History

 
Crater1

Fireball of Christ

The astonishing evidence that a deadly meteorite impact may have played a part in the adoption of Christianity by the Roman Empire, and so changed the world.

In AD312 the Roman Emperor Constantine claimed he saw a mysterious light in the sky which convinced him to convert to Christianity – and so changed the history of the world. Now scientists believe they may have tracked down the source of this mysterious light. 

 
Percy Pilchers Flying Machine

Percy Pilcher’s Flying Machine

In 1899, four years before the Wright brothers' maiden flight, the leading British aviation pioneer Percy Pilcher built a powered aircraft.

On 17 December 1903 the Wright brothers completed the world’s first ever sustained powered flight. Yet it could be an altogether different name we remember today.   This programme sets out to answer: could Percy Pilcher’s machine have flown? 

 
Landscape Mysteries 8 x 30

Landscape Mysteries (8 x 30’)

Taking viewers around the British Isles to uncover the amazing stories which have shaped the landscapes we live in.

Join Aubrey Manning as he solves some of the mysteries of the landscape: what’s the origin of the chalk figures in the downs of southern England, or the mysterious stone towers in Shetland, or the terraces on the sloping sides of Glastonbury Tor? 

 
Talking Landscapes  6 x 30

Talking Landscapes (6 x 30’)

Six programmes in which Aubrey Manning sets out on a journey to decipher the hidden stories of the British landscape.

The history of Britain is written in the landscape. Generation after generation have left behind clues to their ways of life – in the patterns of fields and hedgerows, rivers and marshes. Who moulded the landscape around us?

 
Stone Age Columbus

Stone Age Columbus

One of the most epic journeys in human history – a voyage across the Atlantic in some of the harshest conditions the world has ever known.

These intrepid voyagers were not explorers, Vikings or adventurers. They were men, women and children. And it appears they reached America 15,000 years before Columbus, at the height of the Ice Age.