The Victoria Cross: For Valour is a 2003 BBC television historical documentary presented by Jeremy Clarkson. Clarkson examines the history of the Victoria Cross, and follows the story of one of the 1,354 men who were awarded it - Major Robert Henry Cain. The main part of the programme was to describe how in September 1944, Major Cain won what was described as the "finest Victoria Cross of the whol
James Landale retraces the steps of his ancestor, a well respected merchant who met his adversary at dawn in a field just outside of Kirkcaldy in southern Fife on August 23, 1826.The challenge was made over a bank loan and against a soldier-turned-banker that spread malicious rumours and lies.James takes us on a journey as he uncovers what really happened and delves in and investigates the
We are the most power-hungry generation that has ever lived. This film tells the story of how that power has been harnessed – from wind, steam and from inside the atom. In the early years the drive for new sources of power was led by practical men who wanted to make money.Their inventions and ideas created fortunes and changed the course of history, but it took centuries for science to catch up,
Professor Iain Stewart continues his epic exploration of how the planet has shaped human history. Iain explores man's relationship with fire. He begins by embarking on an extraordinary encounter with this terrifying force of nature - a walk right through the heart of a raging fire. Fire has long been our main source of energy and Iain shows how this meant that the planet played a crucial role in B
Can technology help us tame nature’s most violent tornadoes? Little on this earth can withstand the violent fury of an F5 tornado. A churning vortex with winds over 300 miles an hour, these tornadoes create immense swaths of death and destruction in a matter of seconds. But today, experts are exploring the supertwister’s complex inner workings in bold new ways in the hopes of one day being able to
Marking the 70th anniversary of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, historian Professor David Reynolds re-assesses Stalin’s role in the life and death struggle between Germany and Russia in World War Two, which, he argues, was ultimately more critical for British survival than ‘Our Finest Hour’ in the Battle of Britain itself.The name Stalin means ‘man of steel’, but Reynolds’s pene
This time the team heads back into a dark corner of the 19th century, to a time when corpses were turned into trophies and children were sold by the inch.Their subject is the bizarre mummified body of a child.Sue and the team pick up the trail that leads to body snatching, serial murder and anatomical science in darkest Victorian Britain. Can they give our boy a home, a face, or a name?
The Battle of the Somme, fought in the summer and autumn of 1916, was one of the largest battles of the First World War. With more than one million casualties, it was also one of the bloodiest battles in human history. The Allied forces attempted to break through the German lines along a 25-mile (40 km) front north and south of the River Somme in northern France. One purpose of the battle was to d
Broadcast (1998) A curious feature of our planet’s surface is that it has two distinct levels: the dry land on the continents, on average a few hundred metres above sea level, and the ocean floor, making up two thirds of the Earth’s surface, several kilometres below sea level. Only in the past fifty years have scientists begun to explore in detail this vast region, revealing beneath the waves a la