How the Victorians Built Britain

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.

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.

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.