Real History

Being born as second in line to the throne was always sure to have some effect on Prince Harry's life. Despite this, no one could have predicted the twists and turns that Harry's life took. We take a look at the life of the Royal Family's wild child, from his mother dying while he was only 12 years old to tabloid controversies and serving in Afghanistan.

This documentary follows an operation in Northern Canada that is dedicated to piecing together indigenous history. Due to global warming, melting ice on and around mountains is revealing more and more artefacts that have been perfectly preserved for over 1000 years. These amazing finds are. helping to document and preserve indigenous culture in the region, a culture which is often ignored.

Despite being popularised by the film of the same name, Pocahontas was actually inspired by real life events. The story of Pocahontas is quite different to the Disney version and the "truth" is often disputed by various sources. We take a look at the various versions of events of this 400 year old story.

Christmas is coming to Acton Scott, but first there's a huge amount of preparation to do. Ruth Goodman and food historian Ivan Day try their hand at making a Christmas pudding using the same methods as Bob Cratchit's wife in A Christmas Carol. Meanwhile, Alex and Peter light the forge for the first time to re-shoe the farm workhorse Clumper - the first time a horse has been shod at this forge in over five decades. Alex goes in search of a Christmas tree for the banquet, while Ruth and Peter head for the Victorian town of Blists Hill for Christmas shopping. At the cottage, Ruth meets Debbie Bamford to dye an array of colourful Christmas ribbons to decorate the tree and the presents that sit beneath it. Finally it's time for the Christmas meal in the estate's School Hall. With a rapturous toast to Queen Victoria and a quick trip to the cattle shed to wassail the animals, day turns into night and the drunken Victorian parlour games commence. The next morning it'll be time for the team to

We take a guided tour around an Austrian Christkindlmarkt to explore the true origins of our much-loved Christmas traditions. Despite the origins of Christmas coming from ancient Rome, the form they take today largely come from German speaking countries.

Our Christmas traditions have changed a lot over the years but not as much as the work related side of the holiday. Tony Robinson takes a look back at some of the worst Christmas jobs in history, from puke collector to turkey gutter, you'll be thankful these jobs are a thing of the past!

Dr Joann Fletcher looks at the mysterious world of the ancient Egyptian afterlife and reveals a strange and mysterious world. To them life was just a dress rehearsal for the perfect afterlife they were trying to reach. Joann clambers into rarely visited tombs, explores a treasure trove of long-buried objects and examines spectacular mummies to discover just why the Egyptians spent a fortune preparing for death - and what they hoped to find when they got there.

Christmas has been celebrated in England since around 1038, with unique and interesting ways of celebrating coming and going throughout history. Fun and festive feasts have always been the norm but the Tudors took this to the extreme.

The Victorian farmers - Ruth Goodman, Alex Langlands and Peter Ginn - return to the Acton Scott estate in Shropshire to celebrate a traditional Victorian Christmas. There's an enormous amount of farm work to be done on the estate in the lead-up to the festive season, including the hay harvest, to make food for the animals over winter. Having been thwarted last time by rain, the team anxiously monitor the weather. Peter travels to the Royal Agricultural Society's annual show with sheep expert Richard Spencer to choose a new ram for the flock; back at the farm, Ruth makes mincemeat for the Christmas mince pies. She also prepares for the hoped-for hay harvest celebration with some essentials - bread and butter.

Between the Nile and the necropolis in the Valley of the Kings, thousands of Ancient Egypt's best artisans lived and worked, usually the rest of their lives, with their families and some servants or apprentices, often succeeded by their sons, building and decorating elaborate graves for the Pharaonic dynasty and its rich, mighty entourage. The town also had an almost complete network of logistics and so onto feed and supply the tomb builders and provide various services, almost a complete city, with its own police and administration, medicine and daily cult. Their lives, somewhat privileged, are exceptionally well end extensively documented, not in the least by pottery fragments used to write daily messages and private records.

At 9:00 a.m. on February 19, 1945, the soldiers of the United States Marine Corps 5th Division, H Company lowered themselves down rope cargo nets into landing crafts rocking in five-foot seas. They were less than a mile from the shore of the remote South Pacific island of Iwo Jima.

In this episode, Joann Fletcher explains how ancient Egypt's sank from the glory days of the Pyramid Age into a period of hardship. A chaotic chapter of famine, civil war and anarchy led Egypt to the brink of collapse. How did this time of catastrophic struggle not spell the end for the Pharaohs?

How does a civilisation that lasted for several thousand years begin? Joann Fletcher talks us through the genesis of ancient Egypt and how its story progressed. Fletcher also discusses some of the common misconceptions about ancient Egypt, and how we're still learning new things about it even now.

In the tombs that ancient Egyptians prepared for their deaths, they left a record of how they lived more than 3000 years ago, today. But the full meaning of many of the images remains a mystery. In almost every Egyptian tome one image stands out; the blue lotus.

Joann Fletcher walks us through the various reasons behind the downfall of the great Egyptian empire. An empire that lasted for several thousand years wouldn't go down without a fight, but unfortunately, a slow burn of disaster was already well underway.

The pyramids of Giza were, up until the 20th century, the largest structures in the world. For over 4000 years, they have aroused all kinds of speculation in all who have seen them. How were they built? And who built them?

Estimated to have began between 1570 BC and 1544 BC, The New Kingdom of ancient Egypt would come to represent a mighty empire at the peak of it's power. This period would last around 500 years and would see large expansions in foreign trade as well as territory gains to make this an extremely prosperous period for the Egyptian empire.

For nearly 3000 years, ancient Egypt was the greatest civilization on Earth. And in their ancient tombs and artifacts, they left a detailed record of their lives, but many mysteries remain. Due to advances in technologies and techniques, we are now able to learn more about one of the greatest Egyptian leaders, Tutankhamun.

Since 1735, legend has it that a demonic creature has stalked the woods of one of America's oldest states; the Devil has given its name not just to hockey teams but to shops, wine, musical bands and a dizzying array of memorabilia.

Whether he's known as Bigfoot, Sasquatch, Yeti or the Abominable Snowman, the ape-like monster covered in fur has captivated imaginations the world over. Willow Creek, the Northern California's Bigfoot Scenic Byway, is the epicenter of Bigfoot sightings.

Libya is Africa's last great unknown. A vast desert country veiled from the West by fear, prejudice and misunderstanding. Once it was home to the richest cities in Africa. The headquarters for the African empires of Rome & Greece. Now it is reviled as "a desert with a dictator in it". David Adams follows in the wheel tracks of Ancient Rome's "chariots of fire" - the first wheeled vehicles to explore the Sahara - and discovers a little-known land of exotic brilliance, ancient cities & forbidding deserts.

The town of Rhinelander, Wisconsin is united by the local legend of a fierce creature with scales, horns and sharp claws known as a Hodag.

The battered dhow carves its passage though the tourmaline waters of the South Indian Ocean. Its patched lateen sail fat with monsoon wind, the salt air fragrant with cloves. Barely heard at first, the faint cry of a muezzin crackles through the dawn's early light. Heads turn to the horizon. The turbaned helmsman eases off the sailrope & utters just one magical word.... Zanzibar. Zanzibar. The Spice Island. A real world Shangri-la. The island at the end of the earth. David Adams sails south in search of the lost world of Arab seafarer.

To celebrate Halloween, we investigate the story of the Bell Witch. The small town of Adams in Tennessee is home to the Bell Witch, who cursed the Bell family with a poltergeist.

Nowhere else on Earth is the difference between the tranquillity & beauty of the physical world and the brutality & disorder of the people who live in it brought into such sharp contrast as it is in the former Soviet satellites. Right in the middle of it all lies Georgia. Today it's a place trying to emerge from the iron grip of the Kremlin but once it was a land of mystery and dragons. This is where Prometheus was bound to his rock, where Medea cast her spells, where one of Noah's sons set up house after the biblical flood - and where Jason went in search of the Golden Fleece.

Geneticist Steven O'Brien investigates whether a genetic mutation that helped the inhabitants of a village called Eyam in Derbyshire survive the Black Death pandemic in the 14th century help scientists find a cure for AIDS.

To celebrate Halloween, we investigate the story of the Mothman. In Point Pleasant, West Virginia, there lurks a winged man, with eyes that glow a fierce red, known as the Mothman. The sheer number of sightings has even awed the skeptics.

The two flinty syllables strike at the imagination like the sudden hard beat of an Andean drum. Cities of gold; sun worship; virgin sacrifice. The stuff of legend. Legends that for the most part remain hidden in the impenetrable no-man's land of Peru's high country. For the better part of 400 years people have searched the deep canyons & towering ice peaks of these mist-covered cloud forests trying to locate the lost cities of the Inca. They were all after one thing; gold. Any gold would do but there was one thing desired above all others, the Great Golden Disc of the Sun. The most sacred of all Inca relics. The Inca Holy Grail. It is in search of this Holy Grail that David Adams goes on his journey to Puncuyoc, sacred Sister City of Machu Picchu; the city sought but never found by Hiram Bingham.

As the Battle of the Bulge raged on into 1945, the U.S. battled stiff resistance on Leyte and Iwa Jima in the Pacific, and Americans brought the war into the Fatherland while mourning President Roosevelt, who did not live to see their final victory, signaled by the deaths of Mussolini and Hitler and the atomic bombs that defeated Japan.

Legend tells of a utopian kingdom hidden among the towering mountains of inner Asia. A paradise on Earth, yet a place apart. A place of spiritual contentment and eternal life. A place that's become known to the West as Shangri-La. For century's romantics, adventurers and the devout risked their lives searching for this heaven on Earth. Many perished in the quest. Those who returned told of a journey through hostile lands, of crossing treacherous mountain passes & desert gorges in their search for a valley where people live for hundreds of years. To this day its whereabouts remains a mystery...

In the spring of 1944, America and its allies waged global warfare on an unprecedented scale, pushing towards the inevitable fall of Rome and on "the road back" in the Pacific. Here at home, months of planning and preparation paid off on June 6th with the D-Day landings in Normandy, unleashing the most massive invasion in history.

The Sahara is the biggest desert on earth ... it takes its name from the Arab word for "emptiness". In the dead heart of that emptiness there's a place called the Tenere. The Tenere takes its name from the Tuareg word for "nothing". A nothing the size of France in the middle of an emptiness the size of the United States. It's no wonder the locals call this place "The Land Of Fear". David Adams retraces the trade routes of the people who call this stove-hot corner of the planet home.

By 1943, the battle turned against North Africa. Allied forces led an invasion of Sicily and Italy, and plans were laid to bomb Germany. The liberation of Tunisia and the defense of Stalingrad began to crack the myth of Hitler's super-race, while Allied forces fought back against the Japanese in the Aleutians and on New Guinea and Guadaloanal.

Cambodia is a country of impenetrable jungles and ruins lost in time. Where kings became gods and monks still seek heavenly peace. Now, this mysterious land has begun to open up to reveal the dark beauty that has lured adventurers here for centuries. For more than 30 years, the jungles have been cut off from the modern world, and much of that time it has been a Khmer Rouge stronghold. David Adams boldly penetrates these jungles to meet with former Khmer Rouge militants to enter the last bastion of the Khmer Rouge and visit the final resting place of one of the most ruthless killers in history, Pol Pot. Their new purpose is to protect the forests and the populations of endangered wildlife. Though jungles and along the river the trek is not easy, nor is it in vain.

Adams makes the pilgrimage from Lalibela to Gondar in the northern wilds of Ethiopia, and paddles by papyrus kayak across lake Tana. His quest: to find the Ark of the Covenant.

By the time the U.S. entered the war, the Nazi blitzkrieg had flattened France, Holland, Belgium, Denmark, Norway, and Luxembourg, and the Japanese were overwhelming in the Pacific Ocean. At home in 1942, our mighty war machine roared to life.

After the death of Diana Princess of Wales, theories filled the headlines, but many simple questions about the fatal night of August 31st have never been asked. First, police blamed the paparazzi for causing the accident. Then 48 hours later they blamed the driver of the Mercedes, Henri Paul. He was said to be three times over the drink limit. This compelling program seeks to answer the many questions overlooked by the enquiry.

This balanced and revealing program examines how a beguiling teenager became a despairing royal wife, but grew into a humanitarian figure of international stature. Wonderful footage of Diana at her most glamorous is combined with expert commentary from her biographer, Sarah Bradford. Diana's extraordinary life and the unbelievable tragedy of her death are seen in their true perspective.

In 1941, before Pearl Harbor was attacked, America was providing war materials to its democracies, and its young men were answering the call to service. Throughout America, "preparedness" was the watchword as the conflict that ignited in 1939 swept through Europe, Africa, and Asia, and a war with Japan loomed closer than ever.

David Adams re-lives the last days on the last trail of two American heroes, Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, through the deserts of Bolivia. In 1908 the two legendary outlaws disappeared in the south of Bolivia not far from the border of Argentina. Were they killed by the Bolivian Cavalry? Or did they fake their deaths and escape to the USA and Europe as rich men? This is the mystery tackled by David Adams and the "Journeys" team. He recreates the lives and adventures of Butch and Sundance from La Paz in the north, to San Vincente to the south. And in the process he discovers what life was really like for them, and the true story of what happened in their final hours.

Commemorating the anniversary of Princess Diana's death, this is not just an anniversary programme. It is a powerful summary of Princess Diana's historical, political and social legacy.

In the far-flung reaches of Siberian Russia there's a place unlike any other on earth. A place nine times zones from Moscow. A place so far east it's almost west. A place called Kamchatka, the snowbound Eden. One hundred thousand lakes; 300 geysers; 414 glaciers; 100 volcanoes all crammed into a peninsula the size of California. But it's also a nuclear no-go zone. Off-limits to the world for most of the 20th century. In fact, more Americans have been into outer space than have crossed Kamchatka in the last hundred years. It's into this unforgiving icebox cold corner of the world that David Adams goes in search of the last of the Itelman, the semi-legendary wild men of Siberia's Far East.

The definitive portrait of the 20th century's most remarkable woman - Princess Diana - with exclusive interviews and moving footage of her legendary rise to popularity and triumph over the obstacles of emotional and physical trauma that she faced on an almost daily basis.

Iran is one of the earth's final frontiers. It's a country little visited by western travellers in recent years, yet it has been at the centre of world affairs for millennia. I wanted to take a peek "behind the veil" of modern-day Iran. What I discovered was a complex, incredibly hospitable people living in a much-misunderstood country at the heart of a troubled region. My journey takes me from the bustle of Tehran, via the Valley of the Assassins to ancient cities unchanged since Marco Polo first entered them eight centuries ago. But this isn't just a journey through an ancient landscape. It's a journey in search of one of the world's least known religious sects ... the ancient Fire Worshippers Of Yazd.

A moving account of the unique life of the twentieth century's most remarkable woman, with an American perspective on the events of her life and history, including footage from the auction held to sell her dresses to raise money for charity.

David Adams explores the stories of the African pharaohs in Sudan. Sudan is one of the remaining frontiers in the world. Once upon a time, this vast desert country was home to a sophisticated and intriguing civilisation. An ancient monarchy that was Africa's crown jewel. Egypt was previously ruled by a kingdom. Kush is the name of a kingdom. On a journey into the land of the Black Pharaohs, David Adams goes down the Nile from Lake Nasser to Khartoum in pursuit of the enigmatic country of pyramid builders and sun worshippers.

This remarkable portrait of Princess Diana examines her life following her divorce from Prince Charles. She is assailed by doubts and uncertainties, but still achieves great good for her family, herself and the world.

A climatic catastrophe rocked the Earth in A.D. 535, causing two years of darkness, famine, drought and disease. Was it a comet? An asteroid? A volcano? Written records from China, Italy, Palestine and many other countries suggest a huge catastrophe blighted the world in 536 AD. But the cause of it has been uncertain. Archaeologist David Keys reveals that a volcano is to blame for the Dark Ages of famine and plague that shaped the world order of today.