Movies: British history

Was the legendary playwright William Shakespeare really the author of his acclaimed plays? Or was he just a straw man working for a secret society? Norwegian organist and researcher Petter Amundsen claims to have a solid theory on the subject. Shakes...

Members of three Commonwealth armies, an Aussie, a Canadian, and a New Zealander meet actor Leslie Howard who buys them a beer and makes them understand why they're fighting....

To mark the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, Janina Ramirez tells the story of three books that defined this radical religious revolution in England....

Today, few people's clothes attract as much attention as the royal family, but this is not a modern-day paparazzi-inspired obsession. Historian Dr. Lucy Worsley, Chief Curator at Historic Royal Palaces, reveals that it has always been this way. Explo...

In this special follow-up programme, the only television team with access to the dig and the scientific tests on the skeleton uses unseen footage and conducts two days of additional interviews to tell this extraordinary forensic detective story in ev...

A documentary on the surviving syncretic pagan midwinter customs of the British Isles, focusing on nine ritual celebrations ranging from the Moray Firth in the north, the Somerset Levels in the south, Humberside in the east, and County Kerry in the w...

...

At the end of the 18th century, hundreds of Indian sailors, known as lascars, worked amongst European settlers in Aotearoa New Zealand - often under the gruesome working conditions of seal hunting gangs. The story follows a lascar, Dasa, who has bee...

Mary Berry visits Harewood House in Yorkshire as it prepares for Christmas on a grand scale, and demonstrates how to make delicious recipes inspired by festive dishes of the past....

Built in 1923, the Flying Scotsman was the first steam locomotive to run at 100 miles an hour and to star in its own feature film. This is the untold story of the iconic Flying Scotsman-the very best in the engineering of its time....

The painful story of Ireland and the Irish people, who struggled for centuries to free themselves from the tyrannical clutches of the British Empire; an epic tale of poverty, hunger, despair, violence and unyielding courage....

Chief curator of historic royal palaces Lucy Worsley provides an exclusive tour of London’s most extraordinary palaces: the Tower of London, Hampton Court, and Kensington Palace....

Broadcaster Gyles Brandreth travels to the West Yorkshire moors, known as "Bronte Country". It is an area that shaped the Bronte sisters, and they have, in turn, helped shape it. He explores some of the influences on their writing....

Between 1968 and 1970, J M Goodger, a lecturer at the University of Salford, made a film record of the living conditions in the slums of Ordsall, Salford, which were then in the process of being demolished. Under the title 'The Changing face of Salfo...

Caroline Sturdy Colls, a world leader in the forensic investigation of Nazi crime scenes, is chasing clues to an unsolved case: a concentration camp that existed on the British island of Alderney. Witnesses and survivors claimed that thousands died t...

David Olusoga opens secret government files to show how the Windrush scandal and the ‘hostile environment’ for black British immigrants has been 70 years in the making....

Mary Beard is on a mission to uncover the real Julius Caesar, and to challenge public perception, exploring Caesar's surprising legacy....

...

Clarissa Dickson Wright tracks down Britain's oldest known cookbook, The Forme of Cury. This 700-year-old scroll was written during the reign of King Richard II from recipes created by the king's master chefs. How did this ancient manuscript influenc...

Historian Lucy Worsley restages the 1840 wedding of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Aided by a team of experts, Worsley recreates the most important elements of the ceremony and the celebrations, scouring history books, archives, newspapers and Que...