History TV and radio in the UK: what's on our screens this week?
Can't decide which shows to watch or listen to this week? Here are the latest history radio and TV programmes airing in the UK that you won't want to miss
Archive On 4: The Great Outdoors
BBC Radio 4
Saturday 3 June, 8pm
Matthew Sweet explores the history of the great outdoors. How has the idea we should commune with nature because it’s good for us developed over the years? Plus Sandra Kerr, the folk singer who voiced Madeleine the rag doll in Bagpuss, helps Sweet explore how rural romanticism preoccupied song collectors in the early 20th century.
Ancient Egypt By Train With Alice Roberts
Channel 4
Saturday 3 June, 9.10pm
Donning a sun hat, Professor Alice Roberts takes to the rails to explore the history of one of the world’s oldest civilisations, travelling back in time over four episodes. She begins in Alexandria and visits a site where, it’s been suggested, Cleopatra may be buried.
Gods Of Tennis
BBC Two
Sunday 4 June, 9pm
The 1970s and 1980s are remembered as a golden age in tennis. Why? How did the game change over these decades? And how did these changes reflect wider society? The first episode in a three-part series focuses on sportspeople who in their different ways campaigned for equality: Billie Jean King and Arthur Ashe.
Windrush: A Family Divided
BBC Radio 4
Monday 5 June, 11am
It’s 75 years since HMT Empire Windrush became one of the first ships to bring a large number of West Indian immigrants to the UK. Over four episodes, Professor Robert Beckford and his Jamaican-born wife, Jennifer, consider what the Windrush generation gained by leaving – and whether those who left might have been better transforming their own countries.
Close Encounters
BBC Radio 4
Monday 5 June, 1.45pm
The National Portrait Gallery has been closed for three years for refurbishment. Over 10 weekday episodes. Martha Kearney celebrates its reopening this summer by inviting notable people to discuss their favourite portraits. First up, fashion designer Sir Paul Smith selects a black-and-white shot of photographer and designer Cecil Beaton and poet Stephen Tennant.
Wedgwood: A Very British Tragedy
BBC Radio 4
Monday 5 June, 8pm
Dr Tristram Hunt, director of the V&A, tells the story of visionary ceramics entrepreneur Josiah Wedgwood (1730–95) and the company that bears his name. It’s a tale of innovation and ambition, but also of the company’s fluctuating fortunes down the years and the near-terminal decline of Wedgwood plc in the 21st century.
Once Upon A Time In Northern Ireland
BBC Two
Monday 5 June, 9pm
The history of the Troubles reaches the Thatcher years and a programme centred on the testimony of three women whose lives were shaped by conflict. The mix of the political and personal is hugely powerful as, for example, we hear from Bernadette, just 10 when she was told her father, IRA prisoner Joe McDonnell, was going on hunger strike.
Vicky McClure: My Grandad’s War
ITV1
Monday 5 June, 9pm
Actor Vicky McClure joins her grandfather, 97-year-old Ralph, on a journey into the past. The focus here is on D-Day. Then a teenager, Ralph was a ship’s signaller with the Royal Navy and was among those who landed on Sword Beach.
History’s Secret Heroes
BBC Radio 4
Wednesday 7 June, 11.30am
Major Charity Adams was the first African-American woman to be commissioned in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC). Helena Bonham Carter relates how she came to be sent overseas, initially to Birmingham in the Midlands of England, and as leader of a company of Black WAACs efficiently tackled a huge backlog of mail.
The Gallows Pole
BBC Two
Wednesday 7 June, 9pm
Episode two of Shane Meadows’ drama and David Hartley (Michael Socha) has come up with a scheme money-making – coin clipping, or using slivers of metal from real coins to create counterfeit currency. But how to get enough coins to get started? This won’t, you suspect, end well.
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