Stacey Dooley returns with a moving and insightful documentary exploring the issue of child soldiers in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where an estimated 5.4 million people have died in the civil war.
An estimated 30,000 children have been used as soldiers during the 14-year conflict in the DRC and no one knows how many thousands are still in the forests, enslaved by armed militias. Stacey meets kids who have been soldiers. She goes to a rescue centre where boys and girls arrive daily, rescued from guerrilla militia units as well as the Congolese National Army. She befriends one boy, 16-year-old Patrick, who was kidnapped when he was just 12. He tells her how he was forced to kill people and was even made to drink their blood to give him magic powers.
Stacey meets other boy soldiers and hears their terrifying experiences first hand. Accompanying a local charity, she travels to a frontline Congolese National Army camp where she helps rescues two teenage boy soldiers. On their way to the rescue centre, they reveal to her that they've been living as soldiers, deep in the forest, since they were nine and ten years old.
Stacey takes one boy home to be reunited with his family he hasn't seen for more than three years. He was taken away by the militias, forced to fight and kill and now neither Stacey nor the boy know how his family and the villagers will react to his return.
Stacey witnesses for herself the terrifying complexities of war where young kids have been manipulated to commit atrocities, but who still have to return to living a normal life again.
BBC3. 7th October 2010. 60 minutes
Sunday, 31 October 2010
Henry VIII: Patron or Plunderer?
Episode 1
King Henry VIII had a fascinating and enlightening relationship with art. He came to the throne as the renaissance swept across Europe, yet England's new King never lost sight of the medieval chivalry of his forefathers.
In the first of a two-part documentary, architectural historian Jonathan Foyle looks at the palaces, tapestries, music and paintings created in the King's name and questions whether the art he commissioned compensates for the religious treasures he would come to destroy.
Episode 2
In the 1530s, King Henry VIII was at a crossroads. In his desperation for a new wife and an heir, he had broken with Rome, divorced Catherine of Aragon and married Anne Boleyn. Isolated and vulnerable, he needed a powerful new image as head of church and state.
In the second of a two-part documentary, architectural historian Jonathan Foyle looks for clues in the king's art to glimpse what was going on inside Henry's head as he faced his darkest days.
BBC4. 7-14 October 2010. 2 x 60 minutes
King Henry VIII had a fascinating and enlightening relationship with art. He came to the throne as the renaissance swept across Europe, yet England's new King never lost sight of the medieval chivalry of his forefathers.
In the first of a two-part documentary, architectural historian Jonathan Foyle looks at the palaces, tapestries, music and paintings created in the King's name and questions whether the art he commissioned compensates for the religious treasures he would come to destroy.
Episode 2
In the 1530s, King Henry VIII was at a crossroads. In his desperation for a new wife and an heir, he had broken with Rome, divorced Catherine of Aragon and married Anne Boleyn. Isolated and vulnerable, he needed a powerful new image as head of church and state.
In the second of a two-part documentary, architectural historian Jonathan Foyle looks for clues in the king's art to glimpse what was going on inside Henry's head as he faced his darkest days.
BBC4. 7-14 October 2010. 2 x 60 minutes
The Genius of British Art (Episodes 3-4)
Flesh
Writer Howard Jacobson celebrates the way British artists depict sex and desire, and argues that the most compelling expression is to be found where we might least expect it: in the art of the Victorians.
We like to caricature the Victorians as hypocrites for whom the body is nothing but an embarrassment. In fact, thanks to artists like William Etty, who introduced the nude into British art in the 1820s, the Victorian era became a golden age for painting a wild and desperate sexuality.
What distinguishes this art from what was happening in, for example, France, is its moral consciousness. These are not paintings of unthinking hedonism. They reflect an awareness of the moral and psychological consequences of sex, which is what makes them all the more erotic. 'This for me is the British genius,' says Howard. 'We don't just do the fires of love today. We think about the way we'll feel tomorrow.'
Howard first discovered that British art of the 19th century was far more adventurous than it's given credit for when he visited his local gallery in Manchester as a schoolboy. Even today it's in the great provincial art galleries in which some of our most provocative sexual art can be found, thanks to those Victorian men of trade and industry, like soap billionaire William Lever, whom we often deride as prudish and philistine.
William Etty is York's most distinguished artistic son and yet Howard finds that not a single one of his nudes is on show here. We may laugh at the Victorians for what we think of as their prudery and repression but it seems we are hedged in by more moral prohibitions than they were.
Visions of England
At a time when Britain's contemporary art world has been dominated by the 'Sensation' generation of Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin, it's easy to dismiss English landscape art as nothing more than tea towel culture. That would be a big mistake, argues Sir Roy Strong.
Far from being a succession of chocolate box cliches, the genius of English landscape art is that it affords a sometimes shocking and subversive insight into the country's deepest fears.
What we see at first glance can be deceptive. Take that great national icon: Constable's The Haywain. On the surface it's an image of an idyllic pastoral scene but in its time it was revolutionary. Visitors to the Royal Academy in 1821 were horrified that Constable should exhibit a piece of local landscape on a scale usually reserved for subjects from the Bible or national history.
It was painted during a period when England was engaged in bloody war against France, there was turbulence in the countryside and industrial revolution in the cities.
All the most significant developments in English landscape art have happened at times of great national crisis - the Napoleonic Wars, the First and Second World Wars - when Britain was cut off from the continent and our artists were compelled to look inwards.
Sir Roy argues that, from Constable to Hockney, landscape artists have reflected visions of England on the cusp of change. It is nothing less than this country's greatest contribution to western art.
Channel 4. 17-24 October 2010. 2 x 60 minutes
Writer Howard Jacobson celebrates the way British artists depict sex and desire, and argues that the most compelling expression is to be found where we might least expect it: in the art of the Victorians.
We like to caricature the Victorians as hypocrites for whom the body is nothing but an embarrassment. In fact, thanks to artists like William Etty, who introduced the nude into British art in the 1820s, the Victorian era became a golden age for painting a wild and desperate sexuality.
What distinguishes this art from what was happening in, for example, France, is its moral consciousness. These are not paintings of unthinking hedonism. They reflect an awareness of the moral and psychological consequences of sex, which is what makes them all the more erotic. 'This for me is the British genius,' says Howard. 'We don't just do the fires of love today. We think about the way we'll feel tomorrow.'
Howard first discovered that British art of the 19th century was far more adventurous than it's given credit for when he visited his local gallery in Manchester as a schoolboy. Even today it's in the great provincial art galleries in which some of our most provocative sexual art can be found, thanks to those Victorian men of trade and industry, like soap billionaire William Lever, whom we often deride as prudish and philistine.
William Etty is York's most distinguished artistic son and yet Howard finds that not a single one of his nudes is on show here. We may laugh at the Victorians for what we think of as their prudery and repression but it seems we are hedged in by more moral prohibitions than they were.
Visions of England
At a time when Britain's contemporary art world has been dominated by the 'Sensation' generation of Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin, it's easy to dismiss English landscape art as nothing more than tea towel culture. That would be a big mistake, argues Sir Roy Strong.
Far from being a succession of chocolate box cliches, the genius of English landscape art is that it affords a sometimes shocking and subversive insight into the country's deepest fears.
What we see at first glance can be deceptive. Take that great national icon: Constable's The Haywain. On the surface it's an image of an idyllic pastoral scene but in its time it was revolutionary. Visitors to the Royal Academy in 1821 were horrified that Constable should exhibit a piece of local landscape on a scale usually reserved for subjects from the Bible or national history.
It was painted during a period when England was engaged in bloody war against France, there was turbulence in the countryside and industrial revolution in the cities.
All the most significant developments in English landscape art have happened at times of great national crisis - the Napoleonic Wars, the First and Second World Wars - when Britain was cut off from the continent and our artists were compelled to look inwards.
Sir Roy argues that, from Constable to Hockney, landscape artists have reflected visions of England on the cusp of change. It is nothing less than this country's greatest contribution to western art.
Channel 4. 17-24 October 2010. 2 x 60 minutes
Saturday, 30 October 2010
The Genius of British Art (Episodes 1-2)
Power and Personality
Historian Dr David Starkey examines how royal portraiture from Henry VIII to Princess Diana has had an enduring influence on the iconic power of personality.
No other artist looked at Britain in the way that Hogarth did. There's no one in the art of Europe like him. Hogarth was born poor in London, to whose teeming streets he turned for inspiration throughout his life. Hogarth's London, by far the biggest city in Europe, was not only a great subject for the artist; it was the crucible in which British identity was forged.
Gus has a personal fascination with this story because in 1748, his ancestor, William Ansa, arrived in London from Africa. William had left the Gold Coast, where his father was a wealthy trader, for England to seek his fortune. But the ship's captain had tricked him into slavery and he had spent four years working on a sugar plantation in Barbados.
His case became a cause celebre. The good people of London petitioned for William's freedom and by the time he eventually got here, he was already famous. Gus has always wondered what William might have seen and felt in London. He finds the answers in the life and work of Hogarth.
Uniquely among artists at the time, there are black people everywhere in Hogarth. For Gus, it's an acknowledgement that the lives of people like William Ansa are part of British history too.
Hogarth's inclusive vision of British identity seemed horrifyingly vulgar to the ruling classes of his day. On the whole, the artistic elite shunned the rowdy life of the streets. They wanted a more elegant, chaste vision of British identity. Hogarth wanted art that depicted Britain in all its ugly, rude reality.
Channel 4. 3-10 October 2010. 2 x 60 minutes
Historian Dr David Starkey examines how royal portraiture from Henry VIII to Princess Diana has had an enduring influence on the iconic power of personality.
Henry was enamoured with the imperial power reflected by the art of Rome. His break with the Catholic Church prompted him to embrace the supreme artist of the Reformation, Hans Holbein, and form a partnership whose influence resonates to this day.
Starkey shows how first Henry and Holbein, and then Charles I and his court painter, Anthony van Dyck, set an enduring template for the depiction of power - a template that has been brilliantly adapted in our time by the renegade royal, Princess Diana. Thanks to her own 'Holbein', the photographer Mario Testino, Diana stripped away the pomp of monarchy to promote her own personality in the same way Henry VIII had pioneered 500 years earlier.
Far from being the also-rans in today's age of celebrity, the royals can truly be said to have invented it.
Art for the People
Dr Gus Casely-Hayford shows how our sense of identity was changed forever by the most distinctively British artist this country has ever produced: William Hogarth.
No other artist looked at Britain in the way that Hogarth did. There's no one in the art of Europe like him. Hogarth was born poor in London, to whose teeming streets he turned for inspiration throughout his life. Hogarth's London, by far the biggest city in Europe, was not only a great subject for the artist; it was the crucible in which British identity was forged.
Gus has a personal fascination with this story because in 1748, his ancestor, William Ansa, arrived in London from Africa. William had left the Gold Coast, where his father was a wealthy trader, for England to seek his fortune. But the ship's captain had tricked him into slavery and he had spent four years working on a sugar plantation in Barbados.
His case became a cause celebre. The good people of London petitioned for William's freedom and by the time he eventually got here, he was already famous. Gus has always wondered what William might have seen and felt in London. He finds the answers in the life and work of Hogarth.
Uniquely among artists at the time, there are black people everywhere in Hogarth. For Gus, it's an acknowledgement that the lives of people like William Ansa are part of British history too.
Hogarth's inclusive vision of British identity seemed horrifyingly vulgar to the ruling classes of his day. On the whole, the artistic elite shunned the rowdy life of the streets. They wanted a more elegant, chaste vision of British identity. Hogarth wanted art that depicted Britain in all its ugly, rude reality.
Channel 4. 3-10 October 2010. 2 x 60 minutes
Michael Woods' Story of England (Episodes 5-6)
Henry VIII to The Industrial Revolution
The tale reaches the dramatic events of Henry VIII's Reformation and the battles of the English Civil War. We track Kibworth's 17th century dissenters, travel on the Grand Union Canal and meet an 18th century feminist writer from Kibworth who was a pioneer of children's books.
The story of a young highwayman transported to Australia comes alive as his living descendents come back to the village to uncover their roots. Lastly, the Industrial Revolution comes to the village with framework knitting factories, changing the village and its people forever.
Victoria to the Present Day
In this final episode, helped by today's villagers Michael uncovers the secret history of a Victorian village more colourful than even Dickens could have imagined. Recreating their penny concerts of the 1880s, visiting World War I battlefields with the school and recalling the Home Guard, local land girls and the bombing of the village in 1940, the series finally moves into the brave new world of 'homes for heroes' and the villagers come together to leave a reminder of their world for future generations.
BBC4. 20th-27th October 2010. 2 x 60 minutes
The tale reaches the dramatic events of Henry VIII's Reformation and the battles of the English Civil War. We track Kibworth's 17th century dissenters, travel on the Grand Union Canal and meet an 18th century feminist writer from Kibworth who was a pioneer of children's books.
The story of a young highwayman transported to Australia comes alive as his living descendents come back to the village to uncover their roots. Lastly, the Industrial Revolution comes to the village with framework knitting factories, changing the village and its people forever.
Victoria to the Present Day
In this final episode, helped by today's villagers Michael uncovers the secret history of a Victorian village more colourful than even Dickens could have imagined. Recreating their penny concerts of the 1880s, visiting World War I battlefields with the school and recalling the Home Guard, local land girls and the bombing of the village in 1940, the series finally moves into the brave new world of 'homes for heroes' and the villagers come together to leave a reminder of their world for future generations.
BBC4. 20th-27th October 2010. 2 x 60 minutes
Wednesday, 27 October 2010
Michael Woods' Story of England (Episodes 3-4)
The Great Famine and The Black Death
Wood's fascinating tale reaches the catastrophic 14th century. Kibworth goes through the worst famine in European history, and then, as revealed in the astonishing village archive in Merton College Oxford, two thirds of the people die in the Black Death.
Helped by today's villagers - field walking and reading the historical texts - and by the local schoolchildren digging archaeological test pits, Wood follows stories of individual lives through these times, out of which the English idea of community and the English character begin to emerge.
The Peasants Revolt to The Tudors
Wood's gripping tale moves on to dramatic battles of conscience in the time of the Hundred Years' War. Amazing finds in the school archive help trace peasant education back to the 14th century and we see how the people themselves set up the first school for their children.
Some villagers join in a rebellion against King Henry V, while others rise to become middle class merchants in the textile town of Coventry. On the horizon is the Protestant Reformation, but the rise of capitalism and individualism sow the seeds of England's future greatness.
BBC4 7-13 October 2010. 2 x 60 minutes
Wood's fascinating tale reaches the catastrophic 14th century. Kibworth goes through the worst famine in European history, and then, as revealed in the astonishing village archive in Merton College Oxford, two thirds of the people die in the Black Death.
Helped by today's villagers - field walking and reading the historical texts - and by the local schoolchildren digging archaeological test pits, Wood follows stories of individual lives through these times, out of which the English idea of community and the English character begin to emerge.
The Peasants Revolt to The Tudors
Wood's gripping tale moves on to dramatic battles of conscience in the time of the Hundred Years' War. Amazing finds in the school archive help trace peasant education back to the 14th century and we see how the people themselves set up the first school for their children.
Some villagers join in a rebellion against King Henry V, while others rise to become middle class merchants in the textile town of Coventry. On the horizon is the Protestant Reformation, but the rise of capitalism and individualism sow the seeds of England's future greatness.
BBC4 7-13 October 2010. 2 x 60 minutes
Michael Woods' Story of England (Episodes 1-2)
Romans to Normans
Groundbreaking series in which Michael Wood tells the story of one place throughout the whole of English history. The village is Kibworth in Leicestershire in the heart of England - a place that lived through the Black Death, the Civil War and the Industrial Revolution and was even bombed in World War Two.
With the help of the local people and using archaeology, landscape, language and DNA, Michael uncovers the lost history of the first thousand years of the village, featuring a Roman villa, Anglo-Saxons and Vikings and graphic evidence of life on the eve of the Norman Conquest.
Domesday to Magna Carta
Wood's unique portrait moves on to 1066 when the Normans build a castle in Kibworth. He reveals how occupation affected the villagers from the gallows to the alehouse, and shows the medieval open fields in action in the only place where they still survive today.
With the help of the residents, he charts events in the village leading to the people's involvement in the Civil War of Simon de Montfort. Intertwining the local and national narratives, this is a moving and informative picture of one local community through time.
BBC4. 22-29 September 2010. 2 x 60 minutes
Groundbreaking series in which Michael Wood tells the story of one place throughout the whole of English history. The village is Kibworth in Leicestershire in the heart of England - a place that lived through the Black Death, the Civil War and the Industrial Revolution and was even bombed in World War Two.
With the help of the local people and using archaeology, landscape, language and DNA, Michael uncovers the lost history of the first thousand years of the village, featuring a Roman villa, Anglo-Saxons and Vikings and graphic evidence of life on the eve of the Norman Conquest.
Domesday to Magna Carta
Wood's unique portrait moves on to 1066 when the Normans build a castle in Kibworth. He reveals how occupation affected the villagers from the gallows to the alehouse, and shows the medieval open fields in action in the only place where they still survive today.
With the help of the residents, he charts events in the village leading to the people's involvement in the Civil War of Simon de Montfort. Intertwining the local and national narratives, this is a moving and informative picture of one local community through time.
BBC4. 22-29 September 2010. 2 x 60 minutes
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