1. Home
2. History and biography

Everywhere is now part of our story as we enter a period in history which, like no other, is dominated by the acts and personalities of a small group of powerful leaders - Titans. This is the time for Churchill and Roosevelt, Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini, for Tojo to dominate both public and daily life. Peripheral figures to the main game are still part of the story - Eisenhower, of course, supreme commander in Europe and president-to-be and independence leaders Gandhi in India and De Valera in Ireland.

How the inventor of the detective story became his own greatest mystery.

Stalin, who was highly praised at the 17th congress of the Communist Party in 1934, launched the construction of the Moscow canal and a new Trans-Siberian route. The NKVD, which took over from the GPU, increased the number of camps and transformed the Gulag into a veritable prison industry. In 1935, the number of prisoners in the Gulag exceeded one million. The trials held by Moscow, which were the showcase of the Great Purge, hid the repression that was hitting Soviet society and the anonymous. Mass executions and arbitrary arrests rapidly increased in number. In January 1939, 2 million prisoners were working in the Gulag, but on 22 June 1941, Germany attacked the Soviet Union. As a consequence, in 1942, detention conditions in the gulag degenerated. Famine and disease caused the death of many prisoners. In 1945, in spite of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany, the Gulag archipelago, supplier of essential raw materials, continued expanding.

Engineering has built our modern world. Everything from skyscrapers to roads and air travel are here because of Engineering. But what happens when engineering goes horribly wrong? Go behind the headlines to uncover what really happened in the most notorious engineering accidents.

Life in Edwardian Britain wasn't all fun and games. The Siege of Sydney Street, in East London in 1911, is the perhaps the first terrorist attack ever caught on film. Remarkably, a young Winston Churchill then home secretary can be seen controversially directing operations just yards away from the gunfire.

It is easy to imagine that the past was lived in black and white, but of course, it was not. This landmark series uses modern colouration techniques to present a history of America in colour, for the first time. Season two will take viewers on another visually stunning journey, shifting the focus from various decades to iconic thematic episodes in history, including: Titans of Industry: The story of a rising generation of industrialists like Henry Ford and inventors such as Thomas Edison who came to tower over America, transformed the country and impact the global landscape.

The epic untold story of Ben Cousins, the footy god and hero to fans across the country, whose life went dramatically off the rails. Now he comes clean and nothing is off limits.

In this episode, prank-loving teenage Emperor Elagabalus hosts a dinner party on Roman Come Dine With Me, and some British officers try to get their heads around the complicated causes of World War I.

An up-close-and personal profile of passionate artist Julie Dowling.

The Spanish civil war reaches its bloody climax, the League of Nations seems toothless against the aggression of Italy, of Germany and of Japan. Neville Chamberlain is the man of the hour - but Adolf Hitler is the man of the times and 1938 brings a group of our titans together when Chamberlain invents 'shuttle diplomacy' at Munich, joining Hitler and Mussolini and thinking he has secured 'peace for our time' - "Good man!" telegraphs FDR. But peace is the last thing on Hitler's mind and the episode ends with war again burning across Europe.

Engineering has built our modern world. Everything from skyscrapers to roads and air travel are here because of Engineering. But what happens when engineering goes horribly wrong? Go behind the headlines to uncover what really happened in the most notorious engineering accidents.

The first concentration camps were set up as of 1918, a few months after the October Revolution. The new Bolshevik regime wished to rid itself of its political adversaries and use work to re-educate the so-called social misfits. The first wide-scale experiment was that of the Solovetsky Islands. Thousands of political prisoners and criminals, both men and women, were imprisoned there in inhumane conditions. After the death of Lenin in 1922, Stalin came to power and launched the accelerated industrialisation of the country along with the collectivisation of agriculture, which would lead to deadly famines. Immense building projects were launched in the most remote regions such as Kolyma in Siberia. The GPU, the Communist Party's secret police, which was in charge of cleansing society and ridding it of undesirables, sent hundreds of thousands of Russians to the camps to participate in the establishment of socialism.

Take a personal and in-depth look at the first man to set foot on the moon: Neil Armstrong, one of the world's greatest and least-understood heroes.

It is easy to imagine that the past was lived in black and white, but of course, it was not. This landmark series uses modern colouration techniques to present a history of America in colour, for the first time. Season two will take viewers on another visually stunning journey, shifting the focus from various decades to iconic thematic episodes in history, including: Titans of Industry: The story of a rising generation of industrialists like Henry Ford and inventors such as Thomas Edison who came to tower over America, transformed the country and impact the global landscape.

Edwardian Britain was the richest, most powerful country in the world. We look at what this means for men, women and children hard at work in the mills and the mines of the north, and London's docks and markets.

There is good news for George IV. A World War II evacuee encounters the horrors of the countryside. Joan of Arc gets an unexpected visit. There is a visit to Ancient Greece for the Spartan High School Musical.

The threat of war seems intensifies: war reaches Ethiopia with the Italian invasion and threatens in Europe with the German occupation of the Rhineland and annexation of Australia. Spain and China plunge into terrible civil wars. Mao Zedong leads the Chinese Communist Party to safety at the end of the Long March and the competing factions - Mao and Chiang Kai-shek - unite in the face of Japan's invasion.

Why are the oldest Irish human remains less than 10,000 years old when just 100km away in Britain, human traces go back 700,000 years? Did the first Irish arrive overland on an ice bridge, or on a small fragile boat blown ashore by the winds of chance? Diarmuid Gavin travels to the heart of Africa and beyond in a quest to find the very origins of the Irish people. Who are the Irish and whose blood flows in their veins? A landmark documentary and winner of an Irish Film and TV Award, this program explores the most fundamental questions about the Irish population: Who were the first people to settle there and where did they come from? The series combines cutting-edge science and archaeology, and superb visuals to explore this enthralling topic.