Series ・ 10 parts

A History of Britain: How an Island Changed the World

Rome arrived and departed; across the sea came the Anglo-Saxons, and later the Vikings. The island's map, redrawn again and again, was finally bound into a single kingdom by the Norman Conquest of 1066. Episode 1 traces the thousand years it took for the country called England to come into being.

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01 The Making of an Island ― The Birth of Britain Rome arrived and departed; across the sea came the Anglo-Saxons, and later the Vikings. The island's map, redrawn again and again, was finally bound into a single kingdom by the Norman Conquest of 1066. Episode 1 traces the thousand years it took for the country called England to come into being.
02 Magna Carta ― The Seeds of Liberty and Parliament In 1215, the barons thrust a single document upon King John, who had piled misrule upon misrule. In time it would plant on this island the idea that even a king must obey the law, and the seed of a parliament that governs the realm by counsel. Episode 2 traces the birth of Magna Carta.
03 The Tudors and the Leap to the Sea A king's wish for divorce gave rise to a national church that broke with Rome. His daughter Elizabeth deftly defused the divisions, and in 1588 turned back the Armada of Spain, master of the seas. As religious reform and the leap to the sea overlapped, we trace the Tudor century in which an island stepped toward becoming a maritime nation, viewed neutrally through both its light and its shadow.
04 The Century of Revolution: Civil War and the Glorious Revolution The clash between king and Parliament grew into civil war, reaching at last the unprecedented event of a king's execution and a republic. Yet the republic did not last, and the monarchy was restored. The Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the Bill of Rights the following year established the supremacy of Parliament while avoiding bloodshed, laying the foundation of constitutional monarchy. We trace a century-long chain of revolution, neutrally, through both its light and its shadow.
05 The Rise of the British Empire ― Who Rules the Waves Rules the World An island that repelled France in the Seven Years' War, sank its teeth into India through the East India Company, and planted its flag across the world's oceans. Yet the empire's prosperity was inseparable from the loss of the American colonies and the suffering of millions of enslaved people carried across the Atlantic. We face both the light and the shadow.
06 The Industrial Revolution ― The Workshop of the World The steam engine drew power from water and fire, spinning machines wove thread, and railways shrank distance. Britain became the world's first industrial nation. But at the foot of the factories' prosperity lay soot-choked cities and brutal labor, including that of children. We look at both the abundance and the pain.
07 The Victorian Era — The Empire at Its Zenith In 1837, an eighteen-year-old girl became queen. In the age that bears her name, Britain reached the height it would call 'the empire on which the sun never sets.' The science and prosperity that shone in the Crystal Palace, and the domination and inequality that the same hand spread across the world — this is the story of sixty-four years in which light and shadow lay most thickly overlapped.
08 The Two World Wars and the Twilight of Empire In the twentieth century, two world wars fell upon the largest empire on earth. A generation lost in the trenches, a year — 1940 — fought through in isolation, and then the exhaustion and dismantling of empire that came as the price of victory. Hegemony would in time pass across the Atlantic to America. This is the story of half a century in which glory and twilight crossed paths.
09 Postwar Britain — The Welfare State and Its Trials From cradle to grave — the island, exhausted by the price of victory, set out anew under a fresh promise: the NHS and the welfare state. Yet decolonization, the Suez crisis, a long economic stagnation, and the Thatcher reforms would profoundly shake both that ideal and the shape of society.
10 Modern Britain — Brexit and Beyond Having lost its empire and passed through the welfare state, the island transformed into a multicultural society, was asked about its cohesion as a United Kingdom, and in 2016 chose to leave the EU. Where is Britain headed as it keeps changing while holding to its monarchy and traditions? At the close of a ten-part story, a final chapter that surveys the present without rushing for answers.