The joke in our household is that if you mention some historical event of, say, the Anglo-Saxons or the Vikings or some such then J will say “oh that’s practically modern!” because he’s used to thinking of the Ptolemaic dynasty of Pharaohs (who stop with the famous Cleopatra) as being the “most recent”. Skews your perspective a bit.
If J’s thing is Ancient Egypt, then mine is Tudor England (spreading outwards round the world from there, and back and forth in time). And the BBC did a Tudor season relatively recently, so there were several programmes to my tastes (although I don’t think we ended up watching all of them). Again I drew the cut-off between Ancient and Modern as the fall of Rome, and some serieses straddle that boundary so have appeared on both lists. I’ve shunted some of the truly modern stuff (like Dan Snow’s recent histories of Syria and the Congo) into the next list as I think of them more as current affairs, somewhat arbitrarily!
This is still a pretty long list – 42 programmes or serieses in all. Picking high and low points is hard – there’s not a stand out “why did we ever watch that” like there was in the ancient history list, but I think the weakest was Janina Ramirez’s programme about the Viking sagas. In part because I expect better from her programmes, and from that subject. Games Britannia also deserves a mention, the one episode we watched was OK but I was left with the impression that the later episodes would’ve had me rolling my eyes somewhat.
Best is incredibly difficult to pick, even picking a shortlist of half a dozen seems difficult! But I think the one I shall pick out specially is The Last Days of Anne Boleyn. It stands out not only because it’s obviously slap bang in the middle of my interests but also because it’s a slightly different format to the standard sort of history programme. It didn’t just present one interpretation and call that the truth, instead there were seven different historians or novelists who talked about four different theories about what actually happened. So we got to see more of the complexity of the issue.
- A303: Highway to the Sun. Tom Fort drives along the A303 & talks about the history of the area.
- Ancient Apocalype. Series about how various ancient civilisations met their doom.
- Archaeology: A Secret History. Richard Miles presenting a series about the history of archaeology.
- The Bridges that Built London with Dan Cruickshank – one off programme telling the history of London’s bridges across the Thames. Interesting, but got a bit woo-woo at times towards the end.
- Chivalry & Betrayal: The Hundred Years War. Programme about the Hundred Years War between England & France, presented by Janina Ramirez.
- The Dark Ages: An Age of Light. Programme about the art of the Early Medieval period, presented by Waldemar Januszczak.
- David Starkey’s Music and Monarchy. David Starkey tells us all about the influence the English monarchy has had on English music starting from Henry V through to the present day.
- Fit to Rule. Series about the British monarchs through the lens of their medical history from Henry VIII to Edward VII, presented by Lucy Worsley.
- Games Britannia. History of games in Britain, we only watched the first episode.
- Henry VII: The Winter King. Programme presented by Thomas Penn about the reign of Henry VII.
- Henry VIII’s Enforcer: The Rise and Fall of Thomas Cromwell. Documentary about the life of Thomas Cromwell, presented by Diarmaid MacCulloch. Part of the BBC’s Tudor Court Season.
- Howard Goodall’s Story of Music. History of Western music presented by Howard Goodall.
- A Hundred Years of Us. Aired to coincide with the 2011 census this is a look at how British culture has changed over the last hundred years.
- In Search of Medieval Britain. Alixe Bovey following a medieval map of Britain (link goes to only episode watched in this year).
- John Sergeant on Tracks of Empire. John Sergeant travels across India on the railway, looking at the history of India, the British Empire and the railways.
- King Alfred & the Anglo-Saxons. Series presented by Michael Wood about King Alfred & his successors.
- The King’s War on Witches: Revealed. Rather good Channel 5 documentary about James VI & I’s witchhunts.
- The Last Days of Anne Boleyn. Part of the BBC’s Tudor Court Season, a programme where seven experts discuss what is known and what is conjectured about the fall of Anne Boleyn.
- London: A Tale of Two Cities with Dan Cruickshank. Programme about the development of London in the 17th Century, presented by Dan Cruickshank.
- Lost Kingdoms of South America. The history & archaeology of four cultures in South America.
- The Making of King Arthur. Simon Armitage looking at the development of the King Arthur myth in Norman times.
- Michael Wood on Beowulf. Programme about the epic poem Beowulf, presented by Michael Wood.
- The Most Dangerous Man in Tudor England. Biography of William Tynedale (who translated the Bible into English & was executed for doing it) presented by Melyvn Bragg.
- Nelson’s Caribbean Hell-hole: An Eighteenth Century Navy Graveyard Uncovered. Sam Willis follows an archaeological excavation in Antigua, uncovering 18th Century Navy burials.
- The Ottomans: Europe’s Muslim Emperors. Series about the history of the Ottoman Empire presented by Rageh Omaar.
- Richard III: The King in the Car Park. Documentary following the excavation & analysis of Richard III’s remains.
- The Road to El Alamein: Churchill’s Desert Campaign. Programme presented by Jonathan Dimbleby about the events leading up to the pivotal World War II battle at El Alamein in late 1942.
- Rome: A History of the Eternal City. History of Rome from the perspective of religion, presented by Simon Sebag Montefiore.
- The Secret History of Genghis Khan. Programme about what a history written by Genghis Khan’s adopted son tells us about him.
- Secrets of the Arabian Nights. Richard E. Grant talks about the history & stories of the Arabian Nights tales.
- Secrets of the Saxon Gold. Time Team Special about the Staffordshire hoard.
- She Wolves: England’s Early Queens. Series about Queens of England in medieval & Tudor times, presented by Helen Castor.
- The Story of the Jews. Series presented by Simon Schama about the history of the Jews.
- Stories of the Dark Earth: Meet the Ancestors Revisted. Julian Richards returns to digs that were originally filmed for Meet the Ancestors more than a decade ago & sees what new things have been learnt.
- Time Team: The Hollow Way. The Time Team crew excavate a deserted medieval village at Ulnaby, County Durham.
- Treasures of the Louvre. One-off documentary about the history of the Louvre and of France, and a tour of the highlights of the museum’s collection, presented by Andrew Hussey.
- The Tube: An Underground History. Programme made to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the London Underground.
- A Tudor Feast – one-off programme about preparing a Tudor feast using authentic recipes and techniques.
- The Viking Sagas. Rather weak programme on the Viking sagas presented by Janina Ramirez.
- Wartime Farm. What life was like for farmers during World War II, part re-enactment.
- When Coal Was King. Timeshift episode about the culture of coal miners in the 1940s & 50s. Not a full post.
- Why the Industrial Revolution Happened Here. Cut down version of a programme about what made Britain such fertile ground for the Industrial Revolution.