The Complete History of England, From Stonehenge to Today

In 2012, archaeologists dug into a council car park in Leicester and found a king who had been missing for 527 years: Richard III, killed at Bosworth in 1485. This is the full history of England: how a small, often-invaded corner of an island became a country that shaped the modern world, and at what cost, at home and abroad. Stonehenge and Roman Britain, the making of the English, Alfred and the Danes, 1066, Magna Carta, the Tudors and the break with Rome, a king on trial, empire and the slave trade, coal and cotton, the vote, two world wars, the NHS, Windrush and Europe. NOTES & MYTHS • Cnut and the tide: in the first telling (Henry of Huntingdon, about a century later) he was showing the limits of a king's power, not his arrogance, and the episode may be legend. (Covered in the film.) • Richard III had scoliosis; the withered arm and limp are Tudor and Shakespearean drama. The fate of the princes in the Tower is unknown. • Elizabeth I's "heart and stomach of a king" is known only from a report printed decades later. • Magna Carta did not create democracy. • "Britain stood alone" in 1940: France had fallen, but the Empire and Commonwealth and exiled forces fought on. • Stonehenge's sarsens are about two thousand years older than any attested druids. • England, Great Britain and the United Kingdom are not the same thing; the film explains the difference. WHAT YOU ARE SEEING • Archive images come from open museum and library collections, NASA and Wikimedia Commons (credits below). Paintings are captioned as art, later depictions "as imagined". Historic film is shown without its sound. No images of human remains are shown. • MAP, SCHEMATIC and ILLUSTRATION scenes were made by Shadowfetch Studio in Blender and Unreal Engine. • Quotations are from public-domain sources (Bede tr. Sellar; the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tr. Ingram; Henry of Huntingdon tr. Forester; Sharp's report of Tilbury; the death warrant of Charles I). The narration is a synthetic voice (Kokoro); the score is original. No AI-generated imagery is used in the film. KEY SOURCES University of Leicester and King et al., Nature Communications (2014); Bede; the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle; Henry of Huntingdon; The National Archives; UK Parliament; UCL Legacies of British Slavery; Commonwealth War Graves Commission; Encyclopaedia Britannica CHAPTERS 00:00 Channel opening 00:10 The king under the car park 01:16 An island at the edge of an empire 03:48 The making of the English 06:09 Wessex, the Danes and the tide 09:12 Three kings and a survey 11:39 Common law, conquest and a comeback 14:24 The Tudors and the break with Rome 18:13 The king on trial 21:58 Sugar, slavery and the Company 25:31 Coal, cotton and the machine 27:56 Reform, famine and the vote 30:34 Two world wars 33:41 The NHS, Windrush and Europe 36:44 Under the surface CREDITS Manuscripts, objects, photographs and footage: The Metropolitan Museum of Art (Open Access, CC0); Wikimedia Commons (public domain and CC BY, credited item by item); Cleveland Museum of Art (Open Access, CC0); Library of Congress; British Library (public domain); NASA (public domain); The Walters Art Museum (CC0). CC BY (photographers and creators): Andy / Andrew Fogg, CC BY 2.0; Angel Ganev, CC BY 2.0; August Schwerdfeger, CC BY 4.0; Barry Lewis, CC BY 2.0; Benjamin Kenobi, CC BY 3.0; Bex Walton, CC BY 2.0; chris.rycroft, CC BY 2.0; Darren J. Prior, CC BY 4.0; Digital-Designs, CC BY 2.0; Duncan Harris, CC BY 2.0; Ellen Thompson, CC BY 2.0; Elliott Brown, CC BY 2.0; Francis, CC BY 2.0; Gaius Cornelius, CC BY 4.0; GeorgeM2011, CC BY 4.0; Harry Mitchell, CC BY 4.0; Isananni, CC BY 4.0; It's No Game, CC BY 2.0; James Cridland, CC BY 2.0; Jeff Marquis, CC BY 2.0; Joaquim Baeta, CC BY 4.0; Johnnie Shannon, CC BY 2.0; Jon Callas, CC BY 2.0; Jules & Jenny, CC BY 2.0; Leimenide, CC BY 2.0; LONDON-777 DUKE, CC BY 3.0; M McBey, CC BY 2.0; manish ramrakhani, CC BY 3.0; Matt Brown, CC BY 2.0; Midnightblueowl, CC BY 3.0; Mike Prince, CC BY 2.0; Peter Broster, CC BY 2.0; Peter, CC BY 2.0; Philafrenzy, CC BY 2.0; Portable Antiquities Scheme, CC BY 2.0; Reading Tom, CC BY 2.0; Rob Farrow, Ron Strutt and Keith Evans, CC BY 2.5; Rosser1954, CC BY 4.0; Steven Penton, CC BY 2.0; Suffolk County Council, CC BY 2.0; Surrey County Council, CC BY 2.0; Taro Taylor, CC BY 2.0; The British Museum, CC BY 2.0; ThePsychoNBK, CC BY 3.0; Tim Green, CC BY 2.0; Tony Hisgett, CC BY 2.0; UK Parliament, CC BY 3.0; zaphad1, CC BY 2.0. Original maps: terrain USGS GMTED2010 and NASA SRTM; map data Natural Earth (public domain). Full item-by-item credits accompany the production package. Licence texts: creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, /by/2.5, /by/3.0, /by/4.0 #England #BritishHistory #History #RichardIII #UK #Documentary