Historian Thomas Penn reveals the secrets of founder of Britain’s great Tudor Dynasty - and his amazing trajectory to power. Two weeks after landing on the shores Wales in 1485 with a small band of mercenaries, Henry of Richmond defeats the notorious Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth. He is crowned Henry VII and then begins a career of realpolitik, a charming exterior making a savage ambition. The War of the Roses, his wife Elizabeth of York, and the beginning of the Renaissance are all part of this incredible history, as are Henry’s obsessions with money and astonishing spy network.
Shrouded in mystery and long the subject of debate, the amazing story of Loreta Velazquez is one of the Civil War’s most gripping forgotten narratives. While the U.S. military may have recently lifted the ban on women in combat, Loreta Janeta Velazquez, a Cuban immigrant from New Orleans, was fighting in battle 150 years ago — one of an estimated 1,000 women who secretly served as soldiers during the American Civil War. Who was she? Why did she fight? And what made her so dangerous she has been virtually erased from history?
Home movies shot by the controversial Edward VIII reveal the untold story of his extravagant safaris with the real life cast of "Out of Africa" in the late 1920s, complete with adultery, champagne and specially built airstrips. At the height of the Great White Hunter era, Edward turned his back on big game hunting and championed conservation instead. Inspired by his safari guide, Denys Finch-Hatton - played by Robert Redford in the Oscar winning film - he put down his rifle and picked up a movie camera, pioneering the photographic safaris we all know today.
This countdown special reveals the weapons, inventions and vehicles that shaped and decided World War II. Counting down from 10 to 1, we ll provide an expert-led analysis of key game changers, from every theatre of the war.
Emily Davison stepped into the path of the King's horse at the 1913 Derby and was fatally injured. Clare Balding uncovers her story and finds out how a middle-class governess became a radical activist.
Thomas Cromwell has gone down in history as one of the most corrupt and manipulative ruffians ever to hold power in England. A chief minister who used his position to smash the Roman Catholic church in England and loot the monasteries for his own gain. A man who used torture to bring about the execution of the woman who had once been his friend and supporter - Anne Boleyn. Diarmaid MacCulloch, professor of the history of the church at Oxford University, reveals a very different image of Cromwell. He describes Cromwell as an evangelical reformer, determined to break the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic church and introduce the people of England to a new type of Christianity in which each individual makes direct contact with God.
Writers and historians including Hilary Mantel and Philippa Gregory revisit the last days of Anne Boleyn, who in 1536 became the first queen in British history to be executed.
Patagonia, 1960. A German doctor meets an Argentinean family and follows them to a town where the family will be starting a new life. The family welcomes the doctor into their home and entrust their young daughter to his care, not knowing that he is one of the most dangerous criminals in the world.
The film tells about the tragic date in the history of the Crimean Tatar people — May 18, 1944 — Stalin’s deportation of the Crimean Tatars. The plot of the film — a pilot, twice Hero of the Soviet Union, Amethan Sultan. In May, 1944, a year after liberation of Sevastopol Amethan goes on vacation to his native town Alupka. On May 18 his eyes witness begining of deportation of the Crimean Tatars.
The documentary exposes the ways in which America's foreign policy agenda in the Middle East drives the U.S. media's portrayals of Arabs and Muslims. The film lays bare the truths behind taboo subjects that are conspicuously avoided, or merely treated as sound bites, by the mainstream American media: "Why do they hate us?" "Why do we hate them?" What were the events that led to the 9/11 attacks? What are the politics behind the U.S.-Israeli relationship? Why is there a robust debate about these subjects in Europe, the Arab World and in Israel itself, but not in the U.S.? Valentino's Ghost provides a fresh inquiry which challenges the media's daily barrage of rhetoric and misinformation about our complex and vital relationship with this part of the world
Reza is a freelance journalist who accidentally finds clues from Hiwa, an Iraqi soldier who saved Reza years ago in the harsh conditions of war. He leaves for Iraq to answer the issues he has been hiding from those around him for years.
In the mid-nineteenth century, three sisters astonished the world with their ability to talk to the dead. But what began as a clever prank to gain fortune and fame, soon spiraled beyond anything they could have ever predicted. Based on the true story of The Fox Sisters.
The compelling story of an extraordinary woman's journey from her birth in a paper thin shack in the cotton fields of Georgia to her recognition as a key writer of the twentieth Century.Walker made history as the first black woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for her groundbreaking novel, The Color Purple.
Roque Dalton was the Bertolt Brecht of Central America. His political struggle against the Salvadorian dictatorships brought him into jail various times. He became throughout Latin America a symbol for the fight against social injustice and helped establish one of his country's first guerrilla organizations.
In a small rural town hit hard by the Depression, Katie Connors resides in a middle-class home with her bootlegging husband Melvin. When the opportunity arises to bump him off without getting her hands dirty, she takes a chance she may never get again. After his murder at the hands of criminal Richard Hayden, she begins to receive inopportune visits by Melvin's old business partners about a large shipment of moonshine in her possession. Contacting the FBI for help, agent Ron Sheridan is assigned to her case and develops an unrequited love for Katie. But when a full-scale war develops, she learns the FBI may not be much help to her as she thought, and Katie must take matters into her own hands to pay off her husband's debts for good.