At the Edge of the World?
7 episodes · Sep 30, 2000
The story of Britain from the earliest settlements in 3000 BC to the death of Elizabeth I in 1603. To look back at the past is to understand the present. In this vivid account of over 4,000 years of British history, Simon Schama takes us on an epic journey which encompasses the very beginnings of the nation's identity, when the first settlers landed on Orkney.
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- S1E1
Beginnings (3100 BC - 1000 AD)
Sep 30, 200060mSimon Schama starts his story in the Stone Age village of Skara Brae, Orkney. Over the next four thousand years Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings and Christian missionaries arrive, fight, settle and leave their mark on what will become the nations of Britain.
- S1E2
Conquest! (1000 - 1087)
Oct 7, 200060m1066 is not the best remembered date in British history for nothing. In the space of nine hours whilst the Battle of Hastings raged, everything changed. Anglo-Saxon England became Norman and, for the next 300 years, its fate was decided by dynasties of French rulers.
- S1E3
Dynasty (1087 - 1216)
Oct 14, 200060mThere is no saga more powerful than that of the warring dynasty - domineering father, beautiful, scheming mother and squabbling, murderous sons and daughters, (particularly the nieces). In the years that followed the Norman Conquest, this was the drama played out on the stage of British history.
- S1E4
Nations (1216 - 1348)
Oct 21, 200060mNations is the epic account of how the nations of Britain emerged from under the hammer of England's "Longshanks" King Edward I, with a sense of who and what they were, which endures to this day.
- S1E5
King Death (1348 - 1500)
Oct 28, 200060mIt took only six years for the plague to ravage the British Isles. Its impact was to last for generations. But from the ashes of this trauma an unexpected and unique class of Englishman emerged.
- S1E6
Burning Convictions (1500 - 1558)
Nov 4, 200060mHere Simon Schama charts the upheaval caused as a country renowned for its piety, whose king styled himself Defender of the Faith, turns into one of the most aggressive proponents of the new Protestant faith.
- S1E7
The Body of the Queen (1558 - 1603)
Nov 11, 200060mThis is the story of two queens - Elizabeth I the consummate politician and Mary Queen of Scots the Catholic mother. It is also the story of the birth of a nation.