BBC Two takes us inside the world's biggest invention time capsule - the Science Museum vaults - and asks the nation to vote for Britain's Greatest Invention.
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After 200 years under lock and key, all the personal papers of one of our most important monarchs are for the first time seeing the light of day. In the first documentary to gain extensive access to the Royal Archives, Robert Hardman sheds fascinating new light on George III, Britain's longest reigning king. George III may be chiefly remembered for his madness, but these private documents reveal a monarch who was a political micromanager and a restless patron of science and the arts, an obsessive traveller who never left southern England yet toured the world in his mind and a man who was driven (sometimes to distraction) by his sense of duty to his family and his country. Featuring Simon Callow and Sian Thomas as the voices of King George and Queen Charlotte.
Hogwood: A Modern Horror Story takes you beyond the factory farm walls and follows an intrepid group of undercover investigators as they enter some of Britain's biggest factory farms for the very first time.
Michael Cockerell sheds new light on the tragi-comedy of the 1970s by focusing on some of its most controversial characters. With fresh filming and new interviews, along with a treasure trove of rare archive, the film presents the inside story of giant personalities who make today's public figures look sadly dull in comparison. The well-known journalist revisits some of his films on the big characters who helped shaped the 1970s in Britain. Both tragic and comic, it highlights just how much our world has changed in four decades.
Actual footage by the United States Signal Corps of the landing and attack on Arawe Beach, Cape Glouster, New Britain island in 1943 in the South Pacific theatre of World War Two, and the handicaps of the wild jungle in addition to the Japanese snipers and pill-box emplacements.
Documentary to mark the WI's centenary. Lucy Worsley goes beyond the stereotypes of jam and Jerusalem to reveal the surprisingly radical side of this Great British institution.
A documentary analyzing the furore which so-called "video nasties" caused in Britain during the 1980s.
Beautifully made and historically important pipe organs are being scrapped in their hundreds. Once at the centre of British culture pipe organs are now neglected and unloved.
Parfenov's documentary is about a brilliant scientist and engineer, born in Russia, but only known on the other side of the ocean. The invention of modern television changed the history of mankind. The invention has an author, who is almost unknown in his homeland. Vladimir Zworykin, born in Murom, a Russian American, was the person who created distant wireless transmission of images.
In 1963 in the countryside in England, fifteen men pulled off 'The Great Train Robbery' netting today's equivalent of $85million. This incredible film features Gordon Goody, one of the instigators of the crime, for the first time ever, revealing the identity of the missing mastermind behind Britain's most famous heist- the elusive and mysterious 'Ulsterman'.
Documentary looking back at a Britain during the darkest days of WWII using stunning new archived footage and interviews with people who lived through it.
Chemical engineer and inventor Maria Telkes worked for nearly 50 years to harness the power of the sun, designing and building the world's first successful solar-heated modern residence and identifying a new chemical that could store solar heat like a battery. Telkes was undercut and thwarted by her (male) boss and colleagues at MIT, but she persevered. Upon her death in 1995 Telkes held more than 20 patents, and now she is recognized as a visionary pioneer in the field of sustainable energy whose work continues to shape how we power our lives today.
As good as any Dickens novel, this is the triumphant and tragic story of the greatest architectural dynasty of the 19th century. Dan Cruickshank charts the rise of Sir George Gilbert Scott to the very heights of success, the fall of his son George Junior and the rise again of his grandson Giles. It is a story of architects bent on a mission to rebuild Britain. From the Romantic heights of the Midland Hotel at St Pancras station to the modern image of Bankside power station (now Tate Modern), this is the story of a family that shaped the Victorian age and left a giant legacy.
This John Nesbitt's Passing Parade short tells the story of Alfred Nobel, who invented dynamite, and later established the Nobel Prize.
Shown as part of the BBC's Modern Times series. Think of England shows Parr talking to the many people he encountered in the summer of 1999. He innocently asked people what it took to be English, and this simple question provided many revealing answers.
Featuring footage spanning from 1901 to 1985, this little-seen footage has been found from all across the UK. This programme allows an exploration into stories of migration, community and also the struggle against inequality, while also providing the opportunity to celebrate black British culture and life on screen. Films in the programme include: Miners Leaving Pendlebury Colliery (1901), Hull Fair (1902), For the Wounded (1915), From Trinidad to Serve the Empire (1916), Hello! West Indies (1943), Mining Review 2nd Year No. 11 (1949), To the Four Corners (1957), Black Special Constable (1964), Black Police Officers (1966), Cold Railway Workers (1964), Nigerian Wedding in Cornwall (1964), Coloured School Leavers (1965), London Line No. 373 (1971), African Student Families (1975), Liverpool 8 (1972), Blood Ah Go Run (1982), The Jah People (1981) and Grove Carnival (1981)
At the demise of empire, City of London financial interests created a web of offshore secrecy jurisdictions that captured wealth from across the globe and hid it behind obscure financial structures in a web of offshore islands. Today, up to half of global offshore wealth may be hidden in British offshore jurisdictions and Britain and its offshore jurisdictions are the largest global players in the world of international finance. How did this come about, and what impact does it have on the world today? This is what the Spider's Web sets out to investigate.
Twenty-six-year-old Shani Warren was found drowned in Taplow Lake, Buckinghamshire, with her hands tied and feet bound together in 1987. Revealing how it took a forensic breakthrough to solve the 35-year mystery of the death of The Lady in the Lake.
A look at Britain's beloved canal network via a fact-filled cruise along the first superhighways of the Industrial Revolution. In the age before mechanisation, a frenzy of canal-building saw a new army of workers carve out the British landscape, digging out hundreds of miles of waterways using picks, shovels and muscle.
Trees talk, know family ties and care for their young? Is this too fantastic to be true? German forester Peter Wohlleben and scientist Suzanne Simard have been observing and investigating the communication between trees over decades. And their findings are most astounding.
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