Neil Oliver: News, Interviews, History

This week Neil is taking us aboard the Golden Hind, a legendary ship that sailed around the world and into history.

In 16th century Aldeburgh, which was then an important east-coast port, shipbuilders set to work building a vessel that was to have a profound influence on British history.

Once completed and seaworthy Francis Drake and his crew climbed aboard and set sail on an epic 3 year voyage to circumnavigate the globe. On its return the ship was full to bursting with gold, silver and precious jewels, and Francis Drake received a hero’s welcome and the thanks of his queen, Elizabeth I.

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This week Neil marches with us across the wild beauty of Northumberland to a battleground

that broke Scotland’s heart.

In 1513 Margaret Tudor watched as her husband, the glamours renaissance king, James IV of Scotland, set off to invade England and do battle with her brother, Henry VIII. When Henry invaded France James felt duty bound to honour the Auld Alliance, a treaty of mutual assistance between Scotland and France. In retaliation he led the largest Scottish army ever to invade England across the border. James' powerful force bristling with the latest military technology met an English army led by the Earl of Surrey at Flodden. It was a brutal and bloody battle, fought with formidable pikes imported from the continent, cannon fire, slaughter and a deadly arrow to the King’s face.

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This Week Neil’s on his home turf delving into the deep history of one of the most glorious castles in the British Isles.

They say Stirling castle is the silver brooch that hitches the Highlands of Scotland to the lowlands. Neil very much regards it as his personal touch stone. It’s a place that was already well trodden by our ancestors when the Roman road builders turned up around AD80.

The castle, which sits atop a geological formation known as a crag and tail, has always been strategically vital, playing a crucial part in the history of Scotland and the British Isles.

Kings and queens have been born and raised there, battles fought, and scores settled in and around it. Jaw-dropping grandeur and beauty, it’s a place full of drama and passion, it’s a place Neil knows & loves well.

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This week Neil follows the money!

By the C13th the Hanseatic League had crystalised its power base and was busy spinning lucrative trading routes right across northern Europe, from the Baltic to the British Isles. Neil travels to the Norfolk town of Kings Lynn, which thanks to the Hanseatic League became the third richest port in England. Two building survive from this time, St George’s Guildhall and the Hanse House, structures that are stunning testament to the wealth and international trade that flowed through Kings Lynn during the League dominance. The Hanseatic League was an ultra-powerful trading bloc, not adverse to dabbling in national politics, that lasted for almost three centuries.

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This week, side by side with Neil, we’re striding across a vast, treacherous bay where one false move could see us paying for it with our lives.

Almost 500 years ago, in 1548, the people of Morecambe Bay Sands asked for help, because crossing this vast tidal expanse was so treacherous many lives were being lost. The tides race across the sands faster than a horse can gallop and the bay is dotted with patches of deadly quicksand known locally as Melgraves, which have caught and dragged many to their deaths.

Morecambe Bay is surround and suffused with history, from the C14th Piel castle, which was the Yorkists mustering point in the last hurrah of the Wars of the Roses, to the Midland Hotel, an art deco masterpiece bursting with glitz and glamourous guests, which was opened in 1933. Above everything, it’s a breath-taking landscape that plays its part in our history and reminds us of our place in the powerful natural world.

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This week Neil comes face to face with the mighty walls of an almost impregnable castle, which down through its history inspired many heroic ‘last stands’ and a song that famously features in one of Neil's favourite films.

On the orders of Edward I, Harlech castle was built between 1283 and 1285 by James of St George a military engineer of unsurpassed genius. It’s clever design, a castle within a castle with it’s back protected by the Irish sea, made it a truly formidable fortress.

During the Wars of the Roses in 1460 Margaret of Anjou, queen and wife of the Lancastrian King Henry VI fled to Harlech castle. For the next eight years the castle was besieged by Yorkist forces determined to capture her. Eventually an army, 10,000 strong, starved the castle into submission. Although unsuccessful this heroic, ‘Last Stand’ was immortalised in the song ‘The Men of Harlech’.

It was this song, which was used to such great effect in Zulu, the 1964 film starring Michael Caine, about another legendary ‘Last Stand’, the defence of Rorke’s Drift in the Anglo-Zulu War.

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This week Neil steps into the middle of a brutal family feud - the Wars of the Roses.

The warring family, the Plantagenets, have been described as ‘a race dipped in their own blood. The factions within the family and their unremitting quest for power and the English throne led to a civil-war that ripped England apart for 30 years and left tens of thousands of soldiers dead on battlefields right across the country. With the dead of Westminister Abbey swirling around him, Neil meets the mother whose son, Henry VII, lead England out of the war and began the Tudor dynasty.

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This week Neil steps foot into Cambuskenneth Abbey, a place that was to prove crucial in the making of a legendary king - Robert the Bruce.

The Battle of Bannockburn in 1314 was a defining moment in the long Wars of Scottish Independence. Overlooked by the mighty Stirling castle, which sits atop the crag and tail of an extinct volcano, is a low-lying plain with the lazy meandering river Forth running across it. It was here that Robert the Bruce and his army took on a much larger English force, which was spearheaded by its dreaded heavy cavalry. Cambuskenneth Abbey, built beside the river Forth, plays an important part in Robert the Bruce’s story and this famous battle – it’s a location so thick with history you can almost feel it brush against your face!

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This week Neil’s journey takes us to one of the most beautiful glens in Scotland where we discover, what is believed to be, the oldest living thing in Europe - the Fortingall Yew.

The legendary Fortingall Yew nestles at the eastern end of Glen Lyon – the glen which Sir Walter Scott called the ‘longest, loneliest and loveliest in Scotland’. Many experts put the age of the yew at 9000 years old, which means it was a thousand years old before the British Isles were even created. The tree has seen so much history. Folklore in this part of Scotland has it that Pontious Pilate was born here and as a young child would shelter under the Fortingall Yew before he was whisked off to Rome and into the history books. What’s certain is, the tree and the glen are somewhere that have always mattered to our ancestors, a place that invites deep contemplation as you stand there and mark the long passage of time 

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This week Neil takes us to a place of legends, a place where, with a glint in his eye, he proudly tells us he was once the warm-up act to Bono and U2 on the Pyramid stage.

Glastonbury Tor is a magical landscape shimmering with ancient traditions, beauty and horrors. It’s a place that has always been, and still feels ‘special, the air around it thick with history. Tales of Jesus, the Holy Grail, King Arthur and Guinevere, Glastonbury is a place swirling with wonderful fables and myths.

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