Dan Snow's blog

Can history compete at prime time on Britain’s biggest channel? That was the challenge I was set by the BBC’s top brass. Me and a crack team of producers and researchers were told to come up with a history series that would bring popular history to the heart of BBC One.

We were given five slots, at 7.30pm – and we would be broadcasting live to the nation’s living rooms. The team assembled and the lengthy, intense and often amusing discussions began.

There were rumours from the East. Soviet T-34 tanks were being destroyed at inconceivable ranges while German news reels boasted of a war winning weapon. It was called Tiger. German tank designers had designed a weapon that would restore the balance of the armoured battlefield in Germany’s favour.

Christmas is approaching; people are giving themselves over to wild excess, while misanthropes moan. They wail that Christmas has become a festival of excess, an orgy of licentiousness, a celebration of gluttony.

It was a very British scene. A group of wild haired men and women, dressed like Siberian irregulars, standing in a huddled group on a rain lashed November day on a hillside overlooking Glasgow. From time to time the clouds lifted and a bright autumnal light flashed off the buildings of the city below us. We were there to fire eighteenth century weapons.

The street was full of fans. They were doing what fans do: shouting, laughing, drinking as much beer as possible before it was confiscated at the gates of the stadium. The University of Pittsburgh were playing Connecticut State and the home fans were out in force. It was a typical Saturday afternoon and could have been any town in the English speaking world.

Yesterday was the 250th anniversary of the battle of Quebec, fought on 13 September 1759, on the Plains of Abraham outside the town of Quebec, the capital of France’s vast North American empire. It was a strange day – a large re-enactment had recently been cancelled due to protests made by French Canadian- Quebecois- Separatists.

In one week I've gone from the very nadir of British maritime history to its zenith. On Monday I visited the excellent but low key Upnor Castle on the Medway, where in 1667 King Charles II had laid up his fleet ‘in ordinary’ because he had no money to send them to sea and no inclination to go to parliament and ask for more.