Odysseys

Odysseys

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Odysseys
  • Ghost Ships: Forgotten Wrecks of the River Dart

    All around the UK, in rivers and streams, and in the mud on the side of riverbeds are the remains of our maritime past, which helps us understand who were are today.

    In 2013, a survey around the UK identified 199 different assemblages of hulks, remains of craft. These included paddle ships, ferr...

  • Life Underwater: Inside the HMS Alliance

    Submarine veteran Commodore Eric Thompson gives Dan Snow a tour of HMS Alliance, now preserved at the Royal Navy Submarine Museum in Portsmouth.

  • Bristol: SS Great Britain

    This was our first city road trip for Snow on the Road - 3 days in Bristol visiting its most interesting historical sites. What's so wonderful about Bristol is how its history is interwoven into the fabric of the city. World treasures like the SS Great Britain and Underfall Yard are visible all a...

  • Secrets of Hitler's Island Fortress

    Guernsey and its neighbouring islands have a unique distinction which sets them apart from the rest of the British Isles. Together with the rest of the Channel Islands, they were the only part of the British Isles to fall to Nazi Germany in the Second World War. In this documentary Dan Snow disco...

  • Secrets of the Churchill War Rooms

    Winston Churchill, wartime Prime Minister of Great Britain and its empire during the Second World War, is one of the most recognisable figures of world history. The man dominated Whitehall and Westminster, but many of his most vital decisions during the war years were taken away from the public e...

  • Life and Death in Nelson's Navy

    200 years ago, Britain's Royal Navy was the most technologically advanced and supremely efficient force in the history of naval warfare.

    But what was it like to live and work on board these ships? What did the men eat? How did the ships sail? What were the weapons they used?

    In this documentar...

  • The History of Westminster Abbey

    Sir David Cannadine shows Dan around the iconic Westminster Abbey, in the heart of London. With an unrivalled arrange of monuments - ranging from grand royal tombs to the grave of The Unknown Warrior - and spectacular architecture spanning nearly 1,000 years, join the two historians as they explo...

  • Captain Cook's Endeavour

    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...

  • Total Victory: The Battle of Trafalgar

    Victory was total. An enemy fleet obliterated. The course of a great war determined. A hero struck down and a legend born. In October 1805 the British Royal Navy defeated the combined battle fleets of the French and Spanish empires 20 miles northwest of a promontory of rock and sand in southern S...

  • The Worst Journey in the World: The Arctic Convoys

    In August 1941, the Allies launched Operation Dervish. This was the first of the Arctic Convoys, ships which sailed from the United Kingdom, Iceland and North America, and brought essential supplies to the Soviet Union.

    After the successful launch of Operation Barbarossa, the USSR was in despe...

  • Life and Death of the Inca

    1 season

    A special History Hit deep dive into the fascinating world of the Inca. Dan Snow travels high into the Peruvian Andes to explore how they thrived in their high altitude empire, building extraordinary structures, a vast road network and harnessing the resources of the mountains. We investigate the...

  • Edges of Empire

    1 season

    Tristan Hughes goes on a journey along Hadrian's Wall, visiting some of its greatest sites. Meeting experts to learn more about the Wall's history and the ground-breaking new archaeological discoveries, that continue to tell us more about what life must have been like on this far-flung frontier a...

  • Access All Areas

    1 season

    History Hit gets AAA permission to head behind the scenes at top history locations!

  • Mutiny on the Bounty: To the Ends of the Earth and Back

    In early 1789, Captain Bligh in the South Pacific suffered a mutiny among his crew on HMS Bounty. Put to sea with a small group of loyal sailors in one of the ship's boats, what followed was one of the epic stories of maritime history. For more than 40 days, Bligh and his men sailed across open P...

  • The Jordan: A River Through Time

    Dan Snow explores Biblical lands, discovering the places where religion and history intersect on the east bank of the River Jordan. It is a region full of evidence of the connections early Christians made here with places and events in the Bible, from Moses to the baptism of Jesus.

    The journey b...

  • Ernest Shackleton: With Ranulph Fiennes

    In this fascinating interview, Dan Snow chats to the world's greatest living explorer Ranulph Fiennes about Ernest Shackleton and his heroic expeditions in the Golden Age of Antarctic Exploration.

  • Saving Timbuktu's Manuscripts

    For centuries the city of Timbuktu was famed as a golden metropolis situated on the southern fringes of the Sahara; tales of its immense wealth and its reputation as a key centre of learning obsessed travellers and adventurers for many hundreds of years. Timbuktu certainly has one of the most ill...

  • The Ambassadors: Mysteries of a Tudor Masterpiece

    Tracy Borman unravels the web of messages and secrets hidden in one of the most spectacular and mysterious Tudor paintings, Holbein’s the Ambassadors.

    In 1533 England was in turmoil - Henry VIII had secretly married Anne Boleyn and had his marriage to Katherine of Aragon annulled.

    This was the ...

  • Stonehenge

    Dan Snow visits one of the most recognisable historical sites on Earth. Stonehenge. Timed with the recent solving of the sarsen stones origin mystery, this documentary takes an in-depth look at what we know, and what we don't know, about this iconic Neolithic monument.

  • The Ninth: Mystery of the Lost Legion

    1 season

    It is one of the great mysteries of ancient Mediterranean history. In the 2nd century AD, Rome’s 9th Legion – Legio IX Hispana – vanished from the historical record. Immortalised through Rosemary Sutcliff’s famous novel The Eagle of the Ninth, the question of what happened to this ‘Lost Legion’ h...

  • Debunking the Myths of the Titanic

    At noon on 10 April 1912, crowds gathered at Southampton to watch the maiden voyage of the World's largest ship RMS Titanic. A sleek, modern luxurious liner that was offering a safe and fast crossing of the Atlantic Ocean. Titanic was said to be invincible. She cruised down Southampton waters on ...

  • Operation Dynamo: Escape from Dunkirk

    At the end of May and the beginning of June 1940, over 370,000 Allied soldiers found themselves at great risk, surrounded by German forces on all sides & with their backs to the Channel. The eyes of the World fixed their gaze on the small Allied perimeter that remained, around the beaches of Dunk...

  • HMS Terror and Erebus: With Sir Michael Palin

    In 1845, a British voyage of Arctic exploration led by Captain Sir John Franklin departed England aboard two ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror. The expedition was assigned to traverse the last unnavigated sections of the Northwest Passage in the Canadian Arctic and to record magnetic data to help ...

  • Finding the Lost Battlefield of Brunanburh

    The Battle of Brunanburh was one of the bloodiest and biggest battles of early medieval history. Fought 1100 years ago, Athelstan - the king of the English - opposed a coalition of Irish, Scots, Northumbrians and Vikings and won a decisive victory. The enemy shield wall was penetrated. Their troo...