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...

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...

Dan joins author and mudlark expert Lara Maiklem for a spot of mudlarking.

For generations, Drake's Island, situated just outside of Plymouth harbour, had been owned by the Ministry of Defence. Recently, however, this island bastion has gone into private ownership. In this documentary Bob King, the gatekeeper of Drake's Island, gives Dan an exclusive tour of this extrem...

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...

Narrated by Tom Selleck: Sunday, December 7, 1941 was a beautiful morning on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. A few sailors and soldiers were already up and playing a game of football near Pearl Harbor. Others were sleeping in their barracks or aboard ships after a late night of partying in Honolulu....

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...

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...

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.

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 ...

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...

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

The Battle of Jutland was the decisive naval clash of the First World War, pitting the German High Seas Fleet against the Royal Navy's Grand Fleet in an all or nothing battle for supremacy and survival. At the end of the war, the defeated German fleet was scuttled at Scapa Flow. Or so we thought....

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...