Magna Carta - one of the most important documents from the medieval period. It’s still held up as a totem of democracy even in today’s turbulent world. But why did Magna Carta get written and sealed in the first place?

In the first of two very special episodes, Prof. Michael Livingston is headin...

Join Dan Snow on a special expedition that goes far off the beaten track of history as we venture to Libya in North Africa to explore extraordinary Greek and Roman sites, centred around one of the greatest cities of the ancient world, Cyrene.

After years of civil war and instability, History Hit...

80 years ago Wing Commander Joseph Watts was killed when his RAF Hampden Bomber crashed, as it returned from a bombing raid in Occupied Europe. He left behind a daughter, and also an unborn son. John Watts, born 8 months later, would never meet his father. But recently he discovered that at the R...

Richard van Emden talks to Dan about his new book - Missing: the need for closure after the Great War. The backbone of the book is based on the best single story of World War One that he has found in 35 years of research. It is the story of one woman’s relentless search for her missing son’s body...

Dan Snow pieces together the story of the magnificent Stone Age circle.

200 years ago, the sound and pace of the world changed forever...On September 27th, 1825, the Locomotion Number One made its first journey on the Stockton and Darlington railway line, marking the birth of the modern railway.

Dan Snow climbs aboard a working replica, recreating that historic ori...

Join Dan Snow on an adventure through beautiful scenery, industrial landscapes and epic engineering, to discover a story that shaped the modern world.

Dan travels by narrowboat across the canals of England and Wales to explore a transformation in transport and time. Over just a few decades, jour...

We all know the name, Joan of Arc. But who really was this celebrated voice of the people of France? For some she is a simple peasant girl - one of the people. For others, she is a champion of nation and church. For the English, she was simply the enemy.

Dr Eleanor Janega is on a mission to deci...

The Heinkel He 111 was the most numerous bomber which the Luftwaffe deployed during the Battle of Britain. It was capable of storing and delivering large bombs (250kg) and had state-of-the-art gyroscopic sights to improve its accuracy. The He 111 was protected armour plating and self-sealing fuel...

A fierce WWII battle at sea, unreported for more than 60 years is revealed at the bottom of the Gulf of Thailand in HD underwater video. There lay the US submarine Lagarto and the remains of her 86 crewmen, whose families share how their husbands’ and fathers' disappearance shaped their lives. Wr...

Captain James Cook is one of the greatest maritime navigators in history. Born in 1728 to a Scottish father and English mother, Cook grew up in Yorkshire and soon developed a great fascination with the sea and exploration. In 1746 Cook joined the merchant shipping industry when he moved to the ne...

Dan climbs mountains on the trail of the incredible lost city of the Inca - Machu Picchu.

The story of ancient Italy is so much more than just Rome. Tristan Hughes visits the extraordinary site of Paestum in southern Italy, home to some of the greatest ancient Greek temples from anywhere in the world.

From majestic temples to pristine wall paintings more that 2,500 years old, he exp...

A team of maritime archaeologists descends 700 feet off the coast of North Carolina in search of the U-576, a German submarine that went down in a historic 1942 battle, possibly trapping 45 Nazi sailors inside.

Chris Naunton investigates the Victorian maverick who pioneered modern field archaeology.

Most of us have never heard of Flinders Petrie, but this maverick genius undertook a scientific survey of the pyramids, discovered the oldest portraits in the world, unearthed Egypt's prehistoric roots - an...

Magna Carta has inspired and motivated and radicalised countless people all over the world for centuries. It's a document about administration and process, but it has echoed down through the centuries.

Visiting the places where history was made, examining the documents that tell the story, and s...

Luke Tomes undertakes a series of challenges around England's capital wearing 14th century full-plate armour.

In this video, you'll find out what life was like for medieval knights in battle and on crusade, how they trained for combat, how much their armour cost them and most importantly, how th...

Gladiators, from Spartacus to Ridley Scott’s Maximus Decimus Meridius, we’ve been fascinated by them for hundreds of years. Dan Snow is on the hunt to find out why we’re still so obsessed with the men who controlled the Roman arena from the ground up!

Dan joins experts in Italy and England to in...

Rediscovered at the beginning of the 20th century through the work of British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans, the Minoan Civilization, whose earliest beginnings were from c. 3500 BC on the island of Crete, became one of the most developed, complex urban civilizations in antiquity. Yet we still kn...