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We don't have an overview translated in English. Help us expand our database by adding one.

We don't have an overview translated in English. Help us expand our database by adding one.

We don't have an overview translated in English. Help us expand our database by adding one.

We don't have an overview translated in English. Help us expand our database by adding one.

We don't have an overview translated in English. Help us expand our database by adding one.

We don't have an overview translated in English. Help us expand our database by adding one.

We don't have an overview translated in English. Help us expand our database by adding one.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.