The Secret History of Writing • 2020

59:09

Tracing the origins of Egypt's unique visual style, he treks across the Sahara and travels the Nile to find the rarely-seen art of its earliest peoples. Exploring how this civilisation's art reflected its religion, he looks anew at the Great Pyramid, and the statuary and painting of the Old Kingdom. Sooke is amazed by the technical prowess of ancient artists whose skills confound contemporary craftsmen.

S1E1 • Treasures of Ancient Egypt • 2014 • History

47:01

The story of Hitler's lightning invasion of France and its rapid collapse, of the evacuation from Dunkirk, and of the summer of 1940 when Britain fought on alone. In new digital colour, this episode shows the Battle of Britain and the Blitz.

S1E2 • Apocalypse: The Second World War • 2009 • History

44:11

France is in chaos. The French people take to the roads, trying to escape. The government signs an armistice as Germans take over half the country. May 1940. The French and the English retreat desperately. In Dunkirk, there are more than 300,000 troops waiting to be transhipped in hundreds of ships, which perform a heroic back and forth trips to England. Thousands of men perish at the sea, struck down by German bombs. Celebrated as heroes throughout Britain, the soldiers of Dunkirk were saved by the sacrifice of French soldiers. To take advantage of the booty, Mussolini's Italy attacked in turn in the Alps. Paris is emptying of millions of refugees who experience a desperate exodus on the roads, and the government surrender. The entry of two major figures does not change anything: on June 17 Petain was appointed head of state and calls for an end to the fight, when de Gaulle urges, on June 18, to resist. But the armistice was signed, in a ceremony desired by Hitler to reverse the humiliation of the Germans in 1918. Half occupied by the Germans, the other subject to the Vichy regime, France offered its coasts and airfields to the Germans who want to invade England. Will she be able to survive this Apocalypse better than France?

S1E2 • Apocalypse: Hitler Takes on the West • 2020 • History

58:59

Neil reveals how the clans plotted against Mary Stewart, Queen of Scots, ultimately leading to the beheading of the most charismatic queen in Scottish history. The tale turns on a brother's plot to overthrow his sister in a ruthless bid for power. James Stewart, Earl of Moray, uses clan power to first control and then rid Scotland of his sister Mary. As she battles conspiracies, plots and counterplots, Mary is trapped in the cruel and tumultuous world of clan blood feuds. After they murder her husband Lord Darnley and Mary flees into the arms of the Earl of Bothwell, the most ruthless of Scotland's clan chiefs, civil war breaks out. Mary escapes to England, never to return again.

S1E3 • Rise of the Clans • 2018 • History

58:53

Dr Helen Castor explores the life - and death - of Joan of Arc. Joan was an extraordinary figure - a female warrior in an age that believed women couldn't fight, let alone lead an army. But Joan was driven by faith, and today more than ever we are acutely aware of the power of faith to drive actions for good or ill. Since her death, Joan has become an icon for almost everyone - the left and the right, Catholics and Protestants, traditionalists and feminists. But where in all of this is the real Joan - the experiences of a teenage peasant girl who achieved the seemingly impossible? Through an astonishing manuscript, we can hear Joan's own words at her trial, and as Helen unpicks Joan's story and places her back in the world that she inhabited, the real human Joan emerges.

2015 • History

101:57

This program contends that the popular perception of the Muslim occupation of Spain toward the end of the first millennium is largely wrong. The eighth century Muslim invasion of the Iberian Pennisula was largely welcomed by the locals and rejuvenated the area with advanced technology, agriculture and a construction boom. This program describes these innovations. All this changed in the eleventh century when the regional government fragmented. That set the stage for the Christian invasion and the Islamic fundamentalist resistance leading to more of a civil war than a holy war that decimated the region with corruption, destruction and exile.

2005 • History