Every season of Timewatch ever, ranked from best to worst by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The best seasons of Timewatch!

WINDSORS' WAR: The continuing controversy surrounding the war-time role of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Victims of a bad press, they remained tactfully silent, but now answer back through Maitre Blum, their lawyer, who gives her first television interview.

OPERATION HURRICANE: Britain's first atomic test took place 30 years ago. Film of that secret explosion has been specially declassified by the Ministry of Defence for Timewatch.

CHATHAM DOCKYARD: Now under threat of Government closure, the story of its contribution to naval history from the Armada to HMS Victory, to the Falklands.

Episode 1

THE CHINA OF THE MANCHU EMPERORS and the signing of the treaties which gave Britain Hong Kong. Why do the Chinese regard these treaties as unequal?

SCOTLAND AND THE GREAT WITCH HUNT OF THE 17TH CENTURY: A thousand women were strangled or burnt. Was this persecution a political act by James VI which got out of hand? Why was it directed at women?

The recently discovered diary of a Lancashire weaver JOHN O'NEIL who, a century ago, recorded his experiences as an early trades union leader in the recession of the 1860s.

New research on the founding father of the Irish Republic, EAMON DE VALERA. Was he as committed to a united Ireland as was always believed, or was he prepared to compromise?

Episode 2

'IF THE SPANISH ARMADA HAD LANDED ...' What would have happened if on Monday 7 August 1558 a Spanish Army had marched on London from the invasion beaches of Margate? Timewatch re-examines the fate of the 16th-century Spanish task force and asks how close did it come to success?

WHAT MAKES BEGIN TICK? Vladimir Jabotinsky was the philosopher behind the fighting Jew and is the man whom Menachem Begin considers his mentor. Timewatch examines the vision of Jabotinsky and its influence on Begin both in his early life and in his years as Britain's most wanted terrorist.

LLYWELYN AP GRUFFYDD - THE FIRST AND LAST INDEPENDENT PRINCE OF WALES: Simon Winchester tells his story and assesses his important place in Welsh nationalism today.

Episode 3

Film 1: Sir Thomas More, the Tudor statesman who lost his head on the scaffold in 1535, was made a saint in 1937; now the heroic reputation of the 'man for all seasons' is under attack.

Film 2: Unemployment in Britain 150 years ago when the workhouse became the symbol of oppression and poverty that lasted over a century. Bernard Clark investigates the Poor Law of 1834, designed to cut spending on the poor and unemployed and which left bitter memories for generations.

Film 3: The Russian spy scare of 1927 when the British Cabinet unwittingly betrayed to Moscow the code-breaking secrets of British intelligence.

Episode 4

HOW DO YOU DEMOCRATISE A NAZI? On the 50th anniversary of Hitler's elevation to the chancellorship of the Third Reich Simon Winchester reports from Washington and Nuremberg on how America in 1945 tried to remake a nation in its own image through a process of forced re-education.

THE VENERABLE BEDE - BRITAIN'S FIRST HISTORIAN: Who was he? Where and how did he live? Why is he so important? The story of a remarkable man who, over a thousand years ago, could have travelled from Northumbria to Rome.

THE LEVELLERS: three months ago in Putney church Michael Foot and other members of the Labour Party associated themselves with the men of the 'New Model Army' who spoke there 300 years before. Who were these men who, in their radicalism, saw Cromwell as the modern equivalent of establishment and right wing? How does the philosophy of these Levellers find echoes in the Labour Party today?

In a new edition of THE DIARY OF SAMUEL PEPYS, editor Robert Latham has uncovered previously unknown details of Pepys's life.

THE WEEDERS: Are civil servants destroying vital historical evidence when they decide Government records should not be kept?

THE HISTORICAL CLEOPATRA: As the BBC drama series ["The Cleopatras"] approaches its climax, Timewatch asks, "Was Cleopatra's reputation as a lustful tyrant really deserved?"

THE PEACE MOVEMENT IN THE 1930s AND TODAY: Fifty years ago, British politics was dominated by campaigns for peace. What are the parallels with the 1980s?

THE LAST MUGGLETONIAN: In 1652, the Muggletonians were a radical sect in Revolutionary England. Simon Winchester traces their secret survival until the death of the last Muggletonian in 1979.

THE VICTORIAN POLICE: What sort of force was the Police intended to be? With a new Police Bill before Parliament, Bernard Clark returns to their original beat.

THE LOVED AND HATED KING: Richard III - hunchback murderer of the princes in the Tower, or victim of Tudor propaganda? On the 500th anniversary of his coronation, historians go into battle again over his reputation.

THE SILENT YEARS OF TELEVISION: In 1950 politics were not allowed on British television. By the end of the decade television dominated the political scene. As an election approaches John Bowman asks how television has changed British political history.

ANIMALS AND MEN: Throughout history man has used animals for food, companions and labour. John Tusa talks to Keith Thomas about his new history of Man and the Natural World -the background to today's concern for animal liberation and ecology.

FRANCE AND THE NAZIS: Following the arrest of Klaus Barbie, butcher of Lyon, memories of Nazi collaboration have again returned to haunt a generation of Frenchmen. Dr Christopher Andrew goes to Drancy, the Paris housing estate turned in 1940 into a transit camp for Auschwitz and uncovers the ghost of Marshall Petain's Vichy Government. He talks to stout supporters of the 84-year-old Marshall, such as tennis champion Jean Borotra.

FAKING HISTORY: The Hitler diaries are just the latest in a long line of historical forgeries. The Drake Plate found near San Francisco in 1936 and which claimed California for Queen Elizabeth I was shown to be fake in 1977. The Vinland Map was bought in 1959 for ~£100,000 as the first map to show the North American Continent. Instead it was shown to be a forgery in 1967. Are there other fake historical documents masquerading as genuine? Can any fake survive today's scientific analysis? Timewatch talks to the experts.

Episode 5

BATTLE OF THE RIVER PLATE: During the Falklands war, the Argentinians made great capital of the last time they'd fought the British - and won, in 1806. SIMON Winchester reports.

BODYLINE BOWLING: Was the England captain, Douglas Jardine, aware of the political implications when he said that he would regain the Ashes but lose a dominion? Timewatch talks to cricket veteran Gubby Allen.

DEATH ON THE DOLE: In a time of high unemployment John Bauman looks back at how the health of the unemployed was damaged in the 1930s.

LOUIS XIV: The story of the 'Sun King' of France, who was the first 'politician' deliberately to mould his own favourable image by setting up the 17th-century equivalent of Saatchi and Saatchi.

Episode 6

SHADOW OF THE GALLOWS: After Parliament's vote on hanging, an investigation into the history of Tyburn and the mass public executions in the 18th century. Did hanging deter?

SPYING FOR RUSSIA: Christopher Andrew investigates why the British Secret Service failed to detect Blunt, Burgess and Maclean and he uncovers their Soviet 'control'. He talks for the first time to an Oxford mole who was recruited by Moscow in the 30s.

THE FORGOTTEN WARRIOR KING: William Rufus, son of William the Conqueror, is a king of whom little is known but legend. David Drew reports on new research that throws fresh light on a formidable ruler of England.

Episode 7

A special programme devoted to the life and historical reputation of Prince Albert, husband to Queen Victoria. From Osborne House on the Isle of Wight, designed by Albert for his family, the many different sides of his remarkable character are brought into focus.

Albert the foreigner - his upbringing in Coburg, the tiny German principality where he was born.

Albert the reformer - his belief in improving public services.

Albert the instigator of the Great Exhibition - the biggest triumph of his life.

Albert the politician - his huge and controversial influence on British politics.

Historians Asa Briggs-Robert, Rhodes James, and David Cannadine reassess one of the most important figures of Victorian Britain.

(Re-aired 9 December 1983 as a standalone program titled 'Albert The Early Years')

Special: Albert, Prince Consort

THE BATTLE FOR MARTIN LUTHER: Martin Luther, the German priest who split the Catholic church and began the Reformation, was born 500 years ago. Today, East and West Germany both struggle to claim him. From East Germany, Bernard Clark reports on how the Marxist government has tried to transform Luther into a revolutionary hero.

LEBANON - CRUSADER BATTLEFIELD: The Christian and Muslim militia, who have been fighting around Beirut, trace their enmity back to the first Crusades. How does the history of the Crusades still affect the Middle East power struggle today?

Episode 9

BEFORE THE NATIONAL HEALTH: A remarkable newly discovered archive of silent film reveals hospital life in the 1920s and 30s. How did people afford medical care in the days before the National Health?

ROYALIST OXFORD: In 1642 King Charles I set up his capital in Oxford as the English Civil War began. Simon Winchester returns to Oxford to see what clues remain there to the character of the Cavaliers.

MERRIE ENGLAND: An affectionate look at the days when history at school was about great men of sturdy British stock who made our island's story. Do you remember L. du Garde Peach, one of Britain's bestselling historians?

Episode 10

In May 1945, British soldiers near the Austrian border town of Klagenfurt handed over 26,000 Yugoslav anti-Communist refugees to Tito's Communist partisans, who disarmed then machine-gunned them. Who was responsible? Timewatch has investigated the records and, for the first time, British officers and Yugoslav survivors describe what happened.

In 1348, the Black Death killed one in three of the population. Until now we have always assumed it was an outbreak of bubonic plague. Now a zoologist suggests a far more fearsome disease was the cause. Christopher Andrew investigates.

The Klagenfurt Affair / The Black Death

PREVENTING THE THIRD WORLD WAR: 1984 opens amid the greatest fears of international tension and nuclear holocaust since the Cold War. Lord Bullock, biographer of British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin, talks about the foundation of NATO and how the West learnt to deal with the Soviet Union after the War.

THE KITCHENER ENIGMA: In 1916 Lord Kitchener was drowned on his way to Russia. Now underwater pictures reveal clues as to how his ship, HMS Hampshire, was sunk. Will they lay to rest the rumour that still remains about the secrets surrounding the Imperial War Lord?

THE LAST BATTLE IN ENGLAND: In 1745 the Stuarts had their last chance of being restored to the English throne. Bonnie Prince Charlie reached Derby but then retreated. If he had marched on towards London, could he have seized the crown?

THE LAST FÜHRER: Among the Nazi war leaders tried at Nuremberg, Hitler's successor Admiral Doenitz received the lightest sentence of all. Now new research suggests Doenitz was far more deeply implicated in the atrocities of the Third Reich than previously imagined.

'THEY BE EVIL PEOPLE': Such was how British newspapers described the Russians in the late 17th century. A cautionary tale of how Englishmen in the 1720s feared Tsar Peter the Great planned to conquer the world.

THE CULT OF THE DEAD: How different were medieval attitudes towards death from our own today? The wills and funeral expenses of the 16th century help provide an answer.

THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE: A meeting with the man who met the men who charged with the Light Brigade. Now aged 97, he has devoted his life to tracing all those who took part in the most celebrated action in Victorian history.

KOREA AND THE BOMB: Newly-released documents reveal the extent of American plans to use atomic weapons in the Korean War. The British feared they were being kept in the dark and risked being dragged into world war.

SIR ARTHUR BRYANT: Britain's most famous popular historian celebrates his 85th birthday. His latest book celebrates the greatness of our past. But is it good history?

SEX AND THE VICTORIANS: Did Victorian wives really 'lie back and think of England'? New research suggests they enjoyed a far more liberated sex life than conventional image allows.

GOD SAVE THE KING was first associated with George III. Why did the king who lost the American colonies become adored by his people, with the first royal souvenirs manufactured in his name?

STALIN'S FAMINE: Fifty years after millions of Ukrainian peasants died in Stalin's collectivisation, survivors remember the tragedy the Soviet Union still ignores. Malcolm Muggeridge recalls reporting the suffering.

THE BRITISH EMPIRE EXHIBITION: In 1924, 28 million people visited the last of the great imperial exhibitions at Wembley - now it is almost forgotten.

GOING MAD IN THE 19TH CENTURY: In 1807 there were 2,000 certified lunatics in England. By 1880 there were more than that in one institution.

ROBERT OWEN: Celebrated as defender of the Tolpuddle Martyrs, founder of the Cooperative Movement and a father of British socialism; was Robert Owen in fact a Victorian capitalist, his social reforms designed for greater profits?

THE CASE FOR KING WILLIAM: Why did William of Normandy believe the Crown of England was his right? What do we know of the barons who stamped their authority on their newly-conquered possessions?

THE SECRETS OF DOMESDAY: The Domesday Book is the greatest achievement of Norman government - it surveyed every acre of William's kingdom. Now a computerised study reveals details hidden for 900 years.

The Conquest and the Conqueror

Two names that shaped Britain in two World Wars.

SECRETS OF THE KAISER: The private papers of Germany's last Emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II, uncover his secret life. In public the figurehead of swaggering Prussian militarism, in private a manic personality obsessed with fantastical schemes for himself and Germany. Christopher Andrew reports.

SIR WILLIAM BEVERIDGE: If D-Day was the moment victory over Hitler began, it was Beveridge who gave the vision of the new world for which Britain was fighting. His report established the system of social security in Britain. He was known as the father of the welfare state. In 1984, as the entire system comes under government scrutiny, John Tusa examines the most influential blueprint for Britain this century.

Episode 8

SIR WALTER RALEIGH: In North Carolina they are celebrating the 400th anniversary of the first settlement in North America. Colonisation of the New World was Walter Raleigh's most ambitious scheme, but what was its aim?

THE RISE OF THE VICTORIAN TOWN HALL: With the future of the GLC at stake Mark Jones examines the spectacular growth of Victorian local government and the moment the Tory Government in 1898 tried to abolish the London County Council.

THE LEAKING EMBASSIES: Christopher Andrew reports on the security leaks in the British embassies in Rome and Berlin in the 1930s. The Foreign Office was stunned by the sorry state of British security.

ELECTION 1784: It was the first modern General Election. Two parties, two national leaders - the King versus Parliament. With a computer analysis of the crucial results, Timewatch fights again the election that marked a watershed in English political history.

1914 - WAS GERMANY GUILTY? Seventy years on, the question remains: did Germany conspire to cause war in the summer of 1914? Norman Stone, Professor of Modern History at Oxford, untangles the evidence from the years of crisis, in the vanished empires of Tsarist Russia, the Kaiser's Germany, and Austria-Hungary.

THE FIRST FOOTBALL HOOLIGANS: How new is soccer violence? Christopher Andrew uncovers new evidence that pitch invasions, mob riots and attacks on rival supporters were at their height before 1914.

THE FIRST OIL CRISIS: The Abadan oil crisis of 1951 brought Iran and Britain into open conflict. Then the British Government planned for an invasion; today the memory shadows Iranian suspicions of the West. Sir Anthony Parsons, former adviser to Mrs Thatcher and Ambassador to the Shah, assesses this turning-point in post-war Iranian history.

CLIMATE OF TREASON: The plight of Catholics in Elizabethan England. With their allegiance divided between the Pope and their Queen, should they put their conscience or country first? Were they martyrs or traitors?

Episode 11

ABRAHAM LINCOLN: How true are historical novels? Gore Vidal's 'Lincoln' draws the political battlefield in Washington during the American Civil War. What does it add to our portrait of one of America's greatest presidents?

THE RISE AND FALL OF THE ARISTOCRACY: The British landed Aristocracy held undisputed power and unparalleled property for over 300 years. How did they keep power for so long and why did their collapse come when it did?

THE FIGHTING TEN: A tin trunk in Ascot reveals the forgotten history of one of the most celebrated families of the Victorian Raj: the story of the ten Battye brothers who fought for British India has been pieced together by their descendants.

Episode 12

THE LAST UPRISING: In 1839, 7,000 Welsh miners and ironworkers marched on Newport to demand their democratic rights. The result was the last mass treason trial in British history. Now new research suggests that it was planned as a prelude to a revolution.

THE FALKLANDS AND THE MURDEROUS GAUCHO: The strange case of Antonio Rivero, who caused the Cabinet of 150 years ago serious doubts as to whether Britain had sovereignty over the Falklands or not.

GOERING: Hermann Goering was portrayed by war-time propaganda as the fat buffoon of the Third Reich. A new study reveals him as the most effective political operator in Nazi Germany.

Episode 13

NELSON: Heroes inevitably suffer at the hands of those who worship them, few more so than one of the most popular of all, Nelson. Since his death in 1805, how have subsequent generations perceived him?

THE TORIES AND THE WORKERS: Mrs Thatcher's election victory last year was unparalleled since Lord Salisbury in 1900. How does her electoral achievement compare with her 19th-century predecessors? Why do the working class consistently vote Conservative?

WYCLIFFE: In 1428 the body of John Wycliffe was dug up, burnt and scattered to the wind. The Peasants' Revolt claimed him as their inspiration. Yet on the 600th anniversary of his death practically nothing is known of him.

Episode 14

REAGAN'S COWBOYS: Why have successive presidents celebrated the cowboy as all-American hero?

THE AGE OF CHIVALRY IS DEAD: But did it ever flourish? How true is the picture painted of the knights in shining armour, enchanted castles and fabulous tournaments in medieval romance.

THE HIDDEN HIPPOPOTAMUS: A hundred years ago the scramble for Africa by the European imperial powers began. Timewatch reconstructs a single incident between Christian missionary and African chieftain that suggests the dominance of European over African was not always as straightforward as might be thought.

TAFF VALE: In 1900 the railway workers of Taff Vale embarked on a strike which has political implications to this day. Timewatch examines the first great clash between the Trades Unions and the law.

THE ISLAND AND ITS PAST: How the people of the Isle of Dogs in the Thames Estuary are rediscovering their past.

SPECIAL BRANCH: At the height of her powers, Victorian Britain boasted that she didn't need a political police. After explosions in the Underground, the Tower of London and the Houses of Parliament, she changed her mind. Timewatch investigates the birth of the Special Branch.

'Let not poor Nellie starve.' With those words Charles II, the 'Merry Monarch', died 300 years ago. Of all British sovereigns, this womanising, yachting, horse-racing king has a fond place in popular myth. During his 25-year reign England returned from the horrors of civil war to peace and plenty. David Drew looks at some of the lasting achievements of the age of Charles II and at the man who, somewhat waywardly, presided over them.

Special: The Age of Charles II

CHURCHILL AND ROOSEVELT exchanged 2,000 letters during the Second World War. Collected for the first time, they reveal the tensions behind the friendship and Britain's collapse as a great superpower.

A BLACK AND TERRIBLE TROOP was the name given to a gang of burglars and forgers who terrorised Westmorland 300 years ago. Timewatch traces their rise and fall through the private papers of the Justice who ran them to earth.

RING A RING O' ROSES is the nursery rhyme everyone knows has its roots in the Great Plague. But does it? Iona Opie investigates its origins.

THE UNUSED WEAPON: By 1945 the Allies and the Nazis had stockpiled five times more chemical weapons than had been used throughout the First World War. They were never used. Why? Robert Harris reports.

SUICIDE OF A CAVALIER: At the battle of Newbury in 1643, Lord Falkland charged headlong to his death. His friends thought it was suicide. Now a psychiatrist has reopened the case and offers an explanation.

THE FORGOTTEN BRITISH EMPIRE: Who has heard of Carausius? Yet in the third century, he ruled Britain as his separate empire and defied the power of Rome. Timewatch uncovers the few traces of him that remain.

In April 1945, British and American troops were sweeping across Western Germany. Charles Wheeler was among them. They stopped 50 miles short of the German capital and Berlin became the prize of the Russian army. Forty years on. Charles Wheeler tells how the Soviet Union fought its bloodiest final battle and how the manner of its victory determined the future of Berlin, and Europe, in the postwar world. With previously unseen film of the battle and its aftermath, some in colour, the story is told by men and women veterans of the Russian forces, the Hitler Youth who defied them, and a man who was with Hitler in his final hours.

The Battle for Berlin

This month's programme comes from the centre of Oxford where Peter France introduces three stories which have their roots deep in the confused and bewildering fortunes of the Boer War.

Film 1: Images of the later, tragic stages of the conflict were captured by the newly-invented Box Brownie camera, which went to war for the first time in the knapsack of the ordinary soldier. (Director: ROBERT MARSHALL)

MASTERSPY: Christopher Andrew tells the still secret story of 'C', the first, eccentric head of the puny amateur organisation which was eventually to become the modern Secret Intelligence Service. (Director: JONATHAN DENT)

Film 3: Extracts from the diaries of THE REV ANDREW CLARK reveal the way the momentous events of the First World War touched and changed daily life in his tiny Essex village of Great Leighs. (Director TONY TYLEY)

Executive producer ROY DAVIES

Editor BRUCE NORMAN

Aspects of War

SUMMER OF THE HANGING JUDGE: An examination of the life and times of Judge George Jeffreys 300 years after he presided over the infamous Bloody Assizes which followed the Monmouth Rebellion.

BIRTH OF THE EXPERT WITNESS: Christopher Andrew assesses the important developments in forensic evidence in the hands of medical experts in major trials during the 19th century.

TWELVE GOOD MEN AND TRUE: Jennifer Brooks analyses events at the Old Bailey in September 1670 when 12 men established for all time the right of a jury to return an independent verdict after hearing a case involving William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania.

Elements of Justice

Film 1: As the world waits for Halley's Comet, a recently discovered diary written by a 17th-century merchant from Rye in Sussex reveals the feelings of a man caught up in a scientific revolution, when the new discipline of astronomy shouldered aside the age-old belief in astrology. Author Aubrey Burl, authority on stone circles, outlines new theories which suggest that the ancient peoples of Britain used the world's most famous circle as a lunar as well as a solar observatory.

Film 2: A look back at events earlier this year when Stonehenge and the hill fort at Maiden Castle were at the centre of English Heritage's controversial plans to preserve our past - a controversy that still rages over who digs what and where, that has split the usually placid world of archaeology.

Magic Circles

Three films which reflect the way official records are preserved for future generations.

Film 1: Christopher Andrew examines the extraordinary story of how the MS Automedon, entrusted with top secret documents, fell into enemy hands a year before the fall of Singapore and delivered to the Japanese priceless information which changed the course of the Second World War.

Film 2: Peter Ibbotson reveals how the authorities decide which documents are thrown away and which are to be kept for future generations.

Film 3: In a case which has parallels with modern phone-tapping scandals, Jeremy Black uses documents from Chancery Lane to show how the Foreign Office and the Post Office intercepted political mail in the early 18th century as Britain edged towards stable parliamentary democracy.

Matter of Record

Two stories shed new light on the life and times of Henry Tudor, who took the throne of England from Richard III 500 years ago.

Film 1: The problems facing Margaret Rule and her assistant Andrew Fielding as they put back into the hull of the Mary Rose the thousands of timbers and artefacts which have helped to give a picture of the men who manned the guns of the British Navy in the early 16th century.

HENRY VII: Reassessing the life of Henry VII - the king who may well have commissioned the Mary Rose. David Starkey argues none of the glories of the Tudor dynasty would have been possible without the peace and prosperity which came from his astute control of finance and politics.

Three films presented from the British Museum reveal how visionaries and others dealt with the 'outsider' as they set out to perfect a society, a state and a national image at the turn of the 19th century.

Film 1: English reformers constructed a new prison system - only to find that within 20 years it was a total failure.

Film 2: The Brothers Grimm falsified their country's original folk tales to define behaviour 'acceptable to the architects ' of the new Germany.

Film 3: Satirical cartoonists vilified the national characteristics of the Welsh, the Scots and the Irish to build up the concept of pure Englishness.

The Master Builders

Three stories presented from the Virago bookshop in Covent Garden about the lives of women in worlds dominated by men.

THE NINE DAY QUEEN: Lady Jane Grey was used by men of power when she was alive, and by male propagandists when she was dead. A new film about her life is to be released next month. What interpretation do its makers offer of the 16-year-old girl who was beheaded for treason more than 400 years ago?

MOST DANGEROUS WOMEN shows how close the leaders of a women's international peace movement came to getting the most powerful men in the world to stop the Great War in the middle of 1915.

THE WORLD OF MARY ELLEN BEST illustrates how one woman artist left a vivid record of the domestic surroundings of her time simply because she was denied the opportunities freely available to her male contemporaries.

In January 1943 lone British agent Henri Dericourt was dropped over occupied France. His mission was to organise the reception and departure of RAF flights crucial to the secret work of SOE - the Special Operations Executive. Dericourt quickly earned a stellar reputation, but within six months of his arrival, the SOE's largest network in France was wiped out and more than 400 French resistance workers arrested. Post-war investigations established that Dericourt had fed secrets to the Germans ever since he had begun his work in France. But Dericourt was no simple traitor. What then was his role in the disaster and for whom was he really working?

Special: All the King's Men

In 1936 'The Road to War' used newsreel to try to alert the American people to the mounting horror of war in China, Ethiopia, Italy, Germany, Austria and Spain. But America did not want to know and the film disappeared without trace until last year. Its rediscovery and the memories of the men who made it - Irving Allen and Herbert Bregstein - exposes American attitudes to Fascism as the world headed for war.

The Road to War

Peter France introduces three films exploring the backgrounds of historic items recently auctioned and the motivations of the bidders:

- A Victoria Cross won at the battle of Rorke's Drift more than 100 years ago

- Four pages from a medieval illuminated manuscript about the life of Saint Thomas Beckett, changing hands for the first time in nearly 500 years

The Price of the Past

The Domesday Book was completed 900 years ago, but it says little about the daily worries and concerns of the people whose land and animals are recorded in so much detail. Three films help evoke something of the real lives of those people.

Film 1: Christopher Andrew learns from England rugby star Mark Bailey about the social and economic impact of the rabbit;

Film 2: Patricia Morison explains some of the ways open to men and women of those times to cure their illness and complaints;

Film 3: Norman Stone investigates why there has never been another Domesday Book - a register of just who owns this green and pleasant land. He has uncovered a story of centuries of privacy, secrecy and vested interests which has left England as the only country in Europe without a public and accessible register of land ownership.

A Medieval Affair

Film 1: How a Bulgarian peasant farmer stumbled across the largest Thracian treasure ever discovered - more than 160 silver bowls and jugs, found while digging an irrigation ditch.

THE MAN WHO MADE HISTORY: How an Italian who 'imitated the past' has become known as one of the greatest forgers of all time.

The Human Factor

Peter France presents three films which reflect the extent to which codes of 'honour', allegiance' and 'behaviour' have had their effect on British history.

1: Christopher Andrew examines the demise of duelling 100 years ago.

2: Ian Dear tells the story of the duplicity behind the victories which kept the America's Cup in New York for 130 years.

3: Phillip Knightley shows the process by which British Intelligence secrets have been leaked steadily since the end of the Second World War.

Codes of Conduct

Views of Oliver Cromwell vary as much today as when Parliament asked him to become King in 1657: a tyrant, a repressed religious bigot who murdered a king; a patriot, civilised with a tremendous sense of humour, and conscience in matters of state and religion. How do modern historians view the parliamentarian who some have called the greatest Englishman?

Faces of Cromwell

Two stories showing how previous generations have dealt with the problems of pollution and disease:

DEVONSHIRE COLIC: In Georgian times, a crippling illness struck thousands of cider drinkers in the west of England, who found mysterious relief only by taking the waters at Bath Spa.

In Victorian England, prostitutes, seen as carriers of venereal disease, were forcibly detained and treated in hospitals until they were considered unlikely to infect the male population - particularly the lower ranks of the Army and Royal Navy.

Symptoms of an Age

Mary Queen of Scots has come down to us as a tragic heroine - but what kind of respect does she command as a 16th-century ruler? Anne Boleyn is usually seen either as a scheming predator or as a pathetic figure executed because she failed to produce a male heir for Henry VIII. Historians Jenny Wormald and Eric Ives set out to show that the popular images of Mary and Anne have to be radically reassessed, and Peter France sets their tragic stories into the context of the religious turmoil of the 16th century.

Fateful Century

1: The last attempt by central government to impose educational benchmarks on the majority of British schools.

2: Disinherited Londoners recall the community spirit of a Notting Hill street torn down for redevelopment 25 years ago.

3: Cambridge don David Cannadine explores current attitudes toward British history.

Times of Change

Christopher Andrew and Gabriel Ronay investigate two political mysteries.

THE ZINOVIEV LETTER led to the defeat of the first Labour Government in 1924. Was it genuine - or was it an early attempt to use 'red scare' tactics to bring down a democratically elected government? And if so, who sent it?

THE PRINCE OF TRANSYLVANIA received a pension from Charles II and a magnificent burial in Rochester Cathedral. But was he a prince or a con-man - and why was he so hideously murdered?

Affairs of State

What really happened in Russia in October 1917? How far can we rely on the vivid films from the period to give us a true picture of the Revolution and, of incidents such as the storming of the Winter Palace in St Petersburg? Christopher Andrew, in a critical examination of documentary evidence and the memories of Russian emigres who were eyewitnesses to the events of 1917, steers a path through the propaganda, censorship, carelessness and sheer misunderstanding that have distorted the historical record in Russia and the West for the past 70 years.

Images of a Revolution

Two films examine the reality behind the ideal.

When MANFRED VON RICHTHOFEN died in 1918 he had become a figure of myth; a knight of the air with 80 victories to his credit. But the legend of the Red Baron hid a quiet, aloof man whose aristocratic sense of honour drove him to his death.

WILLIAM MARSHAL, 700 years earlier, was described as the greatest knight in the world. He was loyal, generous, and the champion of many battles. He used his reputation to drag himself up from obscure origins to become Regent of England and Protector of Henry III.

The Art of Chivalry

Explores the trial of Nazi officer Adolph Eichmann through a controversial book, 'Eichmann in Jerusalem' by Hannah Arendt. Many Jews read her reports from Jerusalem with a sense of deep hurt and outrage as she questioned the legality and political purpose of the trial, portraying Eichmann as 'banal rather than evil', and making sweeping comments on Jewish resistance and cooperation. Using archive film of the trial and interviews with friends, historians, and survivors of the camps in New York and Jerusalem, this documentary pieces together the different reactions to Arendt's arguments, and to the painful process of turning the Holocaust into history.

Judgment in Jerusalem

Three films examine the ways our historical record is under attack. In fireproof vaults, millions of feet of film shot on nitrate stock in the first half of this century are decomposing - their images in danger of being lost for ever. In publishing houses, the paper deliberately chosen to print the written word since the end of the last century is destroying itself at a steady rate. In dealers' galleries, maps and the historical record which accompanied them have been systematically separated to satisfy enthusiasts, collectors, and the demands of the marketplace. Where will the destruction lead?

Evidence of Neglect

The control of national television is seen by regimes the world over as a necessary adjunct to their survival today. Peter France presents two films about the control and effect of mass communications in other times. The first tells the story of the financial control of the political press by the establishment in early 19th-century Britain, and the second the psychological power of a dramatic radio broadcast in the USA 100 years later, when the young Orson Welles petrified a nation.

Wars of the Word

Henry Lincoln investigates the story of the 'Man in the Iron Mask' and - using evidence which only came to light last year - separates fact from romantic myth.

The Man in the Iron Mask

In September 1944, in retaliation for Dutch support of the Arnhem landings, the Nazis cut off all food supplies to the population of western Holland. Stocks fell through the following winter until by March 1945 the official ration was down to 500 calories a day. As four million people faced death from starvation, the only hope of relief lay in persuading the Germans to negotiate an unprecedented truce.

The Hunger Winter

Christopher Andrew presents two stories from the darker and more secret side of British history over the past 150 years.

THE DIARY OF A VERY ENGLISH SPY is an insight, based on a unique document, into the training and instruction given to secret agents at a British spy school during the First World War where elements of present spycraft were first perfected.

'... AND ONE LAW FOR THE POOR': How the 1832 Anatomy Act denied the poor and the destitute the freedom to bury their dead but supplied anatomy schools - previously reliant on stealthy body snatchers - with a regular and legal supply of human cadavers.

Dishonour and Death

How old is the Shroud of Turin? To millions of believers it's the burial cloth of Jesus, to sceptics it's a clever medieval fake. Recently the age of the shroud was finally determined by radiocarbon dating. A Timewatch team went to Turin to follow the preparation of the shroud for the scientists, and to Zurich to film the actual tests.

Verdict on the Shroud

Bizarre theories have surrounded the unexplained killings in Whitechapel since they hit the headlines in 1888. This film dispels the grisly fiction, revealing for the first time the true contents of the police and Home Office files on the case, drawing on the expertise of historians and of those who have encountered today's killers - on the street or behind bars. Revisiting the sites of the crimes, piecing together evidence from Victorian locations across London, the invention of the legend becomes clear, as Christopher Frayling unravels the circumstances which turned a killer into a Gothic hero.

Shadow of the Ripper

One hundred years after the matchgirls strike, this dramatised documentary looks at the life of Annie Besant, strike leader, pioneering 19th-century social reformer, and campaigner for the use of contraception who towards the end of her life turned towards theosophy.

A Woman's Story

Peter France examines the Glorious Revolution of 1688 from the perspective of William of Orange, unearthing the real motives behind his invasion.

Visions of a Conqueror: The Glorious Revolution

Fifty years ago, Nikolai Bukharin, Lenin's right-hand man and favourite of the Bolsheviks, was shot by Stalin's henchmen after the last of the infamous show trials in Moscow. Mikhail Gorbachev recently proclaimed his death a travesty of justice and his trial a farce. Granted special permission to cover the story and the first interview with Bukharin's widow Anna, Timewatch accompanies Sir Fitzroy Maclean back to the city where he attended Bukharin's trial in 1938 to find Russians eager to talk for the first time about the terror of the '30s.

Bukharin and the Terror

During the Nazi occupation of eastern Poland, a small group of Jews in the city of Lvov tried to save themselves from the death camps by hiding in the sewers beneath the city for more than 14 months. Timewatch reunited four remaining survivors in 1988 to record their accounts. The oldest, Mundek Margulies, journeyed back to Lvov (now part of the Soviet Union) and with co-operation from local authorities, went down into the sewers and through the maze of tunnels to help describe this extraordinary episode of human courage and endurance from the Jewish Holocaust.

Light in the Dark

What effect did Charlie Chaplin have on the sale of tea? What first caused the sudden and surprising popularity of tennis and golf? And to what extent was the middle class of England responsible for changing an era of optimism and peace into the nightmare of the First World War? Eric Hobsbawm, one of Britain's leading historians, offers some insight into the 19th century and describes a world that was about to disappear for ever.

An Age of Empire

For nearly 50 years the world has been led to believe President Roosevelt's statement that the attack was a total surprise and completely unsuspected by the neutral Americans. But witnesses from all over the world are now coming forward to tell a different story - that Washington was repeatedly warned about the coming attack. Two men who certainly weren't told that they were the likely target for a Japanese air strike were the commanders responsible for the safety of the fleet at Pearl Harbor, 2,000 miles out into the Pacific. Here the whole story is told for the first time - beginning with the breaking of the vital Japanese Naval Code by the British more than two years before.

Sacrifice at Pearl Harbor

Two stories reflect the contribution made to history by non-professionals.

BRITISH AND GUARANTEED: A look at those who re-create their childhood and the golden age of British engineering by collecting Frank Hornby's celebrated model trains.

A BATCHELOR'S DELIGHT: Anne Batchelor has spent four years tracing her family line back to 1527. Among her ancestors is the Elizabethan lutenist, Daniel Bachiler.

Playing with History

Two eyewitness accounts of the past - 500 years apart.

The 15th-century letters of Margaret Paston push aside people's misconceptions about medieval women as passive objects. Harriet Walter brings to life a woman of immense strength, resourcefulness, and courage.

The second film provides startling testimony to a horrifying episode of post-war murder of Polish Jews, filmed secretly by a crew from the Polish trade union Solidarity. Few films from eastern Europe have raised such disturbing questions.

Witnesses

In July 1962, Harold Macmillan sacked a third of his Cabinet, including Chancellor of the Exchequer and some of his oldest political friends. Did the normally unflappable Macmillan panic? Was there, as Macmillan claimed, a plot to overthrow him and, if so, who was behind it? Rare archive film and interviews with Macmillan's closest confidants and victims of his purge offer new evidence for this unprecedented act of political butchery.

The Night of the Long Knives

Did the atomic bombs that fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki really shorten the war and save Allied lives? Based on American archive records, this dramatic account of the decision to use the atomic bomb reveals the reality of power politics - and pinpoints the origins of the Cold War.

Summer of the Bomb

England's land was green but never pleasant. So why do villages and fields conjure up a happy, wholesome past? This film unravels the ironic tale of poverty in countryside and town which led to the invention of a rural fantasy in the years before the First World War. Glimpsing for the first time the new volume of Edith Holden's Country Diary, Timewatch asks why it was that these sweet Edwardian dreams finally came to hide the sour realities altogether.

The Land of Lost Content

Leon Trotsky was one of the architects of the Russian Revolution and creator of the Red Army. Brilliant and eloquent, and expected to succeed Lenin, he was forced into exile, airbrushed out of Soviet history and murdered in 1940 on the direct orders of Joseph Stalin. Today, as Stalin's terrible heritage is being slowly dismantled, this film, using archive footage and personal memoirs, looks at the life and ideas of the revolutionary who was the dictator's first and greatest enemy. (edited from the 1987 French miniseries 'Trotsky')

Trotsky

During the Second World War, Italian forces in Yugoslavia murdered hundreds of thousands of civilians. Historians have now exposed the startling political reasons why there was never an Italian equivalent of the Nuremberg Trials. Michael Bryant narrates the story of the implementation of Mussolini's policy of Italianisation in the Balkans. Part 1 of 2.

Fascist Legacy: 1: A Promise Fulfilled

At the end of the Second World War, conclusive evidence of war crimes was presented against more than 1,200 high-ranking Italian Fascists. Yet despite constant protests from the governments of Yugoslavia, Greece and Ethiopia, not one Italian war criminal was ever extradited to stand trial for crimes committed during the Italian occupation of their countries. Michael Bryant tells the story of how, for political and military reasons, the British and American governments chose to block the extradition of any Italian war criminals, many of whom by then held key positions in the Italian government. Part 2 of 2.

Fascist Legacy: 2: A Pledge Betrayed

Was the last prisoner of Spandau Prison in Berlin really Rudolf Hess, one time deputy to Adolf Hitler, or a doppelganger put in his place by the Nazis before his incredible flight to Britain in 1941? Claims have been made in recent years that the body of the man who died in Spandau Prison in 1987 at the age of 93 bore none of the chest wounds suffered by the real Hess in the First World War. Christopher Andrew talks to wartime witnesses and forensic experts in a personal investigation to establish whether the strange case of Rudolf Hess is a genuine example of the conspiracy theory of history.

An Edge of Conspiracy

Timewatch explores the myth of the man who had a vision of a united Europe 175 years ago.

Napoleon's Last Battle

The Communist party of Hungary has been forced to surrender its monopoly on truth, but it still controls access to the official archives. Any truths about the past 40 years must, therefore, come from the people themselves: witnesses, participants and victims, whose accounts are being gathered by historians, sociologists and film-makers. The history they recall has already had its effect on the pace of reform.

Hungary: The End of Silence

In 1945 the German State and its army disappeared. Recently, harrowing tales from Germans who were prisoners in American camps at that time have begun to emerge. A Canadian author has alleged that nearly a million German soldiers died while prisoners of the Allies. His figures are disputed, but did the American authorities, with images of concentration camps fresh in their minds, set out to punish Germans?

Accounts of a Forgotten Army

In the USA it is becoming standard practice for police to call in archaeologists and anthropologists with their skills at excavation and bone analysis to help them unravel murder cases. Now a British police force is looking at what the academics can offer them.

Helping the Police with Their Enquiries

In January 1987 a band of grave robbers broke into a royal tomb at Sipan in northern Peru. The treasure they plundered was worth millions. Within months it had been smuggled by way of London to Los Angeles. Timewatch examines the international trade in antiquities, and uncovers a tale of ancient gold and modern greed.

The Sipan Affair

On the shore of Sabbathday Lake in Maine lives a religious community of nine men and women. They are the last practising Shakers - members of a sect once persecuted for its dissenting beliefs and celibate lifestyle. Granted unique access, Timewatch explores their struggle to maintain their religious and historic identity while furniture made by previous generations of Shakers breaks saleroom records around the world.

I Don't Want to Be Remembered As a Chair

Seven hundred years ago tomorrow - on 1 November 1290 - the Jews were expelled from England. Christopher Andrew unfolds the extraordinary story of England's medieval Jews and discovers the English roots of European anti-Semitism.

All the King's Jews

In 1914-15 138,000 Indians fought on the Western Front. More than a quarter were casualties. We know what the ordinary soldier felt about the war in France because his letters home were translated and censored. The programme tells the story of those men who fought and died for a country whose language, culture and traditions were alien to them.

A War Far from Home

Charles Wheeler tells how the colonial policy of the post-war Labour government led to the start of a 30-year war in Vietnam.

One of the Reasons Why

On January 23 1915, black insurgents broke into a house on the biggest plantation in British colonial Nyasaland. The rebels killed the white manager, cut off his head and carried it home. The planter's name was William Livingstone. The rebel leader was the black Baptist pastor, John Chilembwe. Two men trapped by a clash of civilizations.

White Man's Grave, Black Man's Grave

Historians and archaeologists have started to reassess some of the ingrained myths of American history. American Indians lived in sophisticated societies, and many more died as a result of the European settlement of North America than has so far been imagined. Andrew Sachs narrates the story of how Puritan prejudices helped to generate false views of Indians.

Savagery and the American Indian: 1: Wilderness

Every year the Sioux nation of South Dakota pays homage to more than 300 unarmed Indians killed by US troops on 29 December 1890. For the survivors and their descendants, it was the beginning of a deliberate and systematic process to destroy their way of life. One hundred years after those events, witnesses recall the terrible emotional scars caused by the US government's disastrous attempts to Europeanise the American Indian.

Savagery and the American Indian: 2: Civilisation

The assassination a year ago of Dr Gerald Bull prevented Saddam Hussein from acquiring a 'supergun'. Bull designed the world's best howitzers, many bought by Iraq, but the supergun remained his lifelong ambition. David Taylor chronicles how the Canadian scientist who plundered the lost secrets of Nazi terror weapons became the victim of his own obsession.

The Man Who Made the Supergun

In 1934, Robert Robinson, a young black car worker from Detroit, was blacklisted by America after renewing a short-term contract from the Russians to work in the First State Ball Bearing Plant in Moscow. During his enforced 44 years inside the Soviet Union, Robinson was coerced to work alongside Stalin on the Moscow Soviet and ultimately to take citizenship. He finally succeeded in escaping while on a visit to Uganda. Now 84 and living in Washington, DC, Robert Robinson recounts his extraordinary life and observations of the Soviet Union during a crucial period in its history.

Reluctant Comrade

A death ray to combat the Antichrist; the effectiveness of astrology; the bizarre sexual practices of the Brahmins; and the impossibility of a society whose sole aim is money and gain. These are some of the ideas which the eccentric medieval scholar Roger Bacon wanted to transmit to the Pope when he wrote to him in 1268. It is a work which gives us a glimpse of the strange and compelling mental landscape of the Middle Ages.

The Transmission of Roger Bacon

For the last three years Palestinians have been involved in an Intifada against the Israeli occupation of their homeland; 50 years ago the British administration in Palestine was faced with an armed Arab rebellion which was suppressed with a brutality as severe as that employed by the Israelis today. The aftermath of the first Intifada is still seen by many Palestinians as contributing directly to the problems of the Middle East.

Palestine: The First Intifada

In 1945 Britain, America and the USSR were allies against Hitler; less than a year later Winston Churchill condemned Soviet expansionism. With east-west relations once again at a crossroads, Dr Christopher Andrew examines the origins of mutual distrust which was at the heart of the Cold War.

A Cold War

The story of how Britain abandoned Spain's democratically elected government during the Spanish Civil War of 1936 and gave clandestine support to the nationalists and General Franco. Remarkable new evidence discovered in Spanish archives shows that Britain used all its economic and diplomatic cunning to safeguard its political and commercial interests in Spain by ensuring victory for General Franco's forces. NEW SEASON.

Beside Franco in Spain

Charles Darwin lived in fear of disgrace because of his views. He believed that humans were just a better sort of ape, that we evolved from worms. These were shattering ideas, especially from a man trained for the Church. Using new research, historians Adrian Desmond and James Moore see Darwin not as the far-sighted hero of the Beagle voyage, but as a privileged Victorian with everything to lose by publishing the heretical views he developed in survival-of-the-fittest London. Wracked with worry, Darwin was sick for most of the 20 years it took him to pluck up courage to tell the world his brutal theory of natural selection.

Charles Darwin - Devil's Chaplain

Was Columbus really the first to discover America? Five hundred years ago three ships sailed from Spain on the most famous voyage in history - west, west and always west across the unknown ocean. But now a modern Spanish ship's officer and a journalist have re-created that momentous voyage to test their astonishing theory that Columbus not only knew where he was going but also what he would find in the not-so-New World.

The Columbus Conspiracy

In the first of two programmes about the First World War, German writer Ludwig Harig makes a pilgrimage to the Somme, hoping to understand why his father was unable to speak about the war. Archive film and the moving testimony of witnesses evoke the realities of life behind the Front. And in France, he finds a generation still haunted by their memories.

Harvests of Iron: 1: The Watch on the Somme

The letters between military surgeon Georges Duhamel and his wife Blanche lay forgotten in a family attic for 75 years. Recently rediscovered, they reveal a poignant love story set against the backdrop of the First World War. In 1914, Blanche Duhamel moved to the frontline capital at Amiens, from where the lights of the trenches were visible, in order to be closer to her husband. Previously unseen film footage shows how business and pleasure continued alongside scenes of suffering as British and colonial troops came and went from the city.

Harvests of Iron: 2: The Theatre of Operations

In the 1830s a pioneering social investigation into child labour uncovered an appalling picture of deprivation, poverty and remorseless physical exploitation throughout Britain and sparked off a fierce debate between Victorian capitalists and reformers. Timewatch has drawn upon the testimonies of the children involved for this dramatised account.

Suffer the Children

Timewatch is a long-running British television series showing documentaries on historical subjects, spanning all human history. It was first broadcast on 29 September 1982 and is produced by the BBC, the Timewatch brandname is used as a banner title in the UK, but many of the individual documentaries can be found on US cable channels without the branding.

The Best Seasons of Timewatch

The Best Seasons of Timewatch

Season 27

Season 7

Season 20

Season 1

Season 2

Season 3

Season 4

Season 5

Season 6

Season 8

Season 9

Season 10

Season 11

Season 12

Season 13

Season 14

Season 15

Season 16

Season 17

Season 18

Season 19

Season 21

Season 22

Season 23

Season 24

Season 25

Season 26

Season 28

Season 29

Season 30