History TV and radio in the UK: what's on our screens this week?
Can't decide which shows to watch or listen to this week? Here are the latest history radio and TV programmes airing in the UK that you won't want to miss
Breaking The Rules: O Is For Orson
BBC Radio 4
Saturday 9th November, 3pm
Jonathan Myerson’s excellent drama considers how the young Orson Welles shook up not just cinema, but radio and theatre too. A portrait of a young genius starring Lucas Aurelio as Welles, Miles Jupp as producer John Houseman, who helped bring Citizen Kane to the screen, and Laurel Lefkow as Marion Davies.
Archive On 4: Famous Last Words
BBC Radio 4
Saturday 9th November, 8pm
It’s 30 years since playwright Dennis Potter, dying of cancer, reflected on his life in the company of Melvyn Bragg. Subsequently, others have similarly granted ‘last interviews’, including Clive James, Diana Athill and Nicholas Dimbleby. Oral historian Sarah O’Reilly digs into the archives to explore, among other questions, what motivates people to offer dispatches from their last days.
Royal British Legion Festival Of Remembrance
BBC One
Saturday 9th November, 9pm
Eighty years after D-Day, the overage of the annual event to honour Britons who died serving their country is likely to have a particular poignancy this year. On Sunday 10th November, cameras will also be present at Remembrance Sunday: The Cenotaph (BBC Two, 10.15am). There’s coverage of both events on BBC radio too.
Ottoman Empire By Train With Alice Roberts
Channel 4
Saturday 9th November, 9pm
Alice Roberts arrives in a city where Europe and Asia meet, Istanbul. Here, she charts how the Ottomans took a supposedly impregnable city from the Romans. She also learns about the life and work of the architect Mimar Sinan (c1488/1500–1588), responsible for the construction of more than 300 major buildings.
Wolf Hall: The Mirror And The Light – pick of the week
BBC One
Sunday 10th November, 9pm
The historical drama returns. Based on the concluding book in Hilary Mantel’s trilogy, it charts the fall of Thomas Cromwell (Mark Rylance), chief advisor to capricious Henry VIII (Damian Lewis). Events pick up in the immediate wake of Anne Boleyn’s death. At 10pm, Peter Kosminsky: This Cultural Life (BBC Four) finds the Wolf Hall director discussing his influences.
Start The Week
BBC Radio 4
Monday 11th November, 9am
Amanda Vickery leads a discussion on sex, Christianity and the female body. Her guests include Diarmaid McCulloch, whose latest book, Lower Than The Angels, charts Christianity’s relationship with humanity’s animal instincts, and Helen King, author of Immaculate Forms: Uncovering The History Of Women’s Bodies.
Mary Beard Remembers… Ultimate Rome: Empire Without Limit
BBC Four
Monday 11th November, 9pm
Always good company, the classicist looks back on her series from 2016. It’s part of an evening of Rome-themed shows on BBC Four, including the opening instalment of Simon Shebang Montefiore’s Rome: A History Of The Eternal City (8pm), the first episode of Beard’s Ultimate Rome (9.15pm) and two episodes of dram-doc series Colosseum (10.45pm & 11.30pm).
The Sky At Night
BBC Four
Monday 11th November, 10pm
The links between astronomy and archaeology are to the fore in tonight’s episode of the long-running series as, on Cornwall’s Bodmin Moor, George Dransfield meets archaeoastronomer Carolyn Kennett. More specifically, the duo’s interest is in the Goodaver stone circle, which for years has been inaccessible to researchers.
A History of Royal Scandals
More4
Tuesday 12th November, 9pm
This week’s theme for Professor Suzannah Lipsomb is witchcraft. Elizabeth I, we learn, wanted to predict the future and to locate the ‘real’ philosopher’s stone. Plus stories of two British queens accused of witchcraft, including one reputed to have been related to a mermaid.
In Our Time
BBC Radio 4
Thursday 14th November, 9am
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Antikythera Mechanism, a bronze object discovered by sponge divers in the wreck of a ship in 1900. It’s turned out to be a 2,000-year-old piece of kit that, the latest research suggests, demonstrates the ancient Greeks’ sophisticated knowledge of astronomy.
Authors
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