I'm writing this blog post in London remembering the last time I was in such warm sunshine. It was during a break in filming and I was enjoying a coffee in the Luv Café in Govan Road, Glasgow last September!

Outside sunlit rows of brown sandstone tenements stretch away to the BAE shipyard and Fairfields with its memories of men pouring out of the great gates in the days when they built the liners here. History all around us.

Michael Wood looking at finds with schoolchildren in Old Deer, Aberdeenshire

Beyond the yards the soaring Victorian Gothic turrets of Govan Old Church, which stands on a site sacred since prehistory, is home to Britain's most amazing collection of Dark Age carved stones.

It's typical of The Great British Story: layers of the past everywhere.

Nowhere in the UK, I suspect, is there a landscape or a cityscape which is not rich in memory and meaning.

It's been a fantastic experience making The Great British Story: A People's History for BBC Two but the schedule has been one of the toughest I've ever done.

Following Alexander over the Hindu Kush in Afghanistan or the Conquistadors through the jungles of the Amazon was actually less taxing than trying to film in all regions in Great Britain and Northern Ireland in one year!

The idea of the series is to look at history through the eyes of ordinary people, so much of the filming has involved community events.

Inevitably they take place over weekends so it's been non-stop since we started last May - but also a delight to walk the streets of the Black Country, Manchester and Swansea and the countryside of Devon and Suffolk, Antrim and Gwent.

Because we are the best documented country on earth for the last 1,000 years we can inhabit those landscapes with the people of the past, imagine their lives, and see the living connections with us.

Coupled with the energy, enthusiasm and knowledge of local communities, schools and groups across the British Isles, that has been the key to the making of the series.

Stand out stories? There are so many it's hard to single out any one, but here are a few:

Our first shoot was on the Royal wedding day last year with the Indian community at their temple in Tividale near Birmingham, and then Kibworth in Leicestershire (setting of our last series Story of England) for their raucous street party complete with a Jamaican gospel choir. That somehow set the tone!

Then at the communal dig at Long Melford one summer weekend we had half the town digging up their back gardens making amazing discoveries of their unknown Roman roots.

Discussing finds with local residents at the Long Melford dig, Suffolk

At Llancarfan near Cardiff the village open day celebrated the sensational discovery of their whitewashed medieval wall paintings.

On Merseyside and the Wirral a DNA project took Scousers on a pilgrimage to their Viking roots.

In Halesowen in the Black Country, where the history of metal working goes from 13th century cutlers to the chainmakers who made the chains for the Titanic, the children at Cradley Primary School collected the first hand stories of those chainmakers for us from their grandparents.

In this year of the Jubilee and the Olympics there is much talk about legacy and thanks to the Heritage Lottery Fund The Great British Story will, we hope, have its own afterlife.

To go with the series, the Heritage Lottery Fund have created a brand new grant scheme, All Our Stories, to give communities and groups across the UK and Northern Ireland the chance to come up with schemes that will enable them to find out more about their own local stories.

But in the immediate future I am off to Liverpool for one of the Great British Story History events that are happening all over the country - once I have admitted that I am a proud Mancunian and a stalwart red I am sure we will have a great day!

Michael Wood is an historian and the presenter of The Great British Story: A People's History.

Comments made by writers on the BBC TV blog are their own opinions and not necessarily those of the BBC.

Series two of Silk opens on BBC One tonight, with Martha Costello now a QC. Actress Maxine Peake answered our questions about the return of the courtroom drama.

How has Martha's character developed in series two?

I don't know whether Martha has developed much as a character as we seem to stay well away from her personal life in this series and focus on her cases much more.

I think if anything she's becoming tougher but it hasn't been easy.

Maxine Peake as Martha Costello QC

You said "it would be extremely challenging for me to play Martha" when series one came out. What was most challenging about it?

I think convincing myself I could credibly play a barrister.

When you have an accent as specific as mine people do tend to pigeon-hole you. Especially as far as class and education are concerned.

I think people associate being middle class with a lack of accent. That is not the case, especially up north, and that a university education would neutralise any accent. We really need to change our way of thinking!

The amount of dialogue to learn too bordered sometimes on the impossible!

How do you get into character?

I have to create a detailed back story for each character I play.

I find it really useful to use music, literature and art as keys to their personality. What they like to listen to, read. Art that stimulates them. I find a song or painting which I think represents them.

A friend of mine, Lex Shrapnel, said to me after a Fleet Foxes concert that the beautiful thing about music is that you can tell a whole story in a few minutes and I think that goes for encapsulating a character's inner life.

Peter [Moffat] very kindly would adapt his scripts to fit my back story too. Which was fantastic.

Tell us a bit about Clive and Martha's relationship and how they test each other over the series.

Martha and Clive are now the best of friends and as with the people you love the most, they challenge and taunt each other.

I adore their relationship. As Rupert put it perfectly: they are like brother and sister who sometimes get a little confused!

Did you do any further research for series two?

I went back to the Old Bailey for a couple of days with Rupert this time and we sat in on a murder trial.

I also met up with a female QC at a chambers in Manchester and she talked me through the highs and lows.

With the cuts to legal aid it's very difficult at the moment and hopefully if Silk goes to a third series Peter might highlight that.

How do you feel during this period between finishing shooting and the programme airing?

I fortunately went straight into another job so didn't give it much thought. Although this year I felt we became much more of a team and did miss everyone a little.

We had the fabulous Frances Barber, Indira Varma, Phil Davis and Shaun Evans on board so we all had to up our game.

Can you enjoy watching your performance on screen or does it make you uncomfortable?

I hate it! It sends me into the depths of despair!

Which of the actors did you most enjoy working with?

I love my scenes with Neil Stuke, he's such an open and energetic actor you just have to react to him.

I bloody love Rupert, he's funny and terribly self-deprecating and I was over the moon when Shaun Evans joined us. He's such a great actor and I've always had a wee bit of a crush on him, but don't tell him that!

What was your personal highlight?

Getting to finally meet Frances Barber. What a woman!

Maxine Peake plays Martha Costello QC in Silk.

Comments made by writers on the BBC TV blog are their own opinions and not necessarily those of the BBC.

There's often this moment backstage at BBC Young Musician when a competitor is about to walk on stage and I wish them luck and my voice cracks and suddenly we both realise, in that same instant, that I'm probably more nervous than they are.

Clemency Burton-Hill on the set of BBC Young Musician 2012

As the presenter I try and play it cool, obviously, but inevitably I'm a gibbering wreck by this point because the tension and excitement levels are so unbelievably high.

It's substantially more nerve-wracking than being backstage at something like The X Factor - I know, I've been there - because these young people have worked for most of their lives to get here.

On BBC Young Musician there's no such thing as overnight success.

These teenagers are like our top athletes, dedicating themselves with a staggering degree of commitment to the thing they love most: classical music.

I'm so proud to be a part of it and thrilled that our growing audience numbers, which are up by around 150,000 from the previous competition, seem to reflect what I believe: that this is a uniquely enthralling show!

The way the competition is structured means I get to know the competitors quite well over the course of a few months.

It's a huge privilege and pleasure to see them at school, meet their families and friends and teachers, find out who they really are off-camera and away from the stage.

But this also means I become very emotionally invested in each and every one of them and I often experience this wave of panic when the jury are about to announce the winner when I suddenly think 'Nooo! Can't they all win?!'

After the verdict I always seek to reassure the ones who don't make it through that they are all winners. Sounds corny but it's true.

It's a huge achievement in itself to get to the category final stage (when there are just five left in each of five instrumental groups, down from hundreds at the start) let alone for the five who then win their category final and make it through to the semi-final.

In their disappointment, which is understandably crushing, I can sometimes see them thinking 'yeah right'. But I really mean it.

They are all outstanding young musicians and on a different night, with a different jury, a different twist of fate, any of them might take the title.

When I was younger I used to play the violin very seriously and once entered Young Musician myself.

I got through the first two rounds but didn't make it to the final. I don't think I had anything like the dedication these kids have! So I am bursting with admiration and respect.

I know all too well how much is at stake here and how terrifying - as well as exciting - it can be to face a jury of this calibre.

They are looking not only for musical and technical brilliance (that much is a given) but for that extra special something.

Who's got it? Who knows? On the night, anything might happen...

One thing's certain: for a young classical artist BBC Young Musician is simply the prize to win - there is no other international platform like it.

You can see that from the incredible careers that former winners like Nicola Benedetti, Guy Johnston and 2010s sensational champion Lara Melda have gone onto have.

This year's strings category winner and semi-finalists cellist Laura Van Der Heijden

So the pressure is on.

And yet, amazingly, if you put the high stakes aside our finalists are basically just lovely, normal, hard-working, passionate teenagers. 'Ordinary', if you like.

They just happen to have a talent that is anything but.

Clemency Burton-Hill is the presenter of BBC Young Musician.

BBC Young Musician is next on on Friday, 11 May at 7.30pm on BBC Four. The semi-final is on Saturday, 12 May at 6pm on BBC Two and the final is on Sunday, 13 May at 6pm on BBC Two.

Comments made by writers on the BBC TV blog are their own opinions and not necessarily those of the BBC.