Friday 25 May 2012, 17:45
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.
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Find out how you can engage with local history in your area
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.
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Watch a clip from episode one: the roots of early Britain
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.
The Great British Story: A People's History is next on on Friday, 1 June at 9pm on BBC Two and BBC HD. For further programme times, please see the episode guide.
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Comment number 1.
TOCARROLL26th May 2012 - 3:45
I found this programme to be poor in the first degree. Let me checkpoint my issues -
1. The programme started off by saying 1500 years. This suggested from the end of Roman occupation. The programme then went on to detail Roman occupation of southern Britain from whenever. No mention was made of the Claudian invasion. Actual time span was nearer 2000 years (47 to 410).
2. All mention of the Caledonian, and more importantly Pictish wars against Rome was never mentioned. Indeed the Picts only entered this primary school history in post Roman history. No mention of the considerable threat the northern (Scottish to be) tribes made. The Great Barbarian conspiracy of the late fourth century was totally absent. The fact the Roman build two walls to keep us out not entering this poor edition.
3. Noticed that this programme appears on the same day the independence 'yes' campaign starts in Scotland.
4. No one in Archaeology gives any credence to 'Dark Ages' term. The post Roman era was a lively and colourful period of history. Wood should know better.
Great British Story? Not even close. Poor English Story more like. And Anti Scottish rant is nearer the truth.
Very poor offering by Mr Wood.
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Comment number 2.
james a taylor26th May 2012 - 5:06
I just watched the first episode and found it very disapointing.
I understand that it must be difficult to try and cram so much history into an hours television, but seeing as this was a 'people's' history, why so much focus upon the Roman garrisons and elite?
no mention of the Boudiccan revolt, Carratacus?
as well as an overemphasis on the extent of romanisation, and the proliferation of the idea that rome was great for everyone, and was accepted and embraced by all.
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Comment number 3.
John26th May 2012 - 7:25
Eye wateringly wonderful! Thank you Michael Wood and thank you BBC. Very interesting that this program coincides with a time when once again we ask ourselves what it is to be British. I found the program to be very moving, all because of Michael Wood. His programs and writing are always full of the warmth of humanity and the acceptance that those who went before were in many ways the same as us, with the same hopes and fears. For me Michael Wood lit the touch paper of my fascination with British history with his book on The Dark Ages (1980s?). This current program had to jump around a fair bit to join up such a large amount of dots for us and is bold in that its broad brush strokes ambitiously create an overview. Is that not what great communication is about? Of course it is. Epic! Utterly Epic!! An outstanding piece of Great British Television.
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Comment number 4.
Woody26th May 2012 - 10:42
I was very disappointed with this programme as I know little of the history of Britain.
As the trend with programmes lately I found it bitty, fragmented and jumping around. It left me totally confused.
Good concept but badly executed.
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Comment number 5.
Dan Ferguson26th May 2012 - 15:53
I find the idea of the programme very good, but some common misconceptions seem to be being restated by Mr Wood. Has he not seen any of the recent DNA research evidence that indicates that the vast majority of the population of the British Isles are descended from people that arrived here just after the last Ice Age, and that
later intrusions of new-comers account for a small minority percentage of the ancestry of the modern population. Yet the progaramme perpetuates the myth of a replacement of a 'Welsh indigenous' population by an Anglo-Saxon one.
Archaeology has indicated no major change in culture during the post-Roman period, except for the loss of the major Roman indicators, which were the result of the collapse of the ancient economy, well underway before the political severence from the Empire. The Germanic intrusions were by small elite warrior groups, no greater in scale during the migration period, or in the `viking' era, than the Norman invasion of 1066. This last indicates how devastating such intrusions could be at any time, but also shows that wholsale replacement, or genocide, of the resident population was, and is, extremely unlikely. Britain probably recieved it's population from much the same origin, that is from nearby continental Europe, throughout history, and this makes identifying particular intruders descendents almost impossible to trace.
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Comments 5 of 113