaks out. His Exocet missiles were the most deadly threat to the British Task Force. And an in-depth look at the US Secretary of State Alexander Haig's attempt to avert a war - and save his own job. He promised President Reagan, "We'll walk this kitty back". Shuttling between General Galtieri and Margaret Thatcher - who dubbed him "Woolly AI" - Haig's moments of elation and disappointment, revealed here for the first time, became increasingly desperate as the Task Force steamed steadily southwards - to war.
In Paraguay the blond, blue-eyed people of New Germany speak the same Saxon as their ancestors did when they arrived there more than 100 years ago. They are the result of a bizarre racial experiment carried out by Elisabeth Nietzsche, sister of Germany's great philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, the man Hitler and Mussolini claimed was their inspiration. Nietzsche founded the colony with Bernard Forster, a racist, Jew-baiting schoolteacher. Her relationship with Forster had led her brother to break off contact with her. But when Friedrich Nietzsche was declared insane, it was Elisabeth who returned to Germany to take control of his affairs. Tonight's film visits Paraguay to meet the descendants of the people she chose for their "purity of blood" to form a new Fatherland. Part 1 of 2.
In 1889, when her Aryan colony in Paraguay began to fail, Elisabeth Nietzsche returned to Germany to look after her dying brother. Over the next 40 years, she so distorted his ideas that even now Nietzsche's name is still directly associated with European fascism. Tonight's film uses material from the Nietzsche Archive (opened following the collapse of the communist state in East Germany) to reveal how Elisabeth Nietzsche was wooed by both Mussolini and Hitler, and how she became one of the most powerful women in the Third Reich. Part 2 of 2.
On Wednesday 27 May 1942, two assassins waited for a German staff car to round a hairpin bend in a suburb of Prague. Their target was SS Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, the architect of the "final solution". Heydrich was considered the most dangerous man in Nazi Germany after Hitler himself, and the plot was masterminded in England. Fifty years on, Timewatch examines the planning of the daring operation and the terrible reprisals it provoked.
For 40 years the Gladio - a secret network of former Nazis originally tasked with resisting the communist threat in occupied territories at the end of the Second World War - has bombed and murdered scores of innocent civilians to keep control of Europe for their political masters. This documentary reveals the crucial role the CIA has played in manipulating the political affairs of post-war Europe through the Gladio. Part 1 of 3.
In August 1980, the left-wing Red Brigades were blamed for the bombing of a Bologna, Italy, railway station that resulted in 86 dead and scores injured. But the Red Brigades had long been penetrated by right-wing agents working for the State whose aim was to commit atrocities that would terrify civilians into pleading for greater state security, even at the cost of personal freedom. Part 2 of 3.
Examines whether Italian Special Forces were involved in the kidnapping and assassination of Italian prime minister Aldo Moro, who supported including the Italian Communist Party in national government. Also reconstructs a preceding series of unexplained killings in Belgian supermarkets. Part 3 of 3.
At the dawn of the Cold War, both communists and anti-communists in America thought the world was on the brink. This special three-part series uses archive film and stories of ordinary Americans to paint a picture of suspicion and repression of "the enemy within" on a huge scale. Part 1 of 3.
Mention McCarthyism and most people think of the Hollywood blacklist. In fact, tens of thousands of ordinary people's lives were destroyed by what amounted to an American Inquisition. Paul was an electrician who couldn't work for 20 years because of one joke. Frank was followed for 38 years by up to eight FBI agents a day despite admitting he was not a security risk. Now that the Cold War is over, they and others can tell their full stories for the first time. Part 2 of 3.
Contrasts the fame and fortune of HUAC witness Harvey Matusow, whose lies went unquestioned, with the experiences of those who refused to co-operate and "name names". In destroying some but trusting others, did America lose faith in its most basic values? Part 3 of 3.
A documentary drama based on the memoirs of English diplomat Ernest Satow. Arriving in Japan at a time of political upheaval in the 1860s, Satow quickly got to know the radical young samurai determined to overthrow the corrupt government of the Shogun and lead Japan into a new age. Part 1 of 2.
Satow's unique understanding of the forces struggling for supremacy in Japan enabled him to have a direct influence on the events leading to the Civil War of 1868, and the restoration of the Mikado. Part 2 of 2.
30 years ago, American reaction against the Cuban Revolution led the world to the brink of nuclear war. Recounting the various US-inspired attacks against Cuba and the life of its leader Fidel Castro, who gives his account of events for the first time on television. When Soviet premier Khrushchev decided to protect Cuba with nuclear missiles and President Kennedy demanded their removal, the world held its breath. Part 1 of 2.
October 1962: The US naval blockade, the shooting down of a US spy plane, and the Soviet preparations for a nuclear response to a US invasion of Cuba are told by insiders from both the Kremlin and the White House, and by Fidel Castro himself.
When white men fell out in 1861, Black Americans gained a measure of freedom. But by 1915, 50 years after the end of the Civil War, blacks in the Southern States could neither vote nor sit on juries. They were segregated and locked into a system of sharecropping that differed little, in practice, from slavery. This of white supremacy could not have happened without the North's tacit approval, but how did it happen and why?
A personal account by actor Kenneth Griffith of the rise and fall of Irish nationalist hero Roger Casement. Knighted by the British for his humanitarian work in Africa and South America, in 1913 Casement switched his efforts to the cause of Irish Home Rule. During the First World War he went to Germany, seeking help from the Kaiser. On the eve of the Easter Rising in 1916, as he returned to Ireland with a shipment of German arms, he was arrested, tried and hanged for treason.
1997
A Second World War love affair between German housewife Lilly Wust and young Jewish lesbian Felice Schragenheim.
Christopher Columbus is popularly believed to have been, in 1492, the first European to discover America. However, some historians are convinced the New World was known before he set sail. Examines their claims and looks into the belief that the Mandan Indians of North Dakota are partly descended from a 12th-century Welsh prince.
A wireless operator who survived torture and a Nazi concentration camp, a 20-year-old sabotage expert, and an MI6 agent who filmed his own undercover operations are just three of the British secret agents whose stories of bravery behind enemy lines in the Second World War are told in this historical documentary.
The Boer War of 1899-1902 saw correspondents and cameramen play a major part in war propaganda for the first time. Diaries, memoirs, photographs and films form part of an examination of the media's role in a conflict that saw young journalists Winston Churchill, Rudyard Kipling and writer Edgar Wallace make their names.
For centuries babies were born at home, their mothers assisted through the birth by other women. But 50 years ago, childbirth was taken out of the home and into hospitals. The transition was made in the name of safety but, as tonight's programme reveals, the emphasis on personal care and humanity was lost in the process. Mothers, midwives, and obstetricians reflect on the effect this has had on the traditional relationship between mother and midwife.
When war broke out in South East Asia in 1941, one hill tribe - the Christian, English-speaking Karen - distinguished itself in the fight against Japan. Karen helped halt the Japanese, taught British Army regulars to fight in the jungle, and worked with Force 136 - the British sabotage unit immortalised in the fiction film 'The Bridge on the River Kwai'. Fifty years later they are fighting for their independence. Using newly unearthed archive material and documents, Timewatch tells why the Karen feel abandoned by the British and how they remain in a brutal civil war with the Burmese.
Tonight's documentary reassesses a project from 1977 designed to find out more about prehistoric life. For over a year a group of young people lived and worked on a replica of an Iron Age farm, but in the light of recent archaeological discoveries, this programme questions the success of the project.
Forty years ago a war movie created a legend. Timewatch now tells the story of Lieutenant Colonel Toosey, the British officer in Burma whose job it was to supply the Japanese with a workforce to build the bridge - which still exists. His tale is told with the help of tapes that recount his experiences and through the letters he exchanged with his Japanese captor after the war. NEW SEASON.
As Christianity became a dominant religious force in Europe, a religious movement was shaping the ancient Mayan civilisation of central America. It was based upon the arrival of a messianic "fire child" into Mayan territory in AD 378. New evidence from the excavation of the city of Copan suggests that Mayans were responsible for a cult of blood sacrifice and an environmental catastrophe that saw them destroyed in accordance with a prophecy.
In 1988 the third film about the inspirational life of Alison French, who has cerebral palsy, saw her get married to Mark John. Ten years and two children later, she talks candidly about her experiences as a disabled person as well as her new career as a youth and community worker.
The first secret documents released by MI5 to the Public Records Office cover its establishment by the mysterious Vernon Kell, code-named "K", in 1909, and the fight to counter the German spy threat during the First World War. Timewatch goes behind the scenes at MI5 and features interviews with early members of the clandestine organisation.
Transatlantic slavery was responsible for the largest long-distance forced migration in history. Europeans did not venture into the interior of Africa until after abolition, so how did approximately 12 million Africans fall into their clutches? Timewatch delves into history and finds that, contrary to popular belief, most of the business was conducted by black slave merchants trading on the coast with Europeans. And slavery was a fact of life long before the transatlantic trade began. For centuries, Africa supplied eunuchs and wives to the Arab world, sacrificial victims to tyrants, and domestic labour.
Secret files documenting the life of Lenin were hidden away for decades by Soviet authorities in a labyrinth of vaults deep underground, behind blast-proof steel doors specially strengthened to withstand nuclear attack. They reveal a disturbed man with a turbulent personal life whose political reign involved terror tactics against the enemies of socialism to force the pace of revolutionary change and direct orders for mass executions.
Twenty-five years ago the Ugandan Asians arrived in Britain, having been expelled from their own country. Greeted warmly on their arrival, they also saw the harsh face of Britain, with the National Front gaining support and publicity. Now one of the most successful communities in Britain, Uganda has asked them to return. With interviews, propaganda footage and news archive, Timewatch explores the emotional history of the Ugandan Asians and examines how they feel about Britain and the home they left behind.
Explores the myths that still surround the legendary Egyptian queen, and attempts to unravel the truth behind a life - and death - that helped to shape the civilised world for the next 500 years.
1996
The temple at Karnak in Egypt, founded around 1500 BC, was the greatest religious shrine of the ancient world, taking 2,000 years and the work of 80,000 people to complete. Yet much of what went on behind its walls was kept hidden. With the aid of computer reconstructions and film shot at religious sites in Egypt, Timewatch reveals its fascinating hidden history.
Some historians have always suspected that Stalin was behind the Korean War, but the Soviets have denied involvement. By obtaining documents from recently opened archives and finding new eyewitnesses, Timewatch has uncovered evidence that Stalin was involved in the war and that over 70,000 members of the Soviet military took part.
Four hundred years ago today, Sir Francis Drake was buried at sea off the coast of Panama after unsuccessfully trying to recapture past glories. History records that his reputation lay in tatters just eight years after defeating the Spanish Armada. This film retraces his strange final odyssey and finds that, contrary to prevailing belief, it was a shrewdly planned venture thwarted by ill fortune. The truth lies with the Guayou Indians of Colombia, in the letters of the men who sailed with him, and with those who tried to stop him.
A 1973 documentary from the 'Man Alive' series portrayed the lives of six teenage male offenders and their time in Peper Harow, a community in Surrey that promoted a policy of treatment rather than punishment. This film shows the youngsters as they were then and, over two decades later, updates their stories. Was the radical Peper Harow rehabilitation experiment a success? Have the men managed to break the cycle of violence that was such a part of their lives?
Had documentary film-makers roamed the streets of London in the mid-19th century, they would have encountered an extraordinary range of characters. A rat catcher, a woman who sells dog dirt, and a depressed street clown are brought to life in this programme, capturing their tragic, amusing, and moving stories. Based on transcribed interviews with a wide range of working people as part of a survey of London labour and life by Henry Mayhew, the Victorian journalist and founder of Punch magazine.
A special edition of the historical documentary series. Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig has been lampooned as the worst type of British officer for his command of the army in the First World War. But did he, as accused, send thousands of British to a futile death? On the 80th anniversary of the battle of the Somme, Timewatch explores a newly emerging historical debate.
When General Norman Schwarzkopf planned and executed the Gulf War's "Desert Storm", he looked to the history books for his strategy and found his inspiration in the distant figure of Hannibal. First of a seven-part series.
Rennes-le-Chateau in southern France is home to one of the century's greatest conspiracy theories. For over a century there have been rumours about treasure buried beneath its streets. This edition of Timewatch sets out to solve the mystery and to separate fact from fiction.
A hundred years ago, gold was discovered on a tributary of the Klondike River in north-west Canada, sparking off an extraordinary stampede across the snowbound passes of the Yukon. Will White from Dorset was one of the thousands of amateur prospectors who set out to make their fortune. White's story, gleaned from his letters home, is interwoven with tales of colourful characters of the time.
For half a century the Soviet Union's labour camps made virtual slaves of millions of Russians. Tens of thousands of foreigners were also caught up in this nightmare world. Using newly-released film from the Soviet archives and testimonies of former prisoners, Timewatch traces the history of these slave-labour camps.
From 1948-64 Curtis E LeMay and Thomas Power controlled the nuclear bombers and missiles of the USA's Strategic Air Command, the most powerful military force the world has ever seen. But it is now believed that, without the president's knowledge, they built up a huge nuclear arsenal and provoked the Kremlin. Timewatch has uncovered a secret plan that risked a Third World War in the sixties.
Tonight's documentary visits the small mining village in South Wales where, in October 1966, disaster struck when a coal tip above the village collapsed and crashed down the hillside at speed, sweeping everything up which lay in its path. How are the villagers coping with their grief 30 years on? This respectful documentary commemorates the disaster and features archive footage alongside contemporary interviews with some of the survivors and the bereaved parents.
Forty years ago this week, thousands of Hungarians demonstrated on the streets of Budapest in protest against Soviet occupation of their country and communist oppression. Subsequent Soviet retribution resulted in the deaths of between 3,000 and 5,000 Hungarians. Ex-revolutionaries Bela Liptak, Greg Pongratz, and Imre Mecs reunite to watch Jeremy Bennett's 1986 film 'Cry Hungary' and discuss how far the ideals of the revolution were achieved.
1998
Examines why Hitler abandoned plans to invade Britain in 1940 and prepared, instead, to attack the Soviet Union. NEW SEASON 1/6.
Nine grammar school boys recall their schooldays and reflect on how that system affected their lives. With former Chancellor of the Exchequer Kenneth Clarke, film director David Puttnam, author Barry Hines, and biologist Steve Jones. 2/6.
In 1976 the chance discovery of a mummified body inside a ghost ride in Long Beach, California, unearthed a chain of events leading all the way back to 1911 Oklahoma territory and a bungled train robbery by small-time burglar Elmer McCurdy. 3/6.
Roman Emperor Trajan led two great wars against the people of Dacia. No written documentation of this campaign survives, but its story is depicted in stone on Trajan's Column, a monument that has towered above Rome for almost 2,000 years. Starting here, the film retraces the steps of Trajan's army and the course of the wars, and uncovers the military secrets of an empire founded on war. 4/6.
Las Vegas, the world's gambling capital: Over 30 million people visit each year, most of them unaware that clean-living Mormons played a major part in creating "sin city". 5/6.
As the Aborigine people fight for their land rights, Australia's historians extract revelations from the archives. Letters and diaries from the Australian frontier help unravel the true story of Australia's land war as white settlers' attempt to maintain racial purity. 6/6.
An estimated quarter-million homosexuals fought for Britain during the Second World War. At the time homosexuality was still a criminal offence, but the authorities mostly turned a blind eye during the national crisis. Tonight's programme tells the story of these forgotten fighters, revealing the extent to which homosexual activity was condoned within the ranks. NEW SEASON 1/6.
Eighty years ago the end of the First World War was celebrated as a triumph for democracy, yet some would later dismiss it as futile. The most surprising change of heart was that of wartime prime minister David Lloyd George, who led his nation to victory but condemned the sacrifice in his 1936 memoirs. Tonight's programme explores the reasons behind his apparent change of heart. 2/6.
It is accepted in American history that the Pilgrim Fathers were a group of religious separatists who founded the first permanent colony at Plymouth, Massachusetts, after sailing to the New World to avoid oppression. As tonight's programme reveals, not only were the Pilgrims not the first European immigrants to America, but their journey very nearly ended in disaster, and initial attempts to establish a colony were met with death from exposure, disease, and starvation. 3/6.
Swiss banks stand accused of collaborating with the Nazis before and during the Second World War. But 60 years ago, when US Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau began investigating this collaboration, he found the Swiss were not alone. Tonight's film looks at Allied bankers - including British and Americans - who continued to do business with the Nazis during the war and how Morgenthau's inquiry led to some of the biggest names in British and American street banking. 4/6.
Tonight's programme follows historian Andrew Roberts across the Indian subcontinent as he argues that Britain should take pride in its imperial past. His opinions are then forcefully challenged in a discussion chaired by Kirsty Wark. 5/6.
In October 1993 elite units of the US army were pinned down on the streets of Mogadishu in Somalia by forces of Mohammed Farah Aidid, whom they were trying to capture. The ensuing battle left 18 American soldiers dead and 75 wounded. Timewatch explores this peace-keeping mission gone wrong. 6/6.
1993
The extraordinary story of one of the war's most secret alliances - between the US Naval Intelligence and the Mafia. Denied for 50 years, the pact was in fact begun on the New York waterfront and sealed in the mountains of Sicily. Now the key players speak for the first time about the deal uniting US Intelligence with "Lucky" Luciano and Don Calò Vizzini - the most feared Godfathers of their day. In Palermo, Leoluca Orlando, head of Italy's newest political party and the Mafia's number one target, talks about the tragic legacy of this most unholy alliance. NEW SEASON.
Examines the origins of the Troubles in Northern Ireland and reveals startling new evidence of the Irish government's crucial role in the emergence of the Provisional IRA. With the help of interviews with Irish ex-cabinet ministers and former leading members of the Republican movement, it details Dublin's funding of the IRA, why it favoured its more radical elements, and how the Irish government secretly plotted to invade Northern Ireland in 1970. Peter Taylor reports.
During the Second World War the Nazis snatched 200,000 Aryan-looking Polish children from their mothers to replenish the "master race" back in Germany. This film tells the extraordinary story of two cousins who were stolen on the same day, 4-year-old Alojzy and 10-year-old Leon. Alojzy was adopted by a "good" Nazi family and soon forgot his Polish past, becoming a model German. When Alojzy was told at age 12 of his Polish parentage, he was horrified, believing the Poles to be Untermensch ("less than human"). It was years before he could accept his real mother and years before the Polish people forgave him his German identity.
A new profile of the man who was director of the FBI for nearly 50 years. This investigation of Hoover's private life reveals that top gangsters had evidence of his secret, homosexual love life and used it to blackmail him. Tainted by ties to organised crime, Hoover turned a blind eye to the Mafia during the vital years of its growth.
Described as "the greatest invention since the wheel" by novelist Angela Carter, the contraceptive pill played a crucial role in the sexual and social revolution of the 60s and 70s. With the help of archive footage from 'Up the Junction', 'Juliet Bravo' and 'Absolutely Fabulous', and interviews with women who talk frankly about the effect the pill has had on their sexual and working lives, Timewatch asks whether the introduction of the pill was a blessing or a burden.
A new look at the legend of William F Cody. From 1883 to 1916, millions of people throughout the world thrilled to the adventures of Buffalo Bill and his Wild West Show, where Indians danced to the rhythms of war and cowboys rode to the rescue. These vivid re-enactments of life on the plains were accepted as fact and handed down from generation to generation. Using rare film fragments and talking to those who remember Cody, Timewatch uncovers the true story behind the legend.
Fifty years ago Bomber Command launched a massive campaign against Nazi Germany - the Battle of the Ruhr. In this special edition Jonathan Dimbleby explores the military and moral issues posed by a form of warfare which, since the end of the war, has become a matter of great contention. Was Britain's area-bombing campaign a necessary strategy to defeat Hitler or was it a war crime? The film revisits the industrial city of Essen to hear from Germans who endured the unceasing night-time campaign and, in the studio, Dimbleby questions RAF veterans, victims of the bombing, military historians and those recently involved in policy-making.
On 23rd August, 1964, the last person in Britain was hanged. To those involved in it, the process of judicial execution was a 'most secret business', never to be discussed, least of all with the media. But now they have broken their silence. This unique account strips away the mystery and reveals the truth about the State's ultimate punishment.
Julius Caesar courted popular support with spectacular displays of gladiatorial combat. But new archaeological research explains what really went on inside the Roman amphitheatre, and how cruelty and violence became the corner-stone of political and social life. Drawing on contemporary accounts and featuring computer reconstructions of the Colosseum, the historical documentary series returns with a disturbing insight into the eternal appetite for violence in entertainment.
It cost more lives than the British Army lost in the entire Second World War. The Battle of Kursk, south of Moscow, was fought 50 years ago. It was the biggest armoured battle in history. If this is the case, why have few of us ever heard of it? Timewatch investigates.
On 5 May 1981, Bobby Sands died on hunger strike at the Maze prison in Northern Ireland. Nine more prisoners starved themselves to death. Using first-hand testimony, this programme tells the story.
In April, a group of 18 people met in a small town halfway between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Some were Jewish, the sons and daughters of Holocaust survivors; the rest were German, the children of Nazi war criminals. Producer Catrine Clay interviewed the participants as they faced up to a hitherto unspeakable shared history. One of them is the son of Martin Boorman, another is the son a woman found buried under a pile of corpses in Belsen.
Was Lee Harvey Oswald a mentally disturbed gunman acting alone, as the report of the Warren Commission suggested? Was he one of two gunmen, as the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded? Or was he, as he claimed, an innocent fall guy? This Timewatch investigative biography sifts through the mysteries of Oswald's life, from his troubled childhood and his Marine service to his dramatic defection to the Soviet Union in 1959 and his return to the USA.
Mao Tse-tung ruled China from 1949 until his death in 1976, and this film examines for the first time on television the true extent of his tyranny and the brutality of his regime. His rise to power, and the revolution that swept away the corruption of Chiang Kai-shek, was accompanied with optimism, but in the following 25 years he virtually destroyed China. Mao's promiscuity with young girls who "felt honoured to have sex with Mao" is revealed by his doctor Li Zhisui; and former Red Guard Zheng Yi reveals that cannibalism played a part in the Cultural Revolution. Followed by CHRISTMAS IN SARAJEVO: As we enjoy Christmas, how are the inhabitants of the Sarajevo street coping with freezing conditions, starvation and shelling? Each night over the holiday period there will be further reports.
1999
In the thirties Grey Owl tricked the establishment into believing he was the world's first eco-warrior. Archie Belaney was in fact a Briton who had emigrated to Canada at 17 and set out on a mission to fool everyone that he was an American Indian.
In 1944, American submarines attacked two Japanese boats in the South China Sea, unaware that the vessels were crammed with more than 2,000 Allied PoWs. Among more than 1,000 who survived the attack were British gunner Wilf Barnett and Australian engineer Ray Wheeler. In tonight's programme, the pair recall their harrowing ordeal and their friends who died.
A pistol shot at noon in 1889 signaled the start of the first race between thousands of desperate men and women to stake their claim on government land in north-western Oklahoma. Tonight's programme sifts through archival footage and meets descendants of those battling pioneers who still own the land today.
When English explorer Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles travelled to the heart of the Indonesian island of Central Java in the early 1800s, he found a jungle-covered hill littered with a few statues. Spurred on by stories of a lost temple, his careful excavation uncovered a massive structure in the shape of a pyramid. Now, following recent renovations, more questions about the temple's fascinating history can be answered.
Marcelle and Elise are two elderly French women who live at opposite ends of the country but shared similar experiences in the Second World War. During the German occupation of France, when their husbands deserted them, they had affairs with German soldiers. In 1944, the women suffered public humiliation as punishment for their so-called collaboration horizontale. This alternative portrait of the occupation interweaves archive footage with testimony from Marcelle and Elise, neighbours, and resistance fighters.
In 1909 the passenger liners Florida - carrying Italian immigrants to New York - and Republic - carrying American tourists to Europe - collided on a freezing north Atlantic night. The lives of over 1,500 passengers and crew were held in the balance as the ships became dependent on a new technology - the wireless. What happened played a crucial role in determining the outcome of the Titanic tragedy three years later.
Two-and-a-half million Indians fought for Britain in Second World War campaigns from Egypt to the Far East. Subject to some of the most brutal attacks on the Allies and decorated for bravery, they were forgotten by the British and disowned by India. This film recreates the era and interviews survivors of the largest volunteer army in military history.
Danish politicians sparked a storm of controversy in 1969 by voting to legalise all forms of pornography, becoming the first country to approve such a move. Why did a traditionally religious nation take this step?
The series returns. Captured German spies were turned into double agents and used by MI5 to deceive Hitler during the Second World War. Newly released MI5 documents and interviews with former members of MI5 and its top-secret interrogation centre, Camp 020, tell how the double agents played a crucial role in the Normandy landings.
The title bestowed by history on Russia's first tsar has become synonymous with tyranny and mass bloodshed, his 16th-century reign characterised by conquest and cruelty. Yet many in Russia regard him as a national hero where he is known as the Grozny or 'awesome' tsar. Timewatch examines this man of contradictions and the contrasting reactions to his reign.
Loathed by the intellectual establishment after its construction in 1889, the Eiffel Tower is now a cherished symbol of Paris. Tonight's film relates the story of the tower's construction and hears from people whose lives are linked to it.
In September 1943, 191 men from Montgomery's 8th Army - who had helped to drive Rommel's troops out of Africa - refused to take part in the Allied fight for Salerno, Italy. Interviews, reconstructions, and previously classified documents show how errors forced the soldiers into a predicament that caused their war pensions to be reduced, their medals reclaimed, and their honour questioned.
2000
In 1946 almost half-a-million German prisoners of war were still being held in Britain, with the ban on fraternisation lifted only in December. Interviews, archive footage, and private photographs shed light on the experiences of the people of Oswaldtwistle, a Lancashire town that extended the hand of friendship to its former bitter enemy at Christmas.
2002
Investigates new research on the early years of the Nazi leader, which have always been mired in controversy. Surprising new information comes to light about his first love amid recent claims that the young Hitler was homosexual. NEW SEASON 1/x.
The Iron Bridge is an icon of the Industrial Revolution - the world's first metal structure and an outstanding example of 18th-Century British technical ingenuity. Yet, incredibly, no-one knows how this vast aerial jigsaw spanning the river Severn in Shropshire was actually constructed. Timewatch sets talented young engineer Jamie Hillier the task of solving the mystery.
The sinking of HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse in December 1941 is recognised as one of Britain's greatest maritime disasters. Follow a team of military and civilian divers trying to unravel the mystery of why the ships were damaged so catastrophically and sank so fast.
In July 1950, No Gun Ri in Korea witnessed one of the largest civilian massacres in US military history. This film, based on Pulitzer Prize-winning journalism, hears from eyewitnesses on both sides of the war and uses recently declassified documents to tell the shocking story.
From the Sex Pistols' trip down the Thames to the royal bonfire in Windsor Great Park, from street parties in Fulham to village fetes in Hampshire and Worcestershire, the Queen's Silver Jubilee was commemorated in very different ways. Timewatch explores the celebrations of June 1977, including a sedan-chair race, a singing landlady, and the BBC's Nationwide Jubilee extravaganza.
Love, greed, murder, rape, and political treachery were ingredients in the doomed 16th-century relationship between Mary, Queen of Scots and her lover, the Earl of Bothwell. Dr Saul David investigates Bothwell's plot to kill Mary's husband, Lord Darnley - was the queen herself involved? Love letters of hotly contested authenticity may hold the key to explaining this extraordinary affair.
No maritime tragedy has captured the public's imagination like the sinking of the Titanic. In the week that marks the 90th anniversary of the disaster, rare archive footage, plus location filming in America, Britain, and Northern Ireland, explains why the ship's story still exerts such a fascination.
Rape, murder, pillage, and destruction ensued when, in early 1945, the Red Army avenged Germany's invasion of Russia some four years earlier. As historian Antony Beevor documents the terrifying nature and scale of the battle, this documentary reveals shocking new evidence.
Over 1,500,000 people died from starvation and disease when Germany besieged Leningrad for 900 days in one of the Second World War's darkest episodes. But even when the Soviets forced the Germans to surrender, Joseph Stalin secretly purged the city, executed the very people whose bravery had ensured its future and imprisoned their families. The documentary series draws on hitherto classified Russian documents and survivors' testimony to explain the dictator's actions.
The Little Bighorn in Montana is the site of one of the most famous battles in the history of the American West. For more than a century, flamboyant General George Armstrong Custer has been remembered for his "last stand", when he gave his life defending his troops against native American attack. But as this programme reveals, thanks to long-ignored testimony and archaeological evidence, historians are now dramatically re-evaluating the battle and the myths surrounding it that persist to this day.
Using dramatic reconstructions and filmed throughout Egypt, this documentary unravels the story of King Akhenaten, the country's heretic monarch, who 3,300 years ago introduced a new religion and demanded to be worshipped like a god. At his side was Queen Nefertiti, one of the greatest iconic figures of the ancient world. What brought this enigmatic couple's reign to a sudden and disastrous halt?
In 1849 American society was shaken by the grisly news that a prominent and wealthy Bostonian, George Parkman, had been killed and dismembered. The subsequent trial found a Harvard medical professor, John White Webster, guilty of murder, and he was sentenced to death by hanging. Historian Simon Schama investigates the case in the light of ongoing doubts about Webster's guilt, and attempts to solve the celebrated murder mystery once and for all.
1991
Historians and archaeologists have started to reassess some of the ingrained myths of American history. American Indians lived in sophisticated societies, and many more died as a result of the European settlement of North America than has so far been imagined. Andrew Sachs narrates the story of how Puritan prejudices helped to generate false views of Indians.
Every year the Sioux nation of South Dakota pays homage to more than 300 unarmed Indians killed by US troops on 29 December 1890. For the survivors and their descendants, it was the beginning of a deliberate and systematic process to destroy their way of life. One hundred years after those events, witnesses recall the terrible emotional scars caused by the US government's disastrous attempts to Europeanise the American Indian.
The assassination a year ago of Dr Gerald Bull prevented Saddam Hussein from acquiring a 'supergun'. Bull designed the world's best howitzers, many bought by Iraq, but the supergun remained his lifelong ambition. David Taylor chronicles how the Canadian scientist who plundered the lost secrets of Nazi terror weapons became the victim of his own obsession.
In 1934, Robert Robinson, a young black car worker from Detroit, was blacklisted by America after renewing a short-term contract from the Russians to work in the First State Ball Bearing Plant in Moscow. During his enforced 44 years inside the Soviet Union, Robinson was coerced to work alongside Stalin on the Moscow Soviet and ultimately to take citizenship. He finally succeeded in escaping while on a visit to Uganda. Now 84 and living in Washington, DC, Robert Robinson recounts his extraordinary life and observations of the Soviet Union during a crucial period in its history.
A death ray to combat the Antichrist; the effectiveness of astrology; the bizarre sexual practices of the Brahmins; and the impossibility of a society whose sole aim is money and gain. These are some of the ideas which the eccentric medieval scholar Roger Bacon wanted to transmit to the Pope when he wrote to him in 1268. It is a work which gives us a glimpse of the strange and compelling mental landscape of the Middle Ages.
For the last three years Palestinians have been involved in an Intifada against the Israeli occupation of their homeland; 50 years ago the British administration in Palestine was faced with an armed Arab rebellion which was suppressed with a brutality as severe as that employed by the Israelis today. The aftermath of the first Intifada is still seen by many Palestinians as contributing directly to the problems of the Middle East.
In 1945 Britain, America and the USSR were allies against Hitler; less than a year later Winston Churchill condemned Soviet expansionism. With east-west relations once again at a crossroads, Dr Christopher Andrew examines the origins of mutual distrust which was at the heart of the Cold War.
The story of how Britain abandoned Spain's democratically elected government during the Spanish Civil War of 1936 and gave clandestine support to the nationalists and General Franco. Remarkable new evidence discovered in Spanish archives shows that Britain used all its economic and diplomatic cunning to safeguard its political and commercial interests in Spain by ensuring victory for General Franco's forces. NEW SEASON.
Charles Darwin lived in fear of disgrace because of his views. He believed that humans were just a better sort of ape, that we evolved from worms. These were shattering ideas, especially from a man trained for the Church. Using new research, historians Adrian Desmond and James Moore see Darwin not as the far-sighted hero of the Beagle voyage, but as a privileged Victorian with everything to lose by publishing the heretical views he developed in survival-of-the-fittest London. Wracked with worry, Darwin was sick for most of the 20 years it took him to pluck up courage to tell the world his brutal theory of natural selection.
Was Columbus really the first to discover America? Five hundred years ago three ships sailed from Spain on the most famous voyage in history - west, west and always west across the unknown ocean. But now a modern Spanish ship's officer and a journalist have re-created that momentous voyage to test their astonishing theory that Columbus not only knew where he was going but also what he would find in the not-so-New World.
In the first of two programmes about the First World War, German writer Ludwig Harig makes a pilgrimage to the Somme, hoping to understand why his father was unable to speak about the war. Archive film and the moving testimony of witnesses evoke the realities of life behind the Front. And in France, he finds a generation still haunted by their memories.
The letters between military surgeon Georges Duhamel and his wife Blanche lay forgotten in a family attic for 75 years. Recently rediscovered, they reveal a poignant love story set against the backdrop of the First World War. In 1914, Blanche Duhamel moved to the frontline capital at Amiens, from where the lights of the trenches were visible, in order to be closer to her husband. Previously unseen film footage shows how business and pleasure continued alongside scenes of suffering as British and colonial troops came and went from the city.
In the 1830s a pioneering social investigation into child labour uncovered an appalling picture of deprivation, poverty and remorseless physical exploitation throughout Britain and sparked off a fierce debate between Victorian capitalists and reformers. Timewatch has drawn upon the testimonies of the children involved for this dramatised account.
During the Second World War, the Nazis took many art treasures for "care and safe-keeping", including the priceless collection of French Impressionist paintings built up by the industrialist Friedrich Carl Siemens in 1930s Berlin - among them works by Manet, Monet, Degas and Cezanne. At the end of the war, when the Americans and the Russians reached Berlin, these treasures went missing and have not been seen since. Timewatch goes in search of the missing treasures and unravels an extraordinary story of official looting.
1994
One In four British merchant seamen died during the Second World War. Life on board ship was dangerous, poorly paid and carried a far higher casualty rate than any of the armed services. Yet their bravery and sacrifices have barely been recognised. In this programme the merchant seamen who faced the North Atlantic storms and the deadly U-boat menace to keep Britain supplied during the war years tell their own brave and moving story.
When Grigorii Efimovich Rasputin was murdered in 1916, rumour and political expediency set to work to paint him as a villain, responsible for the downfall of the Romanov empire, an insane alcoholic capable of any sexual extravagance. This film biography reappraises the myth of the "Mad Monk", using new information as well as first-hand accounts to rescue Rasputin from unjust historians.
Since 1949, dozens of planes and up to 200 US, British and allied air-crew have been lost in an undeclared aerial espionage war between the western powers and the Soviet Union. Many of them were believed to have been captured, tortured and imprisoned by the Soviets. TIMEWATCH reveals the true extent of British and US casualties, and the extraordinary personal stories of those who took part in the secret air war.
In the decades leading up to reform of the divorce laws in 1969, thousands of women suffered the injustices of a system that treated a failed marriage as a criminal offence. Timewatch tells the stories of some of these women, and the terrible price they paid to end their marriages.
While the British government publicly operated an open-door policy to immigrants, in private it was terrified about the growing black population. Documents released under the 30-year rule and obtained by Timewatch reveal the government's true concerns were for interbreeding and therefore diluting the essential British character, rising crime, and health problems as immigrants came from colonies riddled with disease. Jonathan Dimbleby hosts a debate with representatives from the government and civil service in the 50s and 60s including Enoch Powell and John Bean, a founder member of the British National Party.
The question of how the First World War was started has been one of the great controversies of the 20th century. The flashpoint was the assassination in Sarajevo of Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Hapsburg throne. But it was the reaction to his death of a handful of imperial warlords that led to four years of fighting and the death of over eight million people. The producers of this documentary, marking the 80th anniversary of Franz Ferdinand's death, have been round Europe - from Sarajevo to St Petersburg - culling archive film from eight countries to piece together the mysteries and intrigues that led to the Great War.
An entire popular mythology has made the Spanish Inquisition a byword for human evil - sadistic, fanatical and omnipotent. But in reality it was none of these things. How did the truth come to be so distorted? Through special access to the secrets of the Inquisition's own archives, Timewatch presents a very different version of history's most notorious institution. NEW SERIES.
In the final few months of the Second World War, Hitler's revolutionary V1 and V2 missiles terrorised southern England. In London alone, 25,000 homes were levelled and 8,000 people killed as this country became the first to suffer major ballistic missile bombardment from beyond its borders. In remarkable film footage, screened for the first time, of the weapons in various stages of planning and production, Nazi archives reveal how Germany established a technological advantage that could have changed the outcome of the Second World War.
A film about the horrors of the English Civil War, using letters, diaries and memoirs of ordinary people in 17th-century England. The historical characters of Parliamentarian Lord Saye and Sele, and Royalist Sir Edmund Verney, are represented by their own descendants. Other characters - a soldier, a lawyer, and a political activist - are represented by their modern day counterparts.
The tale of one man's attempt to rewrite the history of the world by redating Egypt's greatest mystery, the Sphinx. Until now, no one can say for sure why, when or by whom the famous statue was carved. The experts think it is Egyptian and 4,500 years old, but maverick investigator John West claims to have new and conclusive evidence that the Sphinx was constructed many thousands of years before the Pharaohs.
In the centenary year of his birth, and using previously unseen home movies, this film explores the contradictions of the Ukrainian peasant's son. He contributed to the crises in Berlin and Cuba, yet he hated the arms race. As Stalin's henchman he had plenty of blood on his hands, yet he denounced his former master and ensured that the terror would never return.
Niccolo Machiavelli's name is synonymous with political intrigue, but recent analysis of his work suggests that he was a political pragmatist whose best-known book 'The Prince' is as relevant today as it was in the 16th century. Reading extracts from 'The Prince' is Ian Richardson, who played Francis Urquhart in House of Cards.
Story of the woman judged to be such a danger to public health that she was incarcerated by the city of New York for 23 years. In the winter of 1906, Dr George Soper was summoned to Oyster Bay, Long Island, to investigate a mystery. Why had typhoid fever broken out in the house of a rich New York banker? He uncovered an extraordinary trail of sickness and death left by roving Irish cook Mary Mallon. Two of the people who met Typhoid Mary in her isolation hospital speak for the first time about their mysterious friend. Her story quickly became a medical legend which still has resonance today. Faced with an AIDS epidemic, does the state have a right to lock up people for the good of society? SERIES END.
2004
Examining the UFO phenomenon in Britain since the 1950s, when alleged sightings began and Clement Attlee formed the Flying Saucer Working Party. The documentary recalls how UFOs became a symbol of the communist threat during the Cold War and - with access to previously secret files - shows how paranoia over these mysterious vessels struck at the heart of the political, military, and royal establishments. NEW SERIES 1/5.
On 30 December 1915 the Persia, a passenger ship loaded with gold bullion bound for Bombay, was torpedoed by the notorious U-boat ace Max Valentiner, killing over ## people and sending the liner to the bottom of the sea. For 88 years, the wreck's whereabouts has remained a mystery. However, salvage experts Moya and Alec Crawford believe they can locate the Persia - and her precious cargo. 2/5.
Glamour, money, sex, and danger are all synonymous with the Ferrari brand, and all were evident in the life of its creator, who died in 1988. He was prepared to manipulate, test, and shape everyone around him to achieve his dream. But he also led a secretive life - explored here. 3/5.
The well-preserved remains of an 80ft medieval merchant ship came to light in 2002 on the banks of the River Usk in Newport, Gwent. Two of the archaeologists involved - Kate Hunter and Nigel Nayling - delve into its history, uncovering secrets dating back to the Wars of the Roses. 4/5.
He's best known for having suffered bouts of mental illness and losing the American colonies, but what was King George III really like? With contributions from the Prince of Wales, Timewatch re-examines the life of Britain's longest-reigning king who, despite a painful metabolic condition, was a dutiful, plain-living monarch whose 60 years on the throne saw a flowering of the arts and sciences. 5/5.
Could the British Secret Service be linked with a murder that, for nearly 90 years, has been attributed to self-confessed culprit Prince Felix Yusupov? Acting with a group of fellow conspirators, he is said to have poisoned, shot, and finally drowned the allegedly mad monk Grigori Rasputin in the Russian city of St Petersburg in 1916. Former Scotland Yard commander and murder detective Richard Cullen travels back to the scene of the crime to re-examine the evidence. NEW SERIES 1/6.
When a handful of British volunteers were pitted against the might of the German battleship Tirpitz in 1943, official records described the raid as the most daring attack of the Second World War. Four-man X-class midget submarines battled for 11 days across arctic seas to the impregnable Norwegian fjord where Germany's biggest ship awaited them. While crew members from two of the vessels survived, mystery has always surrounded the role of the X5's crew. Now a team of divers seeks out the truth in order to reveal the story of the unsung heroes. 2/6.
Could the Black Death - killer of up to half of Europe in the 14th century - be lying dormant, ready to strike again? New evidence refutes received opinion that the cause was bubonic plague spread by rats, but was actually a deadly virus that emerged from animals and then vanished again. 3/6.
Could a set of hieroglyphs be about to change the face of Ancient Egypt for ever? Doctor Viv Davies claims that this recent discovery proves that in 800 BC, Egypt was under the rule of 'black Pharaohs' from neighbouring Nubia. As the British Museum prepares an international exhibition of additional finds that seem to corroborate his assertion, this programme accompanies Doctor Davies on his final digs to unearth more clues to the lives of these long-forgotten rulers. 4/6.
The story of the men who served on board the Tudor warship, which sank in Portsmouth harbour during a battle with French forces. Archaeological analysis of artefacts recovered from the wreck, reconstructions, and computer graphics combine to lay bare 16th-century naval life. 5/6.
A journey through modern France in the footsteps of Julius Ceasar. Reconstructions provide an insight into the climax of Caesar's bloody eight-year conflict in Gaul. The great siege at Alesia in 52 BC would seal Gaul's fate and shape the future of the Western world. 6/6.
2001
Opened 70 years ago, the Empire State Building remains one of the enduring symbols of New York City. Tonight's programme explores its colourful - and tragic - history. NEW SEASON 1/6.
Heinrich Himmler was regarded as Hitler's most loyal henchman. But in the last days of the war, his role in a plot to make peace with the west emerged: the final act of a fascinating drama of double-dealing and ideological compromise. 2/6.
Hollywood's portrayal of Thomas More, Henry VIII's Lord Chancellor, is that of a saint but in truth he was a much more complex and interesting man. This drama-documentary, presented by Professor John Guy, follows the last seven years of More's life, when England turned from being a Catholic to a Protestant nation, and assesses the part More played in his own downfall. 3/6.
Ten years into his reign, the notorious emperor Nero attempted to build the largest palace the Romans would ever see, the Domus Aurea or "Golden House". What remains of the building today lies alongside the Colosseum, barely noticed, but after 30 years of renovation it has reopened to the public. 4/6.
During the Great Depression the American public looked for real-life anti-heroes to match the gangster movies - and found one in John Dillinger. A desperado, a bank robber, a bad man no jail could hold, his reputation grew until he was named the country's first Public Enemy Number One. But J Edgar Hoover would use Dillinger's celebrity to burnish his own reputation and that of his new national police force, the FBI. 5/6.
In 1941 the first large-scale paratroop attack took place when Hitler ordered the invasion of Crete. Within a week Churchill gave the order to evacuate the island, but the two leaders' interpretations of the battle could not be more different. This film evokes the horror of the conflict, examines the war leaders' conclusions and the lessons that are still relevant to paratroopers today. 6/6.
For Japanese officer Hiroo Onoda, the Second World War continued until 1974. Now 78 years old and living in Brazil, Onoda tells how he finally accepted defeat and emerged from the Philippine jungle. NEW SEASON 1/6.
Archive footage and interviews, with among others the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, help recapture the balls, dresses, romances, and broken hearts that made up the glitz and the glamour of the debutante season - the annual upper-class marriage market. 2/6.
Rex Bloomstein returns to find out what happened to some of the prisoners featured in the award-winning documentary series he made 21 years ago. 3/6.
A documentary examining the mystery behind the demise in December 1943 of Germany's supposedly unsinkable warship, and a look at the current quest to detect the wreck by Norway's navy. 4/6.
Following guidelines described by the ancient author Vegetius nearly 2000 years ago, and supervised by historian Kate Gilliver, nine volunteers must learn from scratch to endure the harsh regime of the Roman army. 5/6.
Towards the end of the Second World War, many German towns with minimal strategic or industrial importance suffered "saturation bombing". The historical strand throws new light on the political decisions behind the Allied campaign's final stages, and tells the story of raids on two such towns. 6/6.
2005
Criminologist David Wilson conducts an investigation into the death of Russia's first dictator, who ruled the country during the 16th century. Beginning with rumours that Ivan was strangled by enemies close to him, the historical murder mystery then takes Wilson across Russia and on to the court of Queen Elizabeth I. Forensic science finally reveals the way in which Ivan was dispatched - but who was responsible?
Rome, 81 BC: Sextus Roscius is accused of patricide. If found guilty, he faces a brutal execution. Defending him is a young lawyer - Cicero. Using the actual trial record, this drama reconstructs one of the most celebrated murder trials in history. NEW SERIES 1/5.
When Stalin's death from a brain hemorrhage was announced in March 1953, the true details surrounding his death were immediately suppressed: the Soviet Communist Party's power would crumble if foul play was suspected. Acclaimed historian Simon Sebag-Montefiore plays detective, travelling to Moscow to investigate. For the first time, the content of secret KGB files is examined and the official version of Stalin's death is denounced as lies, while interviews with witnesses and experts present an array of motives and suspects. 2/5.
Her romance with a dashing fighter pilot was the stuff of fairy tales - yet the prospect of marriage between the Queen's sister and Group Captain Peter Townsend, a divorced commoner, divided opinion. In 1955 she ended two years of tabloid speculation by choosing duty over love - but was it a needless sacrifice?
It's 9am on 20 January 1607: a 12ft-high wall of water devastates the counties of the Bristol Channel, killing in the region of 2,000. The catastrophe altered the coastline for ever - yet it's been all but forgotten. Scientists Ted Bryant and Simon Haslett team up to find archaeological evidence to support their belief that the event was not a freak storm but a tsunami.
A love of bloody spectacle led the Romans to build amphitheatres all over their Empire. In Britain there were at least 25, the largest in Chester where archaeologists Tony Wilmott and Dan Garner spend three months excavating a complex site of ruins. With the help of computer animation, they bring the amphitheatre back to life.
Mount Tambora in eastern Indonesia unleashed the biggest volcanic blast ever in April 1815, a cataclysmic event that could have provoked a change in climate around the world. Thousands starved to death, lurid skies inspired the artist Turner and, out of the freakish cold, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was born. On opposite sides of the globe, two experts investigate.
In 1605 a group of angry young Catholic men decided to wipe out the monarchy and government by blowing up the Houses of Parliament. To mark the 400th anniversary of the infamous Gunpowder Plot, Timewatch attempts to establish why the conspirators had became so radicalised under the reign of King James I and assesses just how close the plotters came to achieving their aims. 1/4.
A focus on the man responsible for the deaths of almost two million Cambodians. Dramatic reconstructions, the testimony of acquaintances, and the words of the Khmer Rouge leader himself combine to chart his rise to power and his use of terror and hunger to sustain his new regime. 2/4.
On 17 September 1940 a German U-boat attacked the evacuee ship SS Benares en route to Canada, killing 258 of the 401 on board, including 80 of 100 child passengers. Sixty-five years on, those still living recall how they escaped death by hypothermia and drowning. 3/4.
Psychological analysis of the biggest madman of the 20th century. How in 1943, a team of Harvard psychologists arrived at startlingly accurate conclusions from a profile they drew up of the Führer, in a bid to predict his future conduct. 4/4.
1995
Three children of victims of the Holocaust tell the almost unbelievable stories of their parents' survival. From ghetto, through concentration camp, on to displaced persons camp, and out to a new life beyond, these stories are harrowing and inspiring in turn.
Using unique archive material from Vietnam and interviews with US agents, this programme tells the story of the friendly relations in 1945 between the United States government and Vietnamese communist leader Ho Chi Minh.
The reports of young journalists like Martin Bell, David Jessel, Brian Barron, and Julian Pettifer brought the front line of the war into the front room. This review of the BBC's coverage includes dispatches that were often moving, like those on the fate of Vietnamese children orphaned by the war, or broadcast under conditions of great personal risk, as when Julian Pettifer came under fire in Saigon in 1968.
A candid portrait of Oscar Wilde and his remarkable family, including revelations by his grandson Merlin Holland and Lady Alice Douglas, a descendant of Wilde's lover Lord Alfred Douglas.
On the 25th anniversary of the end of the 1967-70 Biafran war, Timewatch examines the doomed struggle of the Ibos, known as "the Jews of Africa", to secede from Nigeria. It was a war which touched the world as no other African war has done; a story of political manoeuvres and surprising propaganda victories. Novelist Frederick Forsyth, who lived in Biafra to cover the war, British High Commissioner Sir David Hunt, and other witnesses to the tragedy add their personal recollections.
The modern view of Vikings is that they were not very different from anyone else at the time. Timewatch travels to Iceland, the Shetlands, and Sicily to investigate the evidence and solve the riddle of Viking navigation.
Pocahontas was the first heroine of American history. Disney has released a romanticised cartoon version of her story, but the real story is far more interesting. Filmed in Virginia, Norfolk, and Kent.
The word kamikaze is synonymous with death. But not every kamikaze who vowed to die in the Second World War fulfilled his promise. Shot down on route to the target, or still waiting to be called when the war ended, there were a handful of kamikazes who survived. First-time interviews with the survivors and archive footage reveal how a nation turned suicide into strategy.
One of the most important revolutions of the 20th century has taken place not on the battlefield but in the home. In 1900, one in three working women in Britain was a domestic servant. Fifty years later, that entire way of life had disappeared, with wide-ranging implications for all women. With the help of archive film of domestic life through the century, and interviews with former domestic servants, employers, and experts, Timewatch looks at how the way we live, the design of our houses, and the role of women have all been caught up in this quiet revolution. It also asks whether the need for domestic help is now back on the agenda.
The 1930s were a golden age for Hollywood and its gangster films. But behind the screen, the Mob was turning a small-time protection racket targeting projectionists into a million-dollar shakedown. What began as extortion soon became a mutually beneficial arrangement. Timewatch went to Hollywood and Chicago to uncover the story of how movie moguls and Mobsters joined forces to keep the dream factory going, whatever the cost.
Eighty years ago, a secret new weapon was born - the tank. From its inauspicious debut on the Somme in 1916 to the massed-tank battles of Cambrai and Amiens, the British media and public were fascinated with the tank. But how did this potent propaganda weapon actually perform on the battlefield? First-hand accounts from Tank Corps veterans and rarely seen archive film trace the highs and lows of this technological novelty, piecing together the true story of the tank in the First World War.
2008
In July 2007, 61 men and women set off on an extraordinary voyage to sail the world's largest reconstructed Viking ship from Denmark to Ireland. This film follows their seven-week journey and reveals the emotional and physical challenges the crew face as they cope with having less than a square metre each in which to work, live, eat, and sleep - with no shelter from the weather. In their efforts to sail like the Vikings of old, the crew are pushed to the limit when they encounter larger waves and stronger winds than they've ever faced before. NEW SEASON 1/6.
The D-Day landing at Omaha Beach in Normandy on 6 June 1944 is widely regarded as a great victory, but the operation was almost an unimaginable disaster. Very little actually went to plan on the day - the majority of the landing craft missed their targets while US troops suffered heavy casualties. How was success secured in the face of adversity? 2/6.
In January 2007 the MSC Napoli ran aground, spilling its cargo on a Devon beach. Opportunists plundered the ship's booty while the authorities struggled to police the scene. But the looters of the Napoli were reviving a tradition that stretched back centuries: wrecking. Author Bella Bathurst goes in search of the wreckers, in an epic journey that takes her from the Isles of Scilly to the Orkney Islands, from the Middle Ages to the 21st century, and from dramatic mythology to the remarkable social history of a national crime. 3/6.
The medieval mêlée tournament was a brutal free-for-all with sharpened weapons, few rules, and one undisputed champion: William Marshal. Military historian Dr Saul David journeys into Marshal's knightly world, training as he did, trying out his weapons, and charting his epic rise from a money-grabbing tournament champion to the Regent of England who saves a kingdom on the battlefield. 4/6.
More than 3,000 years ago the rebel Pharaoh Akhenaten marched his people from Thebes to a desert plain beside the Nile. Within 20 years a huge new city was constructed dedicated to the Pharaoh's new god. This would be a place of abundance overseen by Akhenaten and his queen Nefertiti. After 25 years of digging, forensic evidence sheds new light on life and death under the rebel pharaoh. Was he really a benign leader or a ruthless despot with a keen eye for propaganda? 5/6.
Some 30,000 Brits head for Australia each year - just a fraction of the one million who gambled on the ten-pound assisted-passage scheme through the 1950s and 60s, in one of the largest planned migrations of the 20th century. One of the conditions of the deal was that they stay for a minimum of two years. This insightful film charts the lives of nine of the emigrants. 6/6.
Experts have always believed that Britain's most iconic ancient monument was designed as a burial site. Two years ago a radical new theory emerged suggesting that Stonehenge was a place of healing rather than interment - a Bronze Age equivalent of Lourdes. During the first dig at the site in 50 years, archaeologists use forensic testing to see if they can unearth enough evidence to support their theory of the healing stones. NEW SEASON 1/6.
The Asian tsunami of 2004 was a devastating natural disaster of epic proportions. Many believe a huge wave on this scale couldn't hit Europe - are they wrong? In 1607, an enormous flood engulfed Somerset and Monmouthshire claiming a huge number of lives. Professors Simon Haslett and Ted Bryant believe it was a British tsunami. Their work is controversial, with a governmental report concluding that the risk of a tsunami in Britain is small. Historian, scientist, and radio presenter Vanessa Collingridge weighs up the evidence. 2/6.
Peking, June 1900: The "Society of Right and Harmonious Fists", known by Europeans as the Boxers, entrapped more than 3,000 foreigners and Chinese Christians in the diplomatic quarter, in a bid to free China from the influence of the "Western devils". Ended by a Western relief army after 55 days, the siege helped bring down the imperial monarchy and precipitated a century of destruction, revolution, and ultimate renewal. 3/6.
How did an unassuming little girl become the most powerful woman in the world? At her birth, few believed Princess Victoria would one day be crowned Queen, but following a number of untimely deaths and the failure of her uncles to father any children, she became heir to the throne. But the battle between the princess and her mother, the Duchess of Kent, was to become one of the fiercest mother-versus-daughter struggles of all time, as the Duchess schemed to share in the power and riches that would one day be Victoria's. 4/6.
Michael Palin tells the explosive, poignant story of the First World War's final day, which marks the start of the BBC's 90 Years of Remembrance season. Taking a solemn trudge around the former battlefields of northern Europe, he recounts events leading up to that last morning and reveals how soldiers tragically continued to die for hours after the ceasefire. 6/6.
2006
Eighteen months ago, National Museum of Ireland archaeologists set out to solve a pair of ancient murder mysteries after the discovery of two bodies perfectly preserved by the peat bog in which they had been buried many centuries before. Follow the entire investigation into who these men were, when they lived - and how they died. NEW SEASON 1/6.
A deadly duel at sea - featuring one of the Second World War's great tactical bluffs - is the focus of this dramatised documentary. Commodore Henry Harwood takes on Captain Hans Langsdorff and the pride of the German navy, the Graf Spee. 2/6.
In 1789 the first all-female transport ship set sail from Britain for the struggling colony at Sydney Cove. Three of today's high-flying Australian women trace their ancestry back to the passenger list and find three feisty girls from the Georgian underworld. 3/6.
France 2003: A unit of the American military that aims to bring home all missing US servicemen sifts through the remains of two First World War soldiers. 4/6.
Over 1,300 American pilots were declared missing in action as a result of the Vietnam War. Nearly 40 years on, a special unit of the American military (JPAC) revisits the site where the fighter jet of Major Herman Knapp and his co-pilot Lt David Austin was shot down while returning from a bombing raid over Hanoi. With only 30 days allowed to excavate the site, can JPAC find the servicemen's remains and close the case? 5/6.
Reputed to have been written by Khan's adopted son, 'The Secret History of the Mongols' reveals a very different man to the butcher of legend: a devoted husband, politician, and legislator. This documentary examines the book to show how an illiterate nomad inspired his successors to conquer the largest land empire in history. 6/6.
1179: The Crusaders build a new and supposedly impregnable fortress at a crossing on the Jordan called Jacob's Ford. Within a year of its completion, the castle, which was protected by 1500 Knights Templar, was taken in a siege lasting just five days. Dr Thomas Asbridge is trying to solve the mystery of why the stronghold fell so quickly. 1/6.
When 30 decapitated Romans were found buried in York in February 2005, archaeologists were baffled by their presence. Had these bodies been beheaded because of Roman superstitions about ghosts or were they victims of a brutal act of revenge or war? Timewatch follows the investigation that has since taken place and shows how experts came to the conclusion that these men were caught in a bloody power feud to succeed Emperor Septimius Severus, who died in the city in AD 211. 2/6.
For two months in 1944, the men, women and children of Warsaw faced incredible odds in a bid to liberate the Polish city from Nazi occupation. They did so alone, even though Soviet forces arrived on the scene at the height of the conflict. Told through the personal accounts of those who took part, Timewatch investigates why the Red Army failed to join the uprising as it tells the little-known story behind one of history's greatest betrayals. 3/6.
The first ever exchange of fire between iron-clad ships took place on 9 March 1862 and changed the course of the American Civil War. But what was it like to serve inside these primitive battleships, one of which was dubbed "the iron coffin" by its fearful 19th-century crew? 4/6.
One of America's worst natural disasters struck in the early hours of 18 April 1906. This film marks the centenary of the San Francisco earthquake by revealing the true scale of the catastrophe through the words and images of those who survived. 5/6.
In 1943 the daughter of an Indian mystic was sent into France by the SOE (Churchill's secret service) to provide a vital link with Nazi-occupied Paris. Betrayed and tortured, she revealed nothing of the SOE before being executed. Awarded the George Cross for bravery, this is the story of Noor Inayat Khan. 6/6.
2007
The fascinating story of how, in February 1945, HMS Venturer hunted down and sank the U-boat U864 - a sub on a deadly secret mission. This documentary uses eyewitness accounts, archive material, and a dive into the Baltic's frozen waters to bring the full story of the boat's last hours to life. 1/6.
By 1966 the Beatles had played over 1400 gigs and sold 200 million records. At the height of their popularity, the Fab Four decided they would never tour again. Previously unseen archive footage plus interviews with those who accompanied the band on tour tell the inside story of Beatlemania, from death threats and plane crashes to diplomatic wrangles and, ultimately, disillusionment. 2/6.
A huge volcanic eruption in Iceland in 1783 spewed out poisonous gases that enveloped Europe, killing thousands of Britons. The ensuing winter was one of the worst ever and cost countless more lives. This environmental disaster is well known in Iceland, but its impact on Britain has until now been a mystery. 3/6.
A stone barrier 74-miles long, up to 15ft high, and 10ft thick: Hadrian's Wall stood as the Roman Empire's most imposing frontier for 300 years. Almost 2,000 years after it was built, archaeologists have properly excavated less than one per cent of it, but they have unearthed extraordinary findings. Julian Richards journeys back in time to unlock its secrets. 4/6.
Unlikely as it seems now, the first aerial bombardment of Britain was a Zeppelin raid on the unfortunate Norfolk town of Great Yarmouth with one fatality. The next three years saw a terror campaign that would take hundreds of lives and whose psychological effect was arguably as harrowing as the Blitz of the Second World War. 5/6.
Timewatch recalls the last days of the 600-year-old ritual of duelling, telling the story of two men who set out with pistols into the Scottish countryside on 23 August 1826 after arguing over money. 6/6.
Almost a quarter of a century ago, 50 British servicemen lost their lives at Fitzroy inlet in the Falkland Islands when two supply ships, Sir Galahad and Sir Tristram, were bombed by Argentinian planes. This one-off Timewatch special details the events that led up to the tragedy and talks to survivors about how this act of war continues to shape so many lives.
September 1970: A BOAC flight with 20 school children on board was hijacked in the name of a Palestinian guerrilla group - the first and last time a British commercial aircraft has ever been hijacked. Interviews from hostages and their hijackers help illustrate events that changed airplane travel for ever. NEW SEASON 1/5.
New evidence from the island of Crete suggests that Europe's first great civilisation, the Minoans, was destroyed by a cataclysmic natural disaster. Was the terrible fate of the Minoans the source of Plato's story of Atlantis? A team of archaeologists and scientists scour Crete for conclusive evidence. 2/5.
By 1945 Vichy France had deported 76,000 Jews to Nazi concentration camps. Told in their own words, these are the stories of four children secretly hidden by ordinary French people. Acclaimed director Jonathan Hacker awakes powerful emotions as he accompanies these survivors to the places where they once played a deadly game of hide-and-seek. 3/5.
For centuries gladiators have been seen as legendary figures of the ancient world, based largely on speculation. For five years, two forensic anthropologists have been looking at thousands of bones found in a mass grave in Turkey. Their findings prove how gladiators lived, how they fought, and the exact way they died. 4/5.
Timewatch celebrates its 25th anniversary with a return to the family that featured in its first programme, the Windsors. The coronation of Queen Elizabeth II on 2 June 1953 was the greatest spectacle ever staged in Britain. Told by the people who watched, shaped, and recorded it, this is a chance to go backstage to celebrate the "People's Coronation". 5/5.
2003
A shipwreck off Devon uncovered much more than a haul of Islamic coins and jewellery - it also revealed a forgotten time when coastal Europe lived in terror of the "Barbary pirates". The story behind the ship, and why over a million Europeans vanished into North Africa in the 250 years from 1570. First of six new installments.
For over 1,000 years, Maya kings ruled Central America's jungles. While Europe was just emerging from the Dark Ages, they were great architects, artists, and mathematicians. Then, at the height of their power, they abandoned their cities and vanished. Follow archaeologist Kathryn Reese-Taylor on an expedition to unravel the mystery.
Stephenson's Rocket is famous because of the contest it won in 1829. Few realise it triumphed by default when its two rivals had to withdraw because of faulty parts. Using replica engines, Timewatch gives the rivals a second opportunity to beat The Rocket in a full-scale restaging of the Rainhill Trials. Throughout the event, the story of the world's first intercity railway is relayed.
Ramesses III is remembered as Egypt's last great pharaoh, but the truth was very different. With the help of papyrus that was never intended to survive, the dark workings of a pharaoh in crisis are revealed. It's a story of conspiracy, vengeance, and murder that belies the positive image of his reign that Ramesses III wanted future generations to believe.
The first action involving the British in the First World War was a cavalry skirmish - German lances against British swords. Within eight weeks, it was transformed into a bloody trench stalemate that would last for three years. Why did the whole nature of warfare change so dramatically during this one brief period?
Due to be taken out of service on Friday, the world's only supersonic passenger plane is finally brought to ground. But our love affair with Concorde looks set to endure for years to come. Celebrity frequent fliers, engineers, pilots, and stewardesses tell the story of an icon.
The Battle of Rorke's Drift is routinely presented as a significant British victory of the Zulu wars. Yet on the same day, at the nearby Battle of Isandlwana, heavily equipped British troops were crushed by Zulu warriors bearing little more than spears. Battle re-enactments shot on location and dramatisation of Queen Victoria's journals explore one of the most effective cover-ups in British military history.
Freak weather conditions on 31 January 1953 led to a storm that cut a destructive swathe across the North Sea coastlines of Britain and the Netherlands. Over 2,000 people were killed and thousands left homeless in the worst national peacetime disaster of the 20th century. This documentary charts the course of events, uncovering poignant stories of heroism and suffering, and asks how this catastrophe came to be forgotten so quickly.
Circus strongman-turned-adventurer Giovanni Belzoni filled the British Museum with some of ancient Egypt's greatest treasures, including the seven-ton head of Rameses II. But as a result of a bitter feud he died in obscurity, never gaining the recognition he deserved. This docudrama advances the case for Belzoni as one of Egyptology's founding fathers.
Revealing the extraordinary detective story behind the disappearance in 1944 of highly decorated pilot Wing Commander Adrian Warburton, whose vanishing at the age of 26 sparked a 60-year mystery. In 2002 a diverse group of historians, archaeologists, and air-crash investigators began to piece together the puzzle through a series of seemingly unrelated investigations.
For 40 years the science world was hoodwinked by a forged "missing link" between ape and man. But who was responsible for the infamous "Piltdown Man" hoax? Timewatch lines up the suspects, including the relic's "discoverer" Charles Dawson, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and even staff at the Natural History Museum.
The Second World War Normandy landings helped seal Winston Churchill's reputation as a great wartime leader, but 29 years earlier his first D-Day - the disastrous assault on Gallipoli in 1915 - almost finished his military career. Underwater footage of sunken battleships in the Dardanelles and revealing evidence left on the Turkish beaches are reminders of the bitter lessons learnt prior to the successful invasion of Normandy in 1944.
In a dramatised account, Timewatch follows a German soldier caught up in the most destructive conflict in history - Hitler's invasion of Russia. We travel the route that idealistic young Nazi Henry Metelmann took and see how the choices he made meant he emerged from the war a brutalised man. Last in series, which returns in January.
Streaming availability information not available
2011
Documentary revealing the secret story of how two men hacked into Hitler's personal super-code machine. Their break turned the Battle of Kursk and powered the D-Day landings.
Lord Ashdown tells the story of the Cockleshell Heroes, who took part in one of the most audacious commando raids of World War II - to blow up enemy shipping in Bordeaux harbour.
James Holland presents an analysis of the 1943 mission to destroy German dams with a brand-new weapon - the bouncing bomb. Extraordinarily, the raid almost never happened.
Ben MacIntyre reveals the true story of Britain's most extraordinary wartime double agent, Eddie Chapman. Featuring remarkable footage of Chapman three years before his death.
2010
Historian Bettany Hughes unravels one of the most intriguing mysteries of all time. She presents a series of geological, archaeological and historical clues to show that the legend of Atlantis was inspired by a real historical event, the greatest natural disaster of the ancient world.
2009
A mile off the coast of Alderney in the Channel Islands lies a 16th-century shipwreck that could rewrite England's naval history. Here, Saul David joins a team of divers and experts as they try to raise the ship's timeworn cannons. By recasting and firing one of them, the team hopes to provide an insight into how Elizabeth I became the mother of British naval dominance. NEW SEASON 1/7.
Over 40 years after the QE2's launch, the world's longest-serving cruise ship is set to embark on her final voyage. This celebratory film hops aboard to pay tribute to the much-loved ocean liner as she glides gracefully towards retirement. As well as exclusive footage of the trip, there's a look back over the vessel's glittering history, from humble beginnings on the River Clyde to her status as a British icon. 2/7.
The tale of outlaws Bonnie and Clyde enjoyed a renaissance during the 1960s - Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway portrayed the duo on screen, while Serge Gainsbourg and Brigitte Bardot teamed up to add Gallic cool to the story. But the reality of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow's life on the run was one of violence and danger. Access to gang members' memoirs, family archives, and police records provides an epic road trip through the heart of depression-era America in search of the truth. 3/7.
In the late 18th century, Captain James Cook embarked on three great voyages that pushed the borders of the British Empire to the ends of the Earth. For many, Cook remains the greatest explorer in history; for others, he was a ruthless conqueror. Vanessa Collingridge sets out to uncover the motivations of this controversial figure. 4/7.
They rose from modest backgrounds to become two of Britain's greatest First World War fighter pilots. But as the number of Edward Mannock and James McCudden's victories grew, so did the chances of their going down in flames. This programme tells the story of their battle to survive against the odds - and of the 90-year-old mystery surrounding their deaths. 5/7.
For centuries archaeologists have been trying to work out how the ancient Egyptians raised huge stone blocks to the top of the Great Pyramid of Giza. French architect Jean-Pierre Houdin believes an internal ramp was used and that it's still inside the structure waiting to be unearthed. If he is right, it could be the greatest discovery since Tutankhamun. 6/7.
A small group of British men have some unfinished family business in Antarctica. A century ago their ancestors, under the leadership of the explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton, tried and failed to become the first men to reach the South Pole. Following in their footsteps, the team embarks on a 900-mile trek across an area so rarely visited that more men have walked on the Moon. 7/7.
Forty years ago on 1 July, Wales was celebrating one of the great royal events of the 20th century - the investiture of the Prince of Wales at Caernarfon. It was a day of pomp and pageantry, but also a day of bombs and threats to the lives of the royal family. Presenter Huw Edwards chronicles the extraordinary events of a day when police, politicians, and royalty held their collective breath as a group of nationalist extremists violently plotted against the investiture.