WEDNESDAY 01 AUGUST 2018

WED 19:00 World News Today (b0bfdkhp)
The latest national and international news, exploring the day's events from a global perspective.


WED 19:30 Handmade in Mexico (b09jj0k2)
Series 1

Alebrijes

Alebrijes are brightly coloured, fantastical creatures, carved from copal wood and decorated in extremely detailed paintwork. Different animals and their characteristics are associated with different birth dates, and the patterns are full of symbols and meaning. Consequently, the sculpture contains often complex and personal narratives.


WED 20:00 1066: A Year to Conquer England (b08hyhm7)
Series 1

Episode 2

In this three-part drama-documentary series, Dan Snow explores the political intrigues and family betrayals between Vikings, Anglo-Saxons and Normans that led to war, and the Battle of Hastings. King Harold of England has to take on two invasion forces. First, his brother Tostig attacks the south coast. He is repelled, but there is more to come. Later in the year, a vast Viking invasion force led by King Harald Hardrada of Norway lands in the north of England. Harold rushes to Stamford Bridge to fight for his kingdom and for his life. Meanwhile, Duke William of Normandy is ready to invade, but storms keep his invasion fleet trapped in port.


WED 21:00 Murder in Soho: Who Killed Freddie Mills? (b0bcy56k)
Murder in Soho: Who Killed Freddie Mills? is a real-life murder mystery about the life and untimely death of a national boxing hero, who is often described as Britain’s first sporting celebrity.

Set in 1960s Soho, this film delves into the world of UK and US organised crime, with gangland figures such as the Krays, boxing, gambling, police corruption, and a string of brutal unsolved murders that would become synonymous with the name Freddie Mills.

With access to eight hours of previously unseen home movies, this is an intimate portrayal of a man who rose from the humble surroundings of the fairground boxing booth to become light-heavyweight champion of the world, and became a household name appearing in films and co-presenting the BBC music show Six-Five Special. But it all ended on the 25th July 1965, when he was found shot dead in the back seat of his car. 50 years after his death his family still challenge the coroner’s verdict of suicide. They have always maintained he was murdered.

High profile gangsters such as Eddie Richardson give first hand accounts of the criminal underworld that existed at the time, and ultimately a man comes forward who claims to have been involved in the murder of Freddie Mills. It’s a piece of testimony that could finally conclude a 50-year mystery for Freddie’s family; allowing a British boxing great to be remembered for the man he was, and his achievements in life, rather than for the single day of his death


WED 22:30 Sword, Musket & Machine Gun: Britain's Armed History (b088sznj)
Rapid Fire

In the concluding episode, Dr Sam Willis charts the evolution of weaponry in Britain from 1800 to the First World War, looking at the drive to develop ever more precise weapons, from artillery shells to rifles to the Maxim machine gun.

The pace of technological change in the 19th century was phenomenal. Sam test-fires a 'Brown Bess' musket, the infantry weapon of choice at Waterloo in 1815 and discovers that a well-trained soldier could fire up to three shots a minute. He also looks at efforts to make artillery more effective on the battlefield with the invention of spherical case shot, a new type of shell that was named after its inventor - Henry Shrapnel.

Sam finds out how accessible firearms were to the public in the early 19th century and tells the little-known story of Spencer Percival, the only British prime minister ever to be assassinated, shot at point blank range in the lobby of the House of Commons in 1812.

By the turn of the 20th century, several inventors believed that they could banish war if they invented the ultimate weapon, an instrument so horrific that no-one would dare use it. In the 1880s, Hiram Maxim, an American inventor, devised the first 'Maxim' machine guns in his workshop in Hatton Garden, London. The first rapid-fire weapon to harness the energy of its own recoil, the Maxim gun, and its successor the Vickers machine gun, could fire 600 rounds a minute and were used to devastating effect on the battlefields of the First World War.

Automatic weapons were also sought by criminal gangs, as Sam discovers when he looks back at one of the most infamous sieges of the 20th century - the Siege of Sidney Street in 1911.

The series culminates in a remarkable experiment to find out whether a bulletproof vest made of silk might have stopped a bullet fired at Archduke Franz Ferdinand. With the aid of the Royal Armouries, Sam conducts a unique experiment with assistant firearms curator Lisa Traynor to prove that a bulletproof vest owned by the archduke would have stopped a bullet fired by his assassin, Gavrilo Princip. The killing of the archduke on June 28 1914 set in motion a chain of events that led to the outbreak of the First World War.

World War I was the deadliest war of its age, with the most technologically advanced firearms and weapons of almost medieval brutality used to wage a devastating conflict. When the firing finally stopped on November 11, 1918, an estimated 17 million people had died and 20 million had been wounded. In the aftermath of World War I, we now put increasing faith in treaties, international conventions and diplomacy. Surely we could never allow such carnage to happen again?


WED 23:30 Timeshift (b053pzmd)
Series 14

Spicing Up Britain: How Eating Out Went Exotic

Timeshift looks at how postwar Britain went from a place where eating out was more of a chore than a pleasure to a nation of food adventurers, now spending up to a third of our food budget on restaurant meals. It's the story of the British palate being slowly introduced to a range of what would then have been 'exotic' cuisines by successive generations of migrants opening eateries - first Italians, then Chinese and Indians. By encouraging us to try something new - be it spaghetti, stir fry or samosa - they spiced up not just our food but our high streets and our lives.


WED 00:30 The Inca: Masters of the Clouds (b04y4q35)
Clash of Empires

In the concluding part, Dr Jago Cooper argues that it wasn't simply a clash of arms that destroyed the Inca but a clash of worldviews. He travels from Peru to the far north of Inca territory in Ecuador to reveal how the great strengths of the empire suddenly became factors in its rapid demise. The Spanish conquest of the Inca destroyed one of the most remarkable empires in the world, yet the Inca legacy leaves a great deal for modern civilisations to learn from.


WED 01:30 Shakespeare's Mother: The Secret Life of a Tudor Woman (b05279pq)
Michael Wood tells the extraordinary story of an ordinary woman in a time of revolution. Born during the reign of Henry VIII, Mary Arden is the daughter of a Warwickshire farmer, but she marries into a new life in the rising Tudor middle class in Stratford-upon-Avon. There she has eight children, three of whom die young. Her husband becomes mayor, but is bankrupted by his shady business dealings. Faced with financial ruin, religious persecution and power politics, the family is the glue that keeps them together until they are rescued by Mary's successful eldest son - William Shakespeare!


WED 02:30 1066: A Year to Conquer England (b08hyhm7)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:00 today]