Neil Oliver: News, Interviews, History

This week we travel with Neil to Angus where the glowing red eye of Arbroath Abbey casts a watchful look over us.

It was here at the Abbey in 1320 that the Declaration of Arbroath was written, a revolutionary document whose words would resonate around the world. Drafted as a declaration of Scottish independence and a show of support for the celebrated king, Robert the Bruce, it also held the monarch and his heirs to account. On the heels of Magna Carta this document, was another important steppingstone on the path to democracy.

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This week Neil takes us off the beaten track to St Nectan’s Glen in Cornwall. It’s one of a number of enchanted places that are dotted all over the British Isles, which have a real aura and presence around them. Shimmering with crystal clear waters and enclosed by cliffs coated with rich moss and ferns it’s a place that somehow manages to stop you in your tracks and invites you to think.

Named after St Nectan who lived a life of contemplation and devotion there in the 5th century the glen, with its healing waters, has long been a place of importance and pilgrimage for our ancient ancestors. Long before St Nectan and for as long as can be remembered it was known as a special place, a deep reservoir of human hopes, dreams and the future. 

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This week Neil travels to an island at the heart of the British Isles.

Snaefell is the highest mountain on the Isle of Man. On a clear day, from it’s peak, they say you can spin 360 degrees and see seven Kingdoms. The Isle of Man is at the geographical centre of the British Isles archipelago, but it’s a place apart. A constitutional anomaly that’s under the UK’s protection, but has its own parliament, laws and language. It’s an island of great beauty, deep history and stubborn independence, a place with the power to reset your equilibrium.

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This week, Neil travels to see an iconic document that shook the world.

In 1215 a battling king squared up to his rebellious barons in a power struggle produced Magna Carta and a new political order. A charter of rights that started to pin back the monarchy, Magna Carta declared not even a king is above the law. Never again would an English monarch have absolute power. Magna Carta and a follow-up document the Charter of the Forest helped lay the foundations for parliamentary democracy, shaping the world we live in today.

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This week Neil travels back in time, almost 1000 years, to what became the city of Durham and the construction of a majestic building whose beauty and power have resonated down through the centuries ever since – Durham cathedral.

Our ancestors have always been driven by the need to build. In the years following the turn of the first millennium a great wave of energy ran across Europe and through the British Isles. In 1093 the Normans started building a cathedral whose towering pillars, cavernous interiors and powerful presence make it truly feel like a mountain raised by humans.

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This week Neil’s journey takes us in search of the battle whose ferocity, violence and savagery shocked the whole of the British Isles and shaped its borders for ever – the battle of Brunanburh.

The repercussions from this momentous battle, fought in AD 937, have reverberated right up to the present day. Long remembered as the Great War this was the battle that sliced the long island in two!

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This week Neil takes us in search of the remains of one the greatest Kings ever to reign in the British Isles.

Not far from Winchester’s city centre, in amongst modern residential streets, Neil is on the trail of the location where Alfred the Great’s bones were buried. Alfred the Great took on the Vikings and won. On the field of battle he was a brave and determined soldier. As a ruler his intellect and charisma helped put in place many of the practical and philosophical foundations that have shaped the British Isles. The hunt for his remains gives us a telling snapshot of the man and the history that followed his death

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This week Neil takes us back in time to meet a king who stopped the Vikings in their tracks.

Sitting in the Ashmolean museum in Oxford is a precious golden artefact called the Alfred Jewel, which is over a thousand years old and inscribed with the words, ‘Alfred ordered me made’. This jeweller’s masterpiece tells us so much about the man who commissioned it – King Alfred the Great - a ruler whose actions had a profound effect on shaping the British Isles

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This week Neil winters with the Great Heathen Army, the mighty Viking force that was poised, ready to sweep across the British Isles.

After the Vikings defeated the powerful Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Mercia they chose to over-winter their army in its capital, Repton in Derbyshire.

It was here they rested and recuperated, plotting and planning their next military moves. It was also where they buried their dead. The grave of a formidable Viking, known as the Repton Warrior, who died of terrible injuries was found here, buried with his battle sword. The Vikings, who had died in battle were heading for Valhalla, but come the good weather their comrades were intent on pressing on and conquering the whole of the British Isles.

Also discovered at Repton was a mass Viking grave of great significance. At its centre was, what's thought to be, the grave of one of the Great Heathen Army's leaders - the legendary warrior, Ivar the Boneless.

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This week Neil takes us with him to a place of stunning beauty with a dark and brutal past.

For years the Vikings well-deserved reputation for violence and brutality left a bloody stain right across the British Isles. They were masters of devastating ‘hit-and-run’ attacks, then at the end of the ninth century things took a turn…. for the worse! Vikings arrived on the Brough of Birsay in Orkney, driving off, or in an act of systematic genocide slaughtering the local Pictish men. But what was different this time was the Vikings hadn’t just come to pillage and plunder……they’d come to stay!

Piecing together the archaeology and history Neil tells a compelling story of an island trampled beneath Viking feet…… and he reveals what his DNA says about his own ancestors!

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