He continues his personal account of Britain's empire by looking at how traders, conquerors and settlers spread the British way of doing things around the world - in particular how they created a very British idea of home. He begins in India, where early traders wore Indian costume and took Indian wives. Their descendants still cherish their mixed heritage. Victorian values put a stop to that as inter racial mixing became taboo. In Singapore he visits a club where British colonials gathered together, in Canada he finds a town whose inhabitants are still fiercely proud of the traditions of their Scottish ancestors, in Kenya he meets the descendants of the first white settlers - men whose presence came to be bitterly resented as pressure for African independence grew. And he traces the story of an Indian family in Leicester whose migrations have been determined by the changing fortunes of the British empire.
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In the first programme, he asks how such a small country got such a big head, and how a tiny island in the North Atlantic came to rule over a quarter of the world's population. He travels to India, where local soldiers and local maharajahs helped a handful of British traders to take over vast areas of land. Spectacular displays of imperial power dazzled subject peoples and developed a cult of Queen Victoria as Empress, mother and virtual God. In Egypt, Jeremy explores the bit of Empire that never was, as Britain's temporary peace-keeping visit turned into a seventy year occupation. He travels to the desert where Lawrence of Arabia brought a touch of romance to the grim struggle of the First World War. As Britain came to believe it could solve the world's problems, he tells the story of the triumphant conquest of Palestine by Imperial troops - and Britain's role in a conflict that haunts the Middle East to this day.
2012 • History
He continues his personal account of Britain's empire by looking at how traders, conquerors and settlers spread the British way of doing things around the world - in particular how they created a very British idea of home. He begins in India, where early traders wore Indian costume and took Indian wives. Their descendants still cherish their mixed heritage. Victorian values put a stop to that as inter racial mixing became taboo. In Singapore he visits a club where British colonials gathered together, in Canada he finds a town whose inhabitants are still fiercely proud of the traditions of their Scottish ancestors, in Kenya he meets the descendants of the first white settlers - men whose presence came to be bitterly resented as pressure for African independence grew. And he traces the story of an Indian family in Leicester whose migrations have been determined by the changing fortunes of the British empire.
2012 • History
Jeremy Paxman continues his personal account of Britain's empire, looking at how the empire began as a pirates' treasure hunt, grew into an informal empire based on trade and developed into a global financial network. He travels from Jamaica, where sugar made plantation owners rich on the backs of African slaves, to Calcutta, where British traders became the new princes of India. Jeremy then heads to Hong Kong, where British-supplied opium threatened to turn the Chinese into a nation of drug addicts - leading to the brutal opium wars, in which Britain triumphed and took the island of Hong Kong as booty. Unfair trading helped spark the independence movement in India, led by Mahatma Gandhi; in a former cotton spinning town in Lancashire, Jeremy meets two women who remember Gandhi's extraordinary visit in 1931.
2012 • History
In the final part of his personal account of Britain's empire, Jeremy Paxman tells the extraordinary story of how a desire for conquest became a mission to improve the rest of mankind, especially in Africa, and how that mission shaded into an unquestioning belief that Britain could - and should - rule the world. In Central Africa, he travels in the footsteps of David Livingstone who, though a failure as a missionary, became a legendary figure - the patron saint of empire who started a flood of missionaries to the so-called 'Dark Continent'. In South Africa, Paxman tells the story of Cecil Rhodes, a man with a different sort of mission, who believed in the white man's right to rule the world, laying down the foundations for apartheid. The journey ends in Kenya, where conflict between white settlers and the African population brought bloodshed, torture and eventual withdrawal.
2012 • History
The Ukrainian government says that thousands of children have been taken unlawfully to Russia since the start of the war. The International Criminal Court has issued a warrant for President Putin's arrest. Now, Panorama investigates what happened to more than 40 children taken by Russian forces from a children's home in Kherson. The film-makers, working with journalists in Ukraine, uncover birth certificates, a secret adoption and a trail of evidence leading all the way to the Russian parliament.
2023 • History
Born in France, around the Commune de Paris, and in the wake of the French Revolution, anarchism rapidly disseminated its theories throughout the world. When the brand new International Workers' Association was created, anarchism even became predominant within the workers' movement. Yet early on, anarchism instilled fear in people, not only because all over the world it waged the war for an 8-hour working day, founded schools with no God and no master, and promoted free love, but also, and above all, because from time to time it was quick to use violence and to destroy authority in a highly concrete way. From Ravachol to Bonnot, from the assassination of Empress Sisi of Austria to the Battle of Stepney, from bombs to raids, anarchism has become the bete noire of heads of states and royalty who, in an attempt to protect themselves from it, created anti-terrorist laws that are still in force today.
S1E1 • No Gods, No Masters: A History of Anarchism • 2016 • History
Bettany Hughes recalls eight pivotal days that defined the Roman Empire and its establishment as the world's first superpower. She begins by exploring the day in 202BC when Rome defeated the might of Carthage under Hannibal at the Battle of Zama in modern-day Tunisia "Eight Days That Made Rome is a docu-drama that leaves behind the conventional chronologies of Rome's thousand-year history and brings razor-sharp focus to eight days that created, tested and defined its greatness. Each programme works as a stand-alone, as strong in its own right as part of a series and reveals a Rome relevant to us today, with its noblest and darkest instincts still resonating in the world around us."
S1E1 • Eight Days That Made Rome • 2017 • History
Simon Sebag Montefiore charts Rome's rise from the abandonment and neglect of the 14th century into the everlasting seat of the papacy recognised today. His story takes us through the debauchery and decadence of the Renaissance, the horrors of the Sack of Rome and the Catholic Reformation, through to the arrival of fascism and the creation of the Vatican State. By taking us inside Rome's most sensational palaces and churches and telling the stories behind some of the world's most beloved art, Sebag Montefiore's final instalment is a visual feast.
S1E3 • Rome: A History of the Eternal City • 2012 • History
An extraordinary journey tracing the footsteps of early Homo sapiens leaving Africa, reaching the easternmost end of the Eurasian continent, and developing unique culture there. The latest paleoanthropological findings and CGI created by top game creators should stun the viewers.
S1E1 • Out of the Cradle • 2019 • History
The Story of the Land Speed Record The men that have striven for it and the cars they drove. Craig Breedlove and the plane without wings and Malcolm Campbell's historic 'Bluebird'. Breathtaking shots of success and disaster in the Nevada Desert. In 1904, automotive pioneer Henry Ford set an early speed record--to increase sales. By the late '20s, British competitors Henry Seagrave and Malcolm Campbell had pushed the record to more than 200 mph...25 years later, Campbell's son Donald doubled his father's speed. Craig Breedlove's jet-powered "Spirit of America" soon rocketed to a new record--which was broken by a rocket-powered vehicle and then by one attached to a sidewinder missile. Today Breedlove is once again trying to become the world's fastest man...by driving the speed of sound. With breath-taking footage of triump and disaster this documentary tells the story of men who risked their lives to be the fastest on land. From Malcolm Campbell's 'Bluebird' to Craig Breedlove's self-designed plane without wings that broke the 600 mph barrier in 1965 it is the true story of man's obsession with speed and danger on land.
10/20 • The True Action Adventures of the Twentieth Century • 1996 • History