For ten years western intelligence has fought a secret war against Al Qaeda, the most deadly and sophisticated terrorist organization the world has ever faced. In the decades since 9/11 the west has employed unprecedented and controversial methods, drone attacks, secret prisons and torture. Peter Taylor the filmmaker has reported on terrorist conflicts for almost forty years and in his words, neve
In 1986 a group of Romanian scientists working near the Black Sea stumbled upon one of the most amazing discoveries of this century, one that would revolutionise our understanding of what life itself is and where it came from.Geologist and cave explorer Cristian Lascu was inspecting a series of six test wells near a site where the government had planned to construct a nuclear power plant, the
In 1542, the Spanish Conquistador, Francisco de Orellana ventured along the Rio Negro, one of the Amazon Basin's great rivers. Hunting a hidden city of gold, his expedition found a network of farms, villages and even huge walled cities. At least that is what he told an eager audience on his return to Spain.The prospect of gold drew others to explore the region, but none could find the people o
Once upon a time the ability to draw was seen as the first and most essential skill of any artist, but in the age of the unmade bed and the pickled shark, drawing is widely perceived as an old fashioned activity. Many modern art schools don't even teach it, preferring to arm their students with digital or video cameras. In this four part documentary series Andrew Graham-Dixon, challenges the tedio
There is a battle playing out inside your body right now. It started billions of years ago and it is still being fought in every one of us every minute of every day. It is the story of a viral infection - the battle for the cell.This film reveals the exquisite machinery of the human cell system from within the inner world of the cell itself - from the frenetic membrane surface that acts as a s
Everyday we give thousands of bags of our old clothes away to charity shops and in this documentary BBC's presenter Ade Adepitan is on a journey to find out what happens to it all. Most of us think the clothes, sent to charity shops are sold there but in reality most of it ends up thousands of miles away in Africa.
If you’re reading this any time after lunch and you’re not dead, well done. You have, in the words of Professor Russell Foster, a chronobiologist, “survived the most dangerous part of the day”. Chronobiologists study the body’s various internal clocks. In this documentary, specialists reveal, among other things, that you are three times more likely to have a heart attack between 6.00am and noon, w
It means even on the lower levels of life, there is a profound consciousness or awareness that bonds all things together. Published in 1973, The Secret Life of Plants was written by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird. It is described as “A fascinating account of the physical, emotional, and spiritual relations between plants and man.” Essentially, the subject of the book is the idea that plants m
In 1964 the Disney film "Mary Poppins" was released to world wide acclaim, the film told of a magical world where chimney sweeps are happier than bankers, where you can jump into living pictures on the pavement, it made an international star of Julie Andrews overnight and it changed forever what our concept of a nanny is or should be. One person however hated the cheery tone of the film, this was