The latest national and international news, exploring the day's events from a global perspective.
Documentary series which looks at the different birds that live in the UK and at the stories they can tell us about the British people over time. Top of our affections are garden birds, including the nation's favourite, the robin. Yet this relationship is a surprisingly modern one, the result of some of the most dramatic changes in British society in the last 150 years.
A husband and wife and their best friend who share a passion for managing online football teams take on three friends from London with a collective love of all things historical. They compete to draw together the connections between things which, at first glance, seem utterly random, from Bob Hope impersonator, to physician to inject vitamin B12, to 20 white kittens, to M&Ms.
Emotive documentary portrait of a sporting legend who lived and died during a time when sex was safe and motor racing was dangerous!
Graham Hill was an eccentric, charismatic Englishman from a bygone era of sporting endeavour. With great determination he won the Formula 1 World Championship, the Indy 500 and the Le Mans 24 hours race, thereby achieving the 'triple crown' of motor racing - a unique feat that remains unmatched to this day. Graham also won the glamorous Monaco Grand Prix five times during an era when drivers routinely met violent death. Away from the circuit, he was a raconteur of hilarious proportions, a dashing figure with a keen eye for the ladies. He was an irrepressible free spirit who simply didn't know when to quit.
Graham's illustrious racing career spanned three decades, which at its height saw him routinely slugging it out with fellow F1 champions Jim Clark and Jackie Stewart. Close friends yet intense rivals on the track, they were the 'Three Musketeers' during a golden era of motor racing. But what was the truth behind Graham's popular public image? 30 years on from his death, his family, close friends and former colleagues paint an intimate, revealing and entertaining portrait of a sporting hero tragically killed in a plane crash in 1975.
Sarah and Jan are convinced that there is a link between Nanna's murder and an unsolved case from 15 years earlier. It is now a race against time to nail the evidence. Pernille and Theis are puzzled as they realise the case is far from closed. Troels is counting on winning the election and is willing to put everything on the line.
Drama-documentary in which art critic Andrew Graham-Dixon tells the story of the greatest cultural controversy of the last 200 years. He explores the history of the Elgin Marbles, tells the dramatic story of their removal from Athens and cites the arguments for and against their return to Greece.
TUESDAY 13 SEPTEMBER 2011
TUE 19:00 World News Today (b014jcyp)
The latest national and international news, exploring the day's events from a global perspective.
TUE 19:30 Hidden Paintings (b012722l)
West
Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen uncovers a hidden painting with a remarkable story.
The Badminton Game, by the Wiltshire artist David Inshaw, was once chosen by a prime minister to hang on the walls of 10 Downing Street. But now it languishes in a storage vault, hidden away from the public who helped to pay for it.
The painting is just one of thousands that are publicly owned but not on display. Now, the BBC is helping to digitise the UK's vast collection of paintings, making the artwork available to everyone.
TUE 20:00 A Renaissance Education: The Schooling of Thomas More's Daughter (b0135mv0)
The intellectual forces at work in the Tudor era ensured it was a pivotal period for children's education. Historian Dr Helen Castor reveals how the life and education of Margaret More, daughter of Thomas More, tell a story of the transforming power of knowledge. As a child in Tudor England, and educated to an exceptionally high level, Margaret embodies the intellectual spirit of the age - an era which embraced humanism, the birth of the Church of England and the English Renaissance. This film reveals what a revolutionary intellectual spirit Margaret More was and how the ideas that shaped her education helped change the cultural life of England forever.
TUE 21:00 Elegance and Decadence: The Age of the Regency (b014jbyr)
The Many and the Few - A Divided Decade
In this final programme, Lucy Worsley examines the backlash against the excesses of the Prince Regent and the elite world he represented, as George finds himself in a Britain on the brink of revolution in the closing years of his Regency. This was a moment when the power of the word - in radical writings and speeches - briefly challenged the power of the sword. Percy Bysshe Shelley, and future wife Mary, openly supported revolutionary ideas and Mary's famous novel Frankenstein can be seen as a vehicle for the fears surrounding the creation of an uncontrollable new industrial world.
Lucy reveals that even Lord Byron was not always the snake-hipped seducer of legend. He and fellow writers and poets were active supporters of the grass roots movement for reform. Byron made an impassioned speech in Parliament in defence of Luddite machine-breakers. New industrial cities such as Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester were being established yet, under the archaic electoral system of the day, not one returned an MP. The vote was in fact limited to a small land-owning class. The demands for democratic change were to end in tragedy in Manchester with a bloody massacre of unarmed men, women and children at St Peter's Fields - an event dubbed, with bitter reference to the triumph of Waterloo, as 'Peterloo'.
Lucy also describes the technological changes that transformed the Regency landscape and experiences - she enjoys the thrills of a mail coach ride, complete with armed guard; learns how to operate the world's oldest steam engine; and partakes in the Regency craze of balloon flight.
The programme ends with the Prince Regent finally being crowned as George IV at Westminster Abbey in 1821 while his estranged wife Caroline batters the main doors demanding entry. A colourful ending to a decade of elegance and extravagance.
TUE 22:00 The Killing (b00zth0c)
Series 1
Episode 18
Sarah and Jan check out an abandoned warehouse to look for evidence, but something unexpected happens. Meanwhile, a prime suspect disappears. Troels is struggling to get back into the political arena, but is contacted by a journalist whose attempts to dig up dirt are not entirely unsuccessful. Theis and Pernille are trying to move on and prepare to take their sons to see the new house.
TUE 23:00 The Romantics (b007906y)
Eternity
Byron, Keats and Shelley lived short lives, but the radical way they lived them would change the world. At 19, Shelley wrote The Necessity of Atheism - it was banned and burned, but it freed the Romantics from religion. Through their search for meaning in a world without God, they pioneered the notions of free love, celebrity and secular idolatry that are at the centre of modern Western culture.
For them poetry became the new religion, a way of reaching eternity. Their words are brought to life by Nicholas Shaw, Blake Ritson and Joseph Millson.
TUE 00:00 Elegance and Decadence: The Age of the Regency (b014jbyr)
[Repeat of broadcast at
21:00 today]
TUE 01:00 Birth of the British Novel (b00ydj1p)
Author Henry Hitchings explores the lives and works of Britain's radical and pioneering 18th-century novelists who, in just 80 years, established all the literary genres we recognise today. It was a golden age of creativity led by Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift, Henry Fielding, Laurence Sterne, Fanny Burney and William Godwin, amongst others. Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver's Travels, Tom Jones and Tristram Shandy are novels that still sparkle with audacity and innovation.
On his journey through 18th-century fiction, Hitchings reveals how the novel was more than mere entertainment, it was also a subversive hand grenade that would change British society for the better. He travels from the homes of Britain's great and good to its lowliest prisons, meeting contemporary writers like Martin Amis, Will Self, Tom McCarthy and Jenny Uglow on the way.
Although 18th-century novels are woefully neglected today compared to those of the following two centuries, Hitchings shows how the best of them can offer as much pleasure to the reader as any modern classic.
TUE 02:00 A Poet's Guide to Britain (b00ktrbw)
Lynette Roberts
Poet and author Owen Sheers presents a series in which he explores six great works of poetry set in the British landscape. Each poem explores a sense of place and identity across Britain and opens the doors to captivating stories about the places and the lives of the poets themselves.
Lynette Roberts is not a famous poet. She only published one full collection of poems and her work has been almost forgotten, but her vivid, modern, hot-blooded writing about a Welsh village and her time there during the Second World War reveals an extraordinary woman and a brilliant poetic voice who Robert Graves described in the 1940s as 'one of the few true poets now writing'.
Roberts was brought up in a wealthy family in Argentina but married a writer from Carmarthenshire in 1939 at the outbreak of war and spent the next nine years living in poverty in a Welsh-speaking village. She involved herself in every aspect of village life and despite being accused of being a spy found a fierce passion for the local people and the landscape.
Sheers visits the unassuming village of Llanybri where she lived and is now buried, and uncovers the moving story behind her poem called simply Poem from Llanybri, an invitation to the young soldier poet Alun Lewis to pay her a visit. He talks to locals who remember her and admire her work, and to the National Poet of Wales, Gillian Clarke.
TUE 02:30 Hidden Paintings (b012722l)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:30 today]
TUE 03:00 Elegance and Decadence: The Age of the Regency (b014jbyr)
[Repeat of broadcast at
21:00 today]
WEDNESDAY 14 SEPTEMBER 2011
WED 19:00 World News Today (b014jdfj)
The latest national and international news, exploring the day's events from a global perspective.
WED 19:30 Chemistry: A Volatile History (b00q2mk5)
Discovering the Elements
The explosive story of chemistry is the story of the building blocks that make up our entire world - the elements. From fiery phosphorous to the pure untarnished lustre of gold and the dazzle of violent, violet potassium, everything is made of elements - the earth we walk on, the air we breathe, even us. Yet for centuries this world was largely unknown, and completely misunderstood.
In this three-part series, professor of theoretical physics Jim Al-Khalili traces the extraordinary story of how the elements were discovered and mapped. He follows in the footsteps of the pioneers who cracked their secrets and created a new science, propelling us into the modern age.
Just 92 elements made up the world, but the belief that there were only four - earth, fire, air and water - persisted until the 19th century. Professor Al-Khalili retraces the footsteps of the alchemists who first began to question the notion of the elements in their search for the secret of everlasting life.
He reveals the red herrings and rivalries which dogged scientific progress, and explores how new approaches to splitting matter brought us both remarkable elements and the new science of chemistry.
WED 20:30 Storyville (b014jdfl)
Law of the Dragon
Love Thy Neighbour
Series which follows the remarkable work of Judge Chen and his travelling court. He journeys across the Xuan'en region to ensure that justice is served, even in the remotest corners of China. The hearings take place wherever he hangs the national emblem, be it nailed up in a barn or a field. In this episode, neighbours fight over the ownership of a vital bridge in the village.
WED 21:00 Dinosaurs, Myths and Monsters (b014lsgb)
From dinosaurs to mammoths, when our ancient ancestors encountered the fossil bones of extinct prehistoric creatures, what did they think they were? Just like us, ancient peoples were fascinated by the giant bones they found in the ground.
In an epic story that takes us from Ancient Greece to the American Wild West, historian Tom Holland goes on a journey of discovery to explore the fascinating ways in which our ancestors sought to explain the remains of dinosaurs and other giant prehistoric creatures, and how bones and fossils have shaped and affected human culture.
In Classical Greece, petrified bones were exhibited in temples as the remains of a long-lost race of colossal heroes. Chinese tales of dragons may well have had their origins in the great fossil beds of the Gobi desert. In the Middle Ages, Christians believed that mysterious bones found in rock were the remains of giants drowned in Noah's Flood.
But far from always being wrong, Tom learns that ancient explanations and myths about large fossilsed bones often contained remarkable paleontological insights long before modern science explained the truth about dinosaurs. Tom encounters a medieval sculpture that is the first known reconstruction of a monster from a fossil, and learns about the Native Americans stories, told for generations, which contained clues that led bone hunters to some of the greatest dinosaur finds of the nineteenth century.
This documentary is an alternative history of dinosaurs - the neglected story of how mythic imagination and scientific inquiry have met over millennia to give meaning to the dry bones of prehistory. Today, as our interest in dinosaurs and prehistoric creatures continues unabated, it turns out we are not so far away from the awe and curiosity of our ancient ancestors.
WED 22:00 The Killing (b00zwlfg)
Series 1
Episode 19
The hunt for a missing suspect takes an unexpected turn, while the odds well and truly stack up against Sarah. Amidst a new influx of revelations, Troels and Bremer battle it out in a dramatic live TV debate. But back at the Town Hall, Troels no longer knows who to trust. Theis and Pernille are preparing to move into their new house, but something turns out to be very wrong.
WED 23:00 The Story of British Pathé (b014bb01)
Around the World
For more than half a century film and newsreel company British Pathe documented almost every aspect of British life, but it also captivated audiences with enthralling stories from overseas.
In the age before mass tourism made international travel affordable and accessible to most of us, their sumptuous travelogues and anthropological documentaries offered British cinemagoers a rare opportunity to glimpse faraway worlds. For decades Pathe dutifully covered royal tours to every corner of the British Empire, but by the 1950s, when the first package holidays were sold, the company also recorded the experiences of the first generations of Britons who were able to indulge in leisure travel around the globe.
This film examines the unique footage captured by the company's cameras across five continents during Pathe's seven decades of international film-making.
WED 00:00 Dinosaurs, Myths and Monsters (b014lsgb)
[Repeat of broadcast at
21:00 today]
WED 01:00 A Poet's Guide to Britain (b00l22b3)
Louis MacNeice
Poet and author Owen Sheers presents a series in which he explores six great works of poetry set in the British landscape. Each poem explores a sense of place and identity across Britain and opens the doors to captivating stories about the places and the lives of the poets themselves.
Louis MacNeice was one of the big guns of British poetry in the 1930s and 40s but is less well known today. Sheers takes a stroll into one of his finest poems, called simply Woods, a brilliant evocation of one of the most English landscapes but also a poem that takes you into the life and mind of a fascinating poet.
MacNeice was born and brought up in Ireland until the age of nine, when soon after the death of his mother he was sent to school in England. His split identity was to become a major preoccupation for the rest of his life.
In Woods, the middle-aged MacNeice takes stock of who he has become, unsure that he taken the right path. It is wonderful lyrical, melancholic writing that makes a powerful case for the restoration of this poet's reputation
Includes contributions from poets Dannie Abse and Paul Farley as well as actress Jill Balcon, who knew MacNeice and was married to another great poet of the era, Cecil Day-Lewis.
WED 01:30 Chemistry: A Volatile History (b00q2mk5)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:30 today]
WED 02:30 Storyville (b014jdfl)
[Repeat of broadcast at
20:30 today]
WED 03:00 Dinosaurs, Myths and Monsters (b014lsgb)
[Repeat of broadcast at
21:00 today]
THURSDAY 15 SEPTEMBER 2011
THU 19:00 World News Today (b014jdht)
The latest national and international news, exploring the day's events from a global perspective.
THU 19:30 Top of the Pops (b014b9nj)
26/08/76
Noel Edmonds looks at the weekly pop charts and introduces Manfred Mann's Earth Band, Robin Sarstedt, Acker Bilk, Cliff Richard and Gallagher and Lyle.
THU 20:00 Elegance and Decadence: The Age of the Regency (b014jbyr)
[Repeat of broadcast at
21:00 on Tuesday]
THU 21:00 Timeshift (b014r789)
Series 11
The Picture Postcard World of Nigel Walmsley
The surprising story behind the humble picture postcard, playfully told by comic creation Nigel Walmsley. With their own language and bespoke rules, postcards were the texts and emails of their era, at a time when households received up to four postal deliveries a day. Postcards became a holiday staple, but they were once an important means of communicating events - from election results to rail crashes. Entering the world of collectable cards, it's easy to understand the value of a card posted from the Titanic. It's harder to see why anyone would want to collect cards of holiday camps or motorway service stations, but they do. Some consider postcards an art form, others are fascinated by the messages on the back, poignantly stranded in time. Nigel Walmsley is mostly amused.
THU 22:00 The Killing (b00zwlfj)
Series 1
Episode 20
Having been taken off the case, and yet more determined than ever, will Sarah succeed in nailing Nanna's murderer? At the Town Hall, Troels is on a downward spiral, until he is given some game-changing information. At the Birk-Larssen home, Pernille and Theis invite friends and family to hold a birthday party for Anton, but the evening takes a dark and unexpected turn.
THU 23:00 Everything and Nothing (b00zwndy)
Nothing
Two-part documentary which deals with two of the deepest questions there are - what is everything, and what is nothing?
In two epic, surreal and mind-expanding films, Professor Jim Al-Khalili searches for an answer to these questions as he explores the true size and shape of the universe and delves into the amazing science behind apparent nothingness.
The second part, Nothing, explores science at the very limits of human perception, where we now understand the deepest mysteries of the universe lie. Jim sets out to answer one very simple question - what is nothing? His journey ends with perhaps the most profound insight about reality that humanity has ever made. Everything came from nothing. The quantum world of the supersmall shaped the vast universe we inhabit today, and Jim can prove it.
THU 00:00 Top of the Pops (b014b9nj)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:30 today]
THU 00:40 Elegance and Decadence: The Age of the Regency (b014jbyr)
[Repeat of broadcast at
21:00 on Tuesday]
THU 01:40 Timeshift (b014r789)
[Repeat of broadcast at
21:00 today]
THU 02:40 Everything and Nothing (b00zwndy)
[Repeat of broadcast at
23:00 today]
FRIDAY 16 SEPTEMBER 2011
FRI 19:00 World News Today (b014jdjj)
The latest national and international news, exploring the day's events from a global perspective.
FRI 19:30 BBC Proms (b014k3dh)
2011
Last Night Celebrations in Scotland
The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra conducted by Stephen Bell perform at the Caird Hall in Dundee as part of the BBC Proms Last Night Celebrations. Presented by Kaye Adams and Jamie MacDougall, also performing are Alfie Boe, singer/songwriter Fran Healy and 2011 BBC Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician of the year Kristan Harvey.
FRI 21:30 The Pink Floyd Story: Which One's Pink? (b008hs1m)
Over 40 years after Britain's foremost 'underground' band released their debut album Piper at the Gates of Dawn, Pink Floyd remain one of the biggest brand names and best-loved bands in the world.
This film features extended archive, some of it rarely or never seen before, alongside original interviews with four members of Pink Floyd - David Gilmour, Roger Waters, Nick Mason and the late Richard Wright - and traces the journey of a band that has only ever had five members, three of whom have led the band at different stages of its evolution.
Tracing the band's history from psychedelic 60s London to their reunion appearance at Live 8 in 2005, this is the story of a succession of musical and commercial peaks separated by a succession of struggles around the creative leadership of the band. Their story was given added poignancy by the 2006 death of their estranged frontman, Syd Barrett.
Pink Floyd spearheaded the concept album, never sold themselves as personalities and expanded rock way beyond its three minute pop song beginnings. Pink Floyd has made the four members very rich and has consumed their creative lives, but it hasn't always made them friends. When first meeting their American record company, one of the executives apocryphally asked, "Which one's Pink?". This film traces the reverberations of that question throughout the band's history.
First led by the innovative singer, songwriter and guitarist Syd Barrett, Pink Floyd were at the forefront of Britain's psychedelic era. After putting the band on the map with hits like Arnold Layne and See Emily Play, Barrett drifted out of the band after experimenting with LSD.
The three remaining members added Barrett's old Cambridge friend David Gilmour to the band on guitar and functioned as a communal unit while creating extended sonic explorations on albums like Atom Heart Mother and Echoes. While creating ever larger and more visually ambitious stage shows, the band personally shunned the limelight, taking the stage as four shadowy figures and never appearing on their album covers.
Gradually Roger Waters emerged as the band's key songwriter, creating those massive selling concept albums of the mid-70s, Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall, two of the biggest-selling and boldest albums of all time. But Waters's desire to control the band and the increasing passivity of the others eventually left to him leaving the band and the name after 1983's The Final Cut album.
David Gilmour eventually assumed control of the band, producing two globally-successful Pink Floyd albums, A Momentary Lapse of Reason (1987) and The Division Bell (1994), with the help of Nick Mason and Rick Wright. Meanwhile, Waters conducted a less commercially-successful solo career.
As a result of Bob Geldof's pleading, David Gilmour, Rick Wright and Nick Mason reunited with Roger Waters for one time only for 2005's Live 8, playing together for the first time in approximately 25 years.
Whether Pink Floyd will ever record or perform again with or without Roger Waters remains unclear.
FRI 22:30 A Pink Floyd Miscellany 1967-2005 (b014grts)
A compilation of rarely screened Pink Floyd videos and performances, beginning with the Arnold Layne promo from 1967 and culminating with the reunited band's performance at Live 8 in 2005. Also including a newly restored Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2) and performances of Grantchester Meadows, Cymbeline and others.
FRI 23:30 Pink Floyd: Live in Pompeii (b014skwg)
Concert film shot in the ruins of Pompeii in 1972 which captures the young, long-haired post-Syd Barrett Pink Floyd in all their spacey but melancholy glory.
FRI 00:30 The Pink Floyd Story: Which One's Pink? (b008hs1m)
[Repeat of broadcast at
21:30 today]
FRI 01:30 A Pink Floyd Miscellany 1967-2005 (b014grts)
[Repeat of broadcast at
22:30 today]
FRI 02:30 BBC Proms (b014k3dh)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:30 today]