Britain's Most Historic Towns

Michael Wood argues that the most important and influential British kings were a father, son and grandson who lived over a thousand years ago during the age of the Vikings.

On the edge of London stands Hampton Court, one of Britain's biggest palaces and most popular tourist spots, attracting almost a million visitors every year. Spanning 750 acres of grounds, it boasts 1,300 rooms and 23 courtyards...along with a host of secrets and historic stories. This two-part special provides an exclusive and intimate look at life inside the court today for the people keeping Henry VIII's world alive in the modern age, and also explores what life was like in the palace where the private world of the Tudors began.

Jonathan Meades gives a personal perspective of British history.

In four chapters, largely based on and illustrated with archaeological finds and sites, Neil Oliver explains how, as far as is known, the Iron Age Celtic tribes known as the Ancient Britains evolved and entered European civilization. Their internecine tribal phase was warlike and partitioned. Overseas contacts, especially metal trade, brought wealth and progress. Ultimately, it attracted the superior Roman empire, which would conquer and pacify Britain into a province, like Gaul shortly before, but Caesar's invasion wasn't the definitive annexation yet, that was left to emperor Claudius; even afterward some Celtic traits and even rebellions remained.

In this four-part documentary series, leading Hollywood actors undertake a fascinating journey into their family's past by re-tracing the footsteps of their grandparents during World War Two. We follow the moving, personal stories of Helena Bonham Carter, Mark Rylance, Kristin Scott Thomas, and Carey Mulligan as they travel to historic locations, from the beaches of Dunkirk to prisoner of war camps in Asia, to learn about the war their grandparents experienced. All of the actors have unanswered questions about the scars war left on their grandparents, and in each episode one of the actors explore how six years changed the lives of their family and the world forever while learning about the life and death decisions that their grandparents faced.

Historian Lucy Worsley presents a series marking the 200th anniversary of one of the most explosive and creative decades in British history, the Regency.

Presented by Dr Clare Jackson of Cambridge University, this new three-part series argues that the Stuarts, more than any other, were Britain's defining royal family.

Dr Clare Jackson tells the story of The Stuarts in Exile and sheds new light on the political, military and cultural threat the Jacobite's posed to the embryonic British state. Although the '15' ultimately failed, it crystallised the stark choice facing those living in early 18th-century Britain. Are you for the Stuarts or are you for Hanoverian's?

Part documentary, part historical drama, this series follows the fortunes of the different members of the Boleyn family, ultimately made notorious for daughter Anne’s marriage to Henry VIII and execution.

Dr Alice Roberts follows a year of British archaeology, joining up the results of digs and investigations the length of the country.

Through this three part series Art Historian Dr Janina Ramirez tells the story of the Medieval monarchy as preserved through stunning illuminated manuscripts from the British Library's Royal Manuscripts collection.

Andrew Marr's The Making of Modern Britain is a 2009 BBC documentary television series presented by Andrew Marr that covers the period of British history from the death of Queen Victoria to the end of the Second World War. It was a follow-up to his 2007 series Andrew Marr's History of Modern Britain.