Neil Oliver: News, Interviews, History

In this episode we are walking down Whitehall, one of London’s most famous streets, to remember the dead of the First World War.

Fabian Ware joined the British army at the outbreak of the war, but because he was 45 years old, the authorities would let him fight on the front line and put him in charge of a mobile ambulance unit instead.

Appalled by the number of casualties and troubled that the dead were not being recorded properly he began keeping note. On account of his efforts, the organization now called the Commonwealth War Graves Commission came into existence. The process of remembrance began.

11 November 1919 was the first anniversary of the war’s end. It was marked with the construction of a temporary memorial called the Cenotaph on Whitehall, a march of remembrance and the return of the Unknown Soldier. The outpouring of emotion at this event and the public’s actions demanded that the temporary Cenotaph be made permanent. And across the whole of the British Isles collective grief propelled the largest public art project ever seen as communities took it upon themselves to build their own local memorials to remember all the dead.

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In this episode Horatio Herbert Kitchener, the secretary of state for war, declares, Your Country Needs You!

The First World War meant that Britain had to raise a new army from volunteers, so the call was raised. Five strong, stout brothers from the Souls family, who lived in the Gloucestershire village of Great Rissington, signed up to join the army and become soldiers. After training they shipped out for France.

Albert, the youngest brother, was the first to be killed. Fred was the second brother to die, he was killed at the battle of the Somme. Walter was killed next, soon followed by Alfred.

The last of the five brothers alive was Arthur, he was Alfred’s identical twin, and won the Military Medal for valour at the fight to hold Villers-Bretonneux. But during the battle he was fatally wounded.

Five brothers from the Souls family, all lost. A snapshot of a war like no other - tragedy writ large.

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In this episode we’re travelling over the sea to Skye, an island of ancient jagged crags and rare breath-taking beauty, which feels as though it’s washed in heaven’s tears.

When the first world war was declared, there was a seismic shift and everything changed forever. All of Britain felt it’s pain and devastation, but it hit the Highlands the hardest. A conflict of such magnitude, billions of spent bullets and millions dead, the sorrow and suffering it cause is impossible to comprehend. I’m in Portree, exploring its impact on one small community, trying to come to terms with the magnitude of the Great War.

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In this episode we join Neil as he steps aboard the Titanic, one of the most iconic ships in the world. For Neil this a pivotal moment in history, which marks a point when the world changed forever.

When the Titanic set sail on its maiden voyage it was the largest human-made object that had ever moved across the face of the planet. 900 feet long (240m), 92 feet wide (28m) and weighing in at 50,000 tons. Built in Belfast it was one of a set of near identical triplets. With 2,200 passengers and crew aboard the Titanic heads out into the wild Atlantic ocean, sailing into tragedy as the band played on.

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In this episode, powered by their fabulous fecundity and political astuteness, the Stuart family line inherited the Scottish and English crowns and spread their power and influence right across the British Isles.

The C19th saw a canny member of the Stuart clan spotted a gilt-edged opportunity in Cardiff. As the industrial revolution swept across the world, iron, steel and coal were in great demand and high-grade coal from the Rhondda Valley in Wales became a very valuable commodity. If you could control the supply of this precious resource, there were fortunes to be made.

From his castle in Cardiff, John Crichton-Stuart developed the port of Cardiff, which become the busiest in Britain, and as the coal bonanza boomed, feeding an insatiable global hunger, vast quantities of the ‘black gold’ were ship out and incredible fortunes poured in.

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In this episode we’re putting on our best and strolling along a stylish promenade in Scarborough, the ‘Nice of the North’ to pay homage to the Great British seaside tradition.

The tentacles of Scarborough’s history stretch back thousands of years. On it’s cliffs is an Iron Age Fort. The Viking also took a fancy to the place and much later in the C13th Henry III fortified what was then an important port. But it was the Victorians who made it the place we recognise today.

Attracted by its restorative spa waters, the Victorians added the cast iron, glass, grandeur and glamour, and it becomes Britain’s first seaside town.

Overlooking a stunning long curve of pale sand is what used to be the largest hotel in Europe – built in the shape of a V to honour Queen Victoria and designed to around the concept of time, this week we’re checking into the Grand Hotel in Scarborough.

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In this episode we stride around the Elizabethan battlements of a town held ready for war!

Berwick-upon-Tweed is a place packed to bursting with thousands of years of rich history.

Celtic Britons made it their home, followed by the Romans and the Anglo-Saxons.

It was a wealthy, flourishing port before any of the modern nation states – England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland – even existed.

Sitting on the border of what became Scotland and England it was coveted and fought over in a deadly tug of war lasting hundreds of years. It’s a place that sharply reminds us, that in the British Isles it’s more often than not the case that local rather than national identities have the deepest roots.

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In this episode we travel with Neil to meet the man who split the atom!

Ernest Rutherford’s father said to his children, ‘without money we have to think’ – and think Ernest did. Ernest’s brain took him from his childhood home in rural New Zealand to a scientific career that spanned right around the world. In Manchester he assembled a brilliant and diverse team of fantastic minds. He built one of the largest and best equipped laboratories ever seen in the world and with his team set about exploring the infinitely complex universe within the atom. Ernest Rutherford, the father of nuclear physics

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In this episode we’re in the midst of the great Victorian engineering revolution as the dream to reconnect with Europe begins.

8,000 years ago the Storegga Slide hit and severed the British Isles from the European mainland. To thrive and prosper the new islanders had to develop a mastery of the sea, and those coming to the islands had to be determined and committed. For thousands of years the psyche of the people living on this archipelago was shaped and moulded by it’s ‘separateness’, but in the 1800’s people on both sides of the Channel began to dream of a reconnection.

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In this episode we set sail with Neil and find ourselves at the centre of a devastating hurricane that’s intent on destroying a proud and hardworking fishing port.

In the 1800’s Eyemouth’s fishing fleet found itself battling the elements, bureaucracy and the church. As the harbour remained dangerously inadequate a hated ecclesiastical tax was draining resources. One fateful day bad weather was looming, but under pressure to feed their families and pay the bills, Eyemouth’s brave fisher folk set sail. The whole fleet was out at sea when, sweeping across the North Sea, a hurricane hit, pounding boats to matchwood.

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