MONDAY 29 AUGUST 2011

MON 19:00 A Poet's Guide to Britain (b00k99tf)
William Wordsworth

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. This episode features Composed upon Westminster Bridge by William Wordsworth.

In 1802, Wordsworth, the great Romantic poet of nature and the man famous for writing about the Lake District, daffodils and clouds, penned a short but electrifying poem about the stinking, filthy, heaving city of London. In fact, the poem was a captivating, sublime portrait of the city at dawn which still has the power to catch one's breath.

Sheers investigates what Wordsworth was doing when he wrote the poem on a summer morning in 1802, and uncovers a story that involves three different women. Wordsworth lived in Grasmere in the Lake District, sharing a small cottage in an unusual domestic arrangement with his sister Dorothy. In the spring of that year he decided to marry an old schoolfriend, Mary Hutchinson. However, in order to do so he first needed to clear the air with his French ex-girlfriend and mother of his daughter Caroline, a nine-year-old girl he had yet to meet.

In July 1802, William and Dorothy set out from Grasmere to Calais via London on the intriguing journey that would lead them across the bridge. Sheers follows their journey, discovers how the poem came into existence and examines exactly what Wordsworth wrote. He talks to Wordsworth fans including that epitome of Northern cool, poet Simon Armitage, the writer-in-residence at the Wordsworth Trust, Adam O'Riordan, and some of the commuters who cross Westminster Bridge every morning on their way to work.


MON 19:30 The Weather (b00jzjhx)
Winds

Documentary series about the weather. This episode looks at wind - a phenomenon caused by the interaction of temperature, pressure and the earth's rotation, which took scientists over a thousand years to fully explain.

We witness some remarkable wind-related stories, such as the tornado that flung Dorothy Allwright and her caravan into the air, and how Scottish engineer James Blyth invented the first electricity-producing wind turbine in 1887.

Once we looked to the gods to explain the wind, until science unlocked its mysteries. Today, we may have come to understand the wind, but we have also realised that we will never master it, and that this elemental force cannot be ignored.


MON 20:30 Only Connect (b0140vb7)
Series 5

Analysts vs Editors

A team of professional analysts with degrees in modern languages, English and maths pit their wits against a trio of editors who delight in their meticulous attention to detail. They compete to draw together the connections between things which, at first glance, seem utterly random, from Ho to Beetlejuice to I Divorce You to White Rabbits.


MON 21:00 Elegance and Decadence: The Age of the Regency (b0140vb9)
Warts and All - Portrait of a Prince

Colourful series marking the 200th anniversary of one of the most explosive and creative decades in British history. It presents a vivid portrait of an age of elegance presided over by a prince of decadence - the infamous Prince Regent himself, a man with legendary appetites for women, food and self-indulgence. Yet this was the same man who would rebuild London, carving out the great thoroughfare of Regent Street and help establish the Regency look as the epitome of British style through his extravagant patronage of art and design.

In this first episode, historian Dr Lucy Worsley chronicles the Regency's early years, which culminated in victory over Napoleon in 1815, and explores the complicated character of the Prince Regent, a man with legendary appetites for women, food, art and self-indulgence.

For Lucy, the Regency was an age of contradictions and extremes that were embodied in the person of the Prince Regent himself. She uncovers Prince George's modest childhood; bright and talented, the young George was beaten with a whip by his tutors and it was small wonder that he would later rebel, eventually embracing a scandal-ridden lifestyle that included illegal marriages and discarded mistresses.

So how did this overweight popinjay preside over an age in which art and culture mattered? A tour of his treasures in the Royal Collection shows Lucy that George was a genuine connoisseur, buying up Rembrandts and French furnishings while his excesses were at the same time inspiring satirical caricatures that mocked him as the 'Prince of Whales'. And she investigates George's collaboration with portrait painter Sir Thomas Lawrence, who left the definitive images of Regency society and became George's flatterer-in-chief; Regency wags laughed at how his paintings magically transformed an overweight bald fifty-something into a 'well-fleshed Adonis'.

Meanwhile, the long war with France was having a huge impact on the British psyche; travel and trade with Europe were impossibly restricted. Lucy follows in the footsteps of painter JMW Turner who, unable to travel to the continent, toured the south coast in 1811 and captured startling images of a country at war.

George liked to think of himself as a man of fashion, and Lucy takes us through surviving accounts from his tailors that reveal his shopaholic ways. These were the years in which the Prince's sometime friend Beau Brummell, the famous dandy, ruled fashionable London like a dictator, and Lucy samples a bit of butch Regency style by trying on some of the fashions he popularised, as well as joining Brummell biographer Ian Kelly on a tour of London's fashionable Regency haunts. She also discovers Brummell's spectacular fall from favour, after loudly referring to the Regent as someone's 'fat friend'.

Lucy visits the battlefield of Waterloo and discovers that the site became a prototype of battlefield tourism - Turner, Byron and many others all visited in the years after the battle and Lucy handles some grisly memorabilia purchased by Lord Byron.

The episode concludes with the most spectacular royal art commission of them all - Lawrence's series of paintings in the Waterloo Chamber at Windsor Castle, paid for by George to memorialise his victory over Napoleon. Never mind that George wasn't at any of the battles - this was an age in which appearance and reality fused together to create monumental art.


MON 22:00 The Killing (b00ysnxz)
Series 1

Episode 7

Just as Jan is starting to think that he is now in charge of the case, Sarah returns unexpectedly and decides to launch a search for the father of the victim, Theis, and prime murder suspect Rama, who was Nanna's teacher. Both men have disappeared and Sarah fears for Rama's safety. But her decision to remain in Copenhagen to work on the murder case is exacerbating problems in her private life.

Meanwhile, Troels is stuck between his political advisers and his own sense of morality and comes under further pressure from inside his own party.


MON 23:00 Balmoral (b00mqg2c)
Documentary telling the story of Balmoral, the royal family's most private residence. For over 150 years this Scottish castle has been home to royal traditions of picnics, stag hunting and kilts. From prime ministers to Princess Diana, life at this tartan-bound holiday home has not appealed to everyone.

But there is another story of Balmoral, of how the royal family has played a role in shaping modern Scotland and how Scotland has shaped the royal family. Queen Victoria's adoption of Highland symbols, from tartan to bagpipes, helped create a new image for Scotland. Her values, too, helped strengthen the union between Scotland and England. Ever since, Balmoral has been a place that reflects the very essence of the royal family.


MON 00:00 Elegance and Decadence: The Age of the Regency (b0140vb9)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 today]


MON 01:00 Too Much, Too Young: Children of the Middle Ages (b013rknh)
Medievalist Dr Stephen Baxter takes a fresh look at the Middle Ages through the eyes of children. At a time when half the population was under eighteen he argues that, although they had to grow up quickly and take on adult responsibility early, the experience of childhood could also be richly rewarding. Focusing on the three pillars of medieval society - religion, war and work - Baxter reveals how children played a vital role in creating the medieval world.


MON 02:00 Only Connect (b0140vb7)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:30 today]


MON 02:30 A Poet's Guide to Britain (b00k99tf)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 today]


MON 03:00 Elegance and Decadence: The Age of the Regency (b0140vb9)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 today]