MONDAY 13 AUGUST 2018

MON 19:00 World News Today (b0bflkxn)
The latest national and international news, exploring the day's events from a global perspective.


MON 19:30 What Do Artists Do All Day? (b0bg1b9b)
Raqib Shaw

Part of the Big British Asian Summer season, this profile of Raqib Shaw is the first of three new episodes of What Do Artists Do All Day?

Coveted by the world's biggest collectors, Raqib Shaw is an enigmatic art superstar. His baroque paintings, fusing pop kitsch and images from his Kashmiri homeland, have sold for millions.

A flamboyant personality, he works in an extravagant studio squeezed into an old sausage factory in Peckham, south London. He creates his art in an amazing fantasy world resembling a 21st-century version of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, with thousands of plants, waterfalls, bonsai trees and beehives. The film opens in the dramatic aftermath of a fire in the studio, and with remarkable access, offers a portrait of the art and life of Raqib Shaw.


MON 20:00 Italy's Invisible Cities (b08cbkvr)
Series 1

Florence

Using the latest 3D scanning technology, Alexander Armstrong and Dr Michael Scott explore the romantic city of Florence.

They reveal how its wonderful facades and artworks mask a hidden story of intrigue and secrecy, and one powerful dynasty was behind it all - the Medicis, godfathers of the Renaissance. Finally, the scanning team build a virtual reality 3D model to reveal how the city's secret corridors of power were the foundation of its Renaissance glory.


MON 21:00 Mark Gatiss on John Minton: The Lost Man of British Art (b0bfnlj2)
John Minton was for a time one of the most popular 20th-century British artists, more famous than his contemporaries Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud. He has also been something of an obsession for actor and writer Mark Gatiss since he first saw one of his paintings as a teenager at the National Portrait Gallery. Mark Gatiss plunges back into Minton's world to celebrate his remarkable life and work, but also to find out why he remains all but forgotten.

As well as being a central figure in the postwar British neo-romantic movement, alongside the likes of Graham Sutherland and John Piper, John Minton was also one of the leading lights of Soho during the 1940s and 50s - a bohemian enclave where he felt at ease with fellow artists and models. In the only known footage of Minton, he is caught fleetingly, dancing wildly in a club, like a crazed marionette. It is a captivating, poignant glimpse of a man who was once at the very centre of this world.

He was a prolific painter of both landscapes and portraits, and as a gay man, Mark has always been particularly drawn to his sensitive depictions of striking young men. Minton too was gay but struggled with his sexuality during a highly repressive era when homosexuality was still illegal. However, as Mark discovers, it wasn't just his sexuality that plagued Minton, but his very standing as an artist and his desire to be considered first and foremost a painter rather than an illustrator, which is how he really found fame. On a balcony overlooking the same glorious view, Mark explains how Minton's vibrant jacket design for Elizabeth David's A Book of Mediterranean Food in 1950 was really what attracted people to buy it, as the author herself declared. But it was the 1948 publication of Time Was Away: A Notebook in Corsica that really established Minton, and it became something of a cult book for a new generation of illustrators. Following in his footsteps, Mark travels to Corsica and visits some of the original locations captured so vividly by Minton.

As well as discovering unseen photographs of the artist and previously unknown works by him, the film also gives Mark the chance to hear Minton's voice for the first time in a rare broadcast he made for the BBC Third Programme in 1947. The connections deepen further as Mark meets some of those who knew him well - former models such as actor Norman Bowler recall posing for Minton, and fellow artist David Tindle discusses the rivalries between Minton and his contemporaries, particularly Francis Bacon.

Drawing on all these remarkable first-hand reminiscences, Mark explores the reasons behind Minton's fall from grace and the tragic circumstances of his death at the age of just 39.


MON 22:00 Story of Ireland (b00z2m1g)
The Age of Conquest

Fergal Keane examines how the huge upheavals of Europe in the Middle Ages altered the story of Ireland irrevocably. Beginning with the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland in 1169, he investigates how the Normans changed Irish life and why Gaelic kings initially welcomed an English ruler. But it is also the story of an incomplete conquest. The English crown only finally moves to impose its will in Ireland after the Protestant Reformation places Ireland at the forefront of religious war.


MON 23:00 Britain and the Sea (b03lbv22)
Trade and Romance

This third episode traces the crucial importance of the sea to Britain's trade and to individual livelihoods of coastal communities. Joined on this leg of his epic sail by his son Fred, David follows the trade routes of the west coast of Scotland along the monumental channels that cut through the romantic Highlands and brought wealth and prosperity to the heart of Scotland. The journey starts at Craobh Haven and takes David along the Crinan Canal, around the Isle of Bute and up the River Clyde towards Glasgow.


MON 00:00 Fossil Wonderlands: Nature's Hidden Treasures (b03yfqj8)
Feathered Dinosaurs

Professor Richard Fortey travels to north eastern China to see a fossil site known as the 'Dinosaur Pompeii' - a place that has yielded spectacular remains of feathered dinosaurs and rewritten the story of the origins of birds. Among the amazing finds he investigates are the feathered cousin of T-rex, a feathered dinosaur with strong parallels to living pandas, and some of the most remarkable flying animals that have ever lived.


MON 01:00 Natural World (b01qsfk7)
2012-2013

Giant Otters of the Amazon

Diablo the giant otter lives in a lake in the jungles of Peru, with his unruly family of six cubs. Even at the tender age of six months, they need to learn how to survive in this dangerous paradise. Their dad teaches them to swim and eventually to catch piranha for themselves, but they must also learn to stay away from the neighbours from hell - the giant caiman. These large members of the crocodile family are a real threat to the giant otter family and Diablo must go to extraordinary lengths to try to protect his cubs.

Renowned cameraman and otter specialist Charlie Hamilton-James returns to the place he first filmed Diablo 13 years ago. Following the family over several months, sometimes in very difficult conditions, he discovers how perilous a home this is for the cubs and watches them develop under the careful guidance of their father. He also films remarkable scenes of the giant otters fighting caimans.


MON 02:00 Medieval Lives: Birth, Marriage, Death (b03cv0lm)
A Good Birth

For a medieval woman approaching the moment of labour and birth, there were no antiseptics to ward off infection or anaesthetics to deal with pain. Historian Helen Castor reveals how this was one of the most dangerous moments a medieval woman would ever encounter, with some aristocratic and royal women giving birth as young as 13. Birth took place in an all-female environment and the male world of medicine was little help to a woman in confinement. It was believed that the pains of labour were the penalty for the original sin of humankind - so, to get through them, a pregnant woman needed the help of the saints and the blessing of God himself.