Neil Oliver Podcast (Fat Belly Films)

Neil Oliver’s Love Letter to the British Isles begins a million years ago, as he sets off on his journey through time and space to tell the story of the British Isles and how they came to exert a profound influence over the whole world.

Neil’s journey starts on the Norfolk coast, in Happisburgh, where he brings us footprint to footprint with evidence of a lost tribe, human, and yet not quite us – the first tenants of what would become the British Isles

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In this episode, Neil’s journey across the British Isles brings us face to face with a dead body and a case of mistaken identity.

In Goat’s Hole Cave, on the Gower Peninsula, Neil uncovers tantalising clues and profound emotions surrounding a grave that is 34,000-year-old - the grave where the remains of the oldest modern human ever found in the British Isles was discovered.

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Neil’s journey across the British Isles, and through its history, continues as he takes us on a walk down one of the oldest streets on the planet.

In this episode Neil is confronted with some of the oldest art ever found in Britain. Around 16,000 years ago Creswell Crags, in the Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire borders got its latest tenants, a group of hunter gathers who made their homes home with beautiful decorations and mysterious painted symbols.

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This week Neil brings us face to face with the violent, bloody birth of the British Isles.

In this episode Neil takes us to Angus, in Scotland to see the breath-taking beauty of the Montrose Basin and evidence of the biggest natural disaster the world has seen in the last 8000 years.

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This week Neil takes us to the roots of the most profound, self-inflicted, social upheaval our species has ever known.

Travelling to the west coast of Ireland, Neil tells the story of how our view of the world, and our place in it changed forever - the introduction of farming and the daily grind around 10,000 years ago has had social and psychological consequences we are still coming to terms with today.

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In this episode Neil turns the British Isles upside down! Travelling to Orkney, off the north-east tip of Scotland, he uncovers ancient burial tombs, ceremonial halls and gives us a glimpse of an influential powerhouse long hidden by time.

As he tells the story of the profound changes this once formidable centre of influence has undergone, Neil unravels the lessons history tells us and the pointers it gives to what may lay ahead in the future.

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In this episode Neil travels to a time when our ancestors lived with their dead in a way many of us would find shocking today.

Journeying to the World Heritage Site on the east coast of Ireland, where the incredible Neolithic tombs at Newgrange and Knowth sit, Neil explores an age that still has many hidden secrets. As soon as he steps foot inside the monumental megalithic art, it’s clear that this place continues to hold the power to move us.

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In this episode Neil takes us deep underground chasing the beautiful, ‘must-have’ raw material our ancestors craved.

Travelling to the incredible lunar landscape of Grime’s Graves in Norfolk, Neil unravels the story of how, 5,000 years ago, our ancestors mined high quality flint on an almost industrial scale. Miners with a deep sense of responsibility, always giving something back for what they took from the earth - an ancient knowledge we are only just starting to relearn today.

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This week Neil explores heaven itself.

Travelling back in time to the Neolithic and the inspiringly beautiful Great Langdale in Cumbria’s Lake District, Neil delves into the history behind the famous greenstone axe heads. Telling the story of our ancestors who produced them and finding out what them tick.

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In this episode Neil takes us across Wiltshire’s Ritual Landscape to investigate a mysterious chambered tomb.

Built by our ancestors over 5000 years ago West Kennet Long Barrow is one of the largest chambered tombs in the British Isles. In it were found stone daggers, beads and pottery together with skulls, long bones and other human remains – a place that that still has the power and presence to make the hairs on the back of your neck rise as you crawls inside.

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In this episode Neil takes us to a place that is famous around the world and speaks of massive intent.

Constructed with huge stones weighing up to 40 tons and great sarsen trilithons - Stonehenge is truly monumental. It brought our ancestors and their ideas together, tracking the light, the planets and time - and 5000 years after it was begun it's somewhere that still has the power to put you in your place.

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In this week’s podcast Neil’s journey continues across Wiltshire’s powerful ritual landscape, taking us to the largest stone circle in the world.

Avebury is a colossal monument built over centuries by our Neolithic ancestors. It consists of three stone circles and at its heart is the cove stone weighing nearly 100 tons. This complex and mysterious monument chart’s the seasons, marks time and once brought our ancestors together. Awed by its sheer scale and intent Neil testifies to the fact that, thousands of years ago, this surely was a place that meant so much.

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This week Neil travels to the largest artificial, prehistoric mound in Europe.

Half a million tons of chalk were used by our Neolithic ancestors to build Silbury Hill. Neil explores this colossal monument, the mystery and myths that surround it and the role it played in the lives of the people who constructed it. Built at a time when our ancestors had moved from being hunter gathers to farmers and were starting to make marks on the landscape, it’s an incredibly powerful statement that shouts ‘we are here’!

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In this week’s episode Neil takes us to Salisbury to meet a Time Traveller from around four and a half thousand years ago who still has much to say.

Neil uncovers the stories this remarkable man tells us about the journey he took, walking right across Europe to Wiltshire in a time when you could hear the banging and clattering of building work at Stonehenge. Known as the Amesbury Archer, our Time Traveller was a man of great status. When he died, he was buried surrounded by beautiful flint arrow heads, fine archer’s wrist guards, gold and other precious metals - the richest Bronze Age burial ever discovered in Britain.

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This week Neil takes us to a place swirling with myths and legends.

In Cardigan bay lies the fabled Welsh Atlantis, Cantre’r Gwaelod. Legend tells of a rich land that was prized and protected but lost to an unstoppable flood. Setting off from Borth, Neil walks across an ancient landscape that intersects with history and archaeology to reveal some of it’s hidden secrets.

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In this week’s podcast we travel with Neil across the British Isles into the Bronze Age, investigating the metal alloy that would transform the human species.

The ancient world knew Cornwall as one of the richest sources of tin on the planet. And in the Bronze Age tin was in demand, because it is one of the two metals, along with copper, needed to make the new 'wonder' alloy, bronze. Neil takes us to Geevor tin mine on the incredibly beautiful Cornish coast exploring how this part of the British Isles played its part in helping to create the weapons, tools, jewellery and artworks that powered the world’s Bronze age.

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This week Neil takes us with him to Llandudno to explore deep within the belly of a mountainous sea serpent.

Across the world the powerful marriage of copper and tin was producing a new metal alloy that was propelling the future of our species and driving a new age, the Bronze Age. Around 4000 years ago, at the Great Orme in Clwyd our ancestors started mining copper one of the metals needed to make this new metal alloy. The result, a vast almost industrial operation, helps shine a light on the drive, determination and sophistication of our ancestors - the mine they dug is the largest known prehistoric copper mine in the world.

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In this episode Neil takes us on board the oldest known seagoing boat in the world – the Dover Boat.

Next door to the White Cliffs of Dover, one of the most unmistakeable, and instantly recognisable landmarks in the whole of the British Isles, Neil comes face to face with what for him, is one the most extraordinary artefacts he has ever seen. An incredible bit of ancient kit that was made by Bronze Age shipbuilders and used, by our ancestors, to travel and trade across the channel - Neil brings the Dover Boat to life.

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In this episode we travel with Neil to one of the most magical lakes in the British Isles.

In the beautiful dark waters of Llyn Fawr, in Mid-Glamorgan, Neil comes face to face with the reflections of another world - home to ritual, ceremony and an ancient way of life that spanned the Bronze and Iron Ages. He rubs shoulders with an elite group of thinkers, whose power and knowledge spread right across the British Isles and discovers a hoard of incredible artefacts.

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In this episode Neil takes us to a place of great power and beauty, an island off the west coast of Ireland, with its shoulder set hard against the mighty Atlantic.

High on the dramatic cliffs of Inishmore Neil explores two formidable Iron Age forts - Dún Aengus and Dún Dúchathair. The compelling mystery behind the remains of these breath-taking forts gives us a sharp reminder of the forces that shape the world we all live in today.

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In this episode Neil travels across the channel with legions of heavily armed, well trained Roman soldiers and heads to Bath in Somerset

In AD 43 a conquering Roman army invaded the British Isles and brought the modern world with it - forms to fill in, records to keep, taxes to pay, straight roads and central heating. Exploring Rome’s influence on the British Isles Neil takes us with him to Bath’s hot springs, the incredible natural phenomenon that brought two gods together - Sulis, the Celtic goddess and Minerva from Rome.

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In this podcast we’re walking with Neil alongside the largest Roman artefact in the whole world, Hadrian’s Wall, the boundary of Empire. And we comes to a stop at a stretch of the Wall called Sycamore Gap, where one of the most beautiful trees in the British Isles stands.

Over 70 miles long, Hadrian’s Wall is an incredible feat of engineering. Interspersed with milecastles, barracks, forts and settlements, it’s a formidable wall dividing the long island into North and South. The Romans took around 6 years to complete the wall and it was built before there were any such people called the Scots or the English. The sheer ambition and hard work needed to construct it shows just how serious the Romans were about owning the British Isles.

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In this episode Neil steps into an opulent Roman Villa grand enough to have housed the governor of Roman Britannia and maybe even put up a visiting emperor or two.

Lullingstone villa, in Kent, was built in the first century AD and developed and expanded over the next 300 years or so. Large in size, by anyone’s standard, and decorated with fine mosaic floors and beautiful wall paintings. With some archaeological detective work and painstaking restoration the interiors of this incredible building reveal nothing less than the arrival of Christianity into the British Isles.

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In this episode Neil’s journey takes us to a magical island where the landscape, the light and the very air you breath come together to soothe the soul.

This week Neil sails from Oban, on the west coast of Scotland, to the island of Mull, from there he takes another boat to island of Iona. On the edge of the British Isles, Iona is steeped in ancient history long lost in time, said to be the place where some Scottish, Irish and Norwegian Kings are buried. It's now famous as a holy island where a group of very early Christian evangelists came to keep their faith alive. It's an island of breath-taking beauty that has the power to restore you.

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This week, on his journey around the British Isles, Neil takes us to Northumberland to meet the legendary, King Arthur.

Climbing the battlements of the imposing Bamburgh Castle, swirling with mist and myths, legends and history, Neil explores the legend of King Arthur, the fabled hero, who resonates with us still in the 21st Century. The site is heavy with history. A place of majestic kingdoms and ritualistic cruelty. The episode takes in the retreating Romans, the advance of the Anglo-Saxons and the looming presence of the Vikings, and woven throughout it is the story of King Arthur – the hero who is said to be sleeping, ready to return when these Isles need him again.

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In this episode Neil takes us to an island stained with the first bloody fingerprints of an invader who would change the British Isles forever.

Heading to the Northumberland coast, at low tide, Neil walks to the tidal island of Lindisfarne. During the 7th century this small island became home to a thriving priory that grew to be rich and famous around the world. Its wealth drew the attention of the Vikings who in a smash-and-grab raid plundered its treasure, maiming and murdering anyone who stood in their way. Home to a picturesque castle that stands on a basalt crag facing the mighty North Sea, Lindisfarne is an island that has seen much!

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This week Neil takes us with him to a place of stunning beauty with a dark and brutal past.

For years the Vikings well-deserved reputation for violence and brutality left a bloody stain right across the British Isles. They were masters of devastating ‘hit-and-run’ attacks, then at the end of the ninth century things took a turn…. for the worse! Vikings arrived on the Brough of Birsay in Orkney, driving off, or in an act of systematic genocide slaughtering the local Pictish men. But what was different this time was the Vikings hadn’t just come to pillage and plunder……they’d come to stay!

Piecing together the archaeology and history Neil tells a compelling story of an island trampled beneath Viking feet…… and he reveals what his DNA says about his own ancestors!

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This week Neil winters with the Great Heathen Army, the mighty Viking force that was poised, ready to sweep across the British Isles.

After the Vikings defeated the powerful Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Mercia they chose to over-winter their army in its capital, Repton in Derbyshire.

It was here they rested and recuperated, plotting and planning their next military moves. It was also where they buried their dead. The grave of a formidable Viking, known as the Repton Warrior, who died of terrible injuries was found here, buried with his battle sword. The Vikings, who had died in battle were heading for Valhalla, but come the good weather their comrades were intent on pressing on and conquering the whole of the British Isles.

Also discovered at Repton was a mass Viking grave of great significance. At its centre was, what's thought to be, the grave of one of the Great Heathen Army's leaders - the legendary warrior, Ivar the Boneless.

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This week Neil takes us back in time to meet a king who stopped the Vikings in their tracks.

Sitting in the Ashmolean museum in Oxford is a precious golden artefact called the Alfred Jewel, which is over a thousand years old and inscribed with the words, ‘Alfred ordered me made’. This jeweller’s masterpiece tells us so much about the man who commissioned it – King Alfred the Great - a ruler whose actions had a profound effect on shaping the British Isles

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This week Neil takes us in search of the remains of one the greatest Kings ever to reign in the British Isles.

Not far from Winchester’s city centre, in amongst modern residential streets, Neil is on the trail of the location where Alfred the Great’s bones were buried. Alfred the Great took on the Vikings and won. On the field of battle he was a brave and determined soldier. As a ruler his intellect and charisma helped put in place many of the practical and philosophical foundations that have shaped the British Isles. The hunt for his remains gives us a telling snapshot of the man and the history that followed his death

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This week Neil’s journey takes us in search of the battle whose ferocity, violence and savagery shocked the whole of the British Isles and shaped its borders for ever – the battle of Brunanburh.

The repercussions from this momentous battle, fought in AD 937, have reverberated right up to the present day. Long remembered as the Great War this was the battle that sliced the long island in two!

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This week Neil travels back in time, almost 1000 years, to what became the city of Durham and the construction of a majestic building whose beauty and power have resonated down through the centuries ever since – Durham cathedral.

Our ancestors have always been driven by the need to build. In the years following the turn of the first millennium a great wave of energy ran across Europe and through the British Isles. In 1093 the Normans started building a cathedral whose towering pillars, cavernous interiors and powerful presence make it truly feel like a mountain raised by humans.

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This week, Neil travels to see an iconic document that shook the world.

In 1215 a battling king squared up to his rebellious barons in a power struggle produced Magna Carta and a new political order. A charter of rights that started to pin back the monarchy, Magna Carta declared not even a king is above the law. Never again would an English monarch have absolute power. Magna Carta and a follow-up document the Charter of the Forest helped lay the foundations for parliamentary democracy, shaping the world we live in today.

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This week Neil travels to an island at the heart of the British Isles.

Snaefell is the highest mountain on the Isle of Man. On a clear day, from it’s peak, they say you can spin 360 degrees and see seven Kingdoms. The Isle of Man is at the geographical centre of the British Isles archipelago, but it’s a place apart. A constitutional anomaly that’s under the UK’s protection, but has its own parliament, laws and language. It’s an island of great beauty, deep history and stubborn independence, a place with the power to reset your equilibrium.

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This week Neil takes us off the beaten track to St Nectan’s Glen in Cornwall. It’s one of a number of enchanted places that are dotted all over the British Isles, which have a real aura and presence around them. Shimmering with crystal clear waters and enclosed by cliffs coated with rich moss and ferns it’s a place that somehow manages to stop you in your tracks and invites you to think.

Named after St Nectan who lived a life of contemplation and devotion there in the 5th century the glen, with its healing waters, has long been a place of importance and pilgrimage for our ancient ancestors. Long before St Nectan and for as long as can be remembered it was known as a special place, a deep reservoir of human hopes, dreams and the future. 

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This week we travel with Neil to Angus where the glowing red eye of Arbroath Abbey casts a watchful look over us.

It was here at the Abbey in 1320 that the Declaration of Arbroath was written, a revolutionary document whose words would resonate around the world. Drafted as a declaration of Scottish independence and a show of support for the celebrated king, Robert the Bruce, it also held the monarch and his heirs to account. On the heels of Magna Carta this document, was another important steppingstone on the path to democracy.

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This week Neil takes us to a place of legends, a place where, with a glint in his eye, he proudly tells us he was once the warm-up act to Bono and U2 on the Pyramid stage.

Glastonbury Tor is a magical landscape shimmering with ancient traditions, beauty and horrors. It’s a place that has always been, and still feels ‘special, the air around it thick with history. Tales of Jesus, the Holy Grail, King Arthur and Guinevere, Glastonbury is a place swirling with wonderful fables and myths.

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This week Neil’s journey takes us to one of the most beautiful glens in Scotland where we discover, what is believed to be, the oldest living thing in Europe - the Fortingall Yew.

The legendary Fortingall Yew nestles at the eastern end of Glen Lyon – the glen which Sir Walter Scott called the ‘longest, loneliest and loveliest in Scotland’. Many experts put the age of the yew at 9000 years old, which means it was a thousand years old before the British Isles were even created. The tree has seen so much history. Folklore in this part of Scotland has it that Pontious Pilate was born here and as a young child would shelter under the Fortingall Yew before he was whisked off to Rome and into the history books. What’s certain is, the tree and the glen are somewhere that have always mattered to our ancestors, a place that invites deep contemplation as you stand there and mark the long passage of time 

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This week Neil steps foot into Cambuskenneth Abbey, a place that was to prove crucial in the making of a legendary king - Robert the Bruce.

The Battle of Bannockburn in 1314 was a defining moment in the long Wars of Scottish Independence. Overlooked by the mighty Stirling castle, which sits atop the crag and tail of an extinct volcano, is a low-lying plain with the lazy meandering river Forth running across it. It was here that Robert the Bruce and his army took on a much larger English force, which was spearheaded by its dreaded heavy cavalry. Cambuskenneth Abbey, built beside the river Forth, plays an important part in Robert the Bruce’s story and this famous battle – it’s a location so thick with history you can almost feel it brush against your face!

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This week Neil steps into the middle of a brutal family feud - the Wars of the Roses.

The warring family, the Plantagenets, have been described as ‘a race dipped in their own blood. The factions within the family and their unremitting quest for power and the English throne led to a civil-war that ripped England apart for 30 years and left tens of thousands of soldiers dead on battlefields right across the country. With the dead of Westminister Abbey swirling around him, Neil meets the mother whose son, Henry VII, lead England out of the war and began the Tudor dynasty.

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This week Neil comes face to face with the mighty walls of an almost impregnable castle, which down through its history inspired many heroic ‘last stands’ and a song that famously features in one of Neil's favourite films.

On the orders of Edward I, Harlech castle was built between 1283 and 1285 by James of St George a military engineer of unsurpassed genius. It’s clever design, a castle within a castle with it’s back protected by the Irish sea, made it a truly formidable fortress.

During the Wars of the Roses in 1460 Margaret of Anjou, queen and wife of the Lancastrian King Henry VI fled to Harlech castle. For the next eight years the castle was besieged by Yorkist forces determined to capture her. Eventually an army, 10,000 strong, starved the castle into submission. Although unsuccessful this heroic, ‘Last Stand’ was immortalised in the song ‘The Men of Harlech’.

It was this song, which was used to such great effect in Zulu, the 1964 film starring Michael Caine, about another legendary ‘Last Stand’, the defence of Rorke’s Drift in the Anglo-Zulu War.

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This week, side by side with Neil, we’re striding across a vast, treacherous bay where one false move could see us paying for it with our lives.

Almost 500 years ago, in 1548, the people of Morecambe Bay Sands asked for help, because crossing this vast tidal expanse was so treacherous many lives were being lost. The tides race across the sands faster than a horse can gallop and the bay is dotted with patches of deadly quicksand known locally as Melgraves, which have caught and dragged many to their deaths.

Morecambe Bay is surround and suffused with history, from the C14th Piel castle, which was the Yorkists mustering point in the last hurrah of the Wars of the Roses, to the Midland Hotel, an art deco masterpiece bursting with glitz and glamourous guests, which was opened in 1933. Above everything, it’s a breath-taking landscape that plays its part in our history and reminds us of our place in the powerful natural world.

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This week Neil follows the money!

By the C13th the Hanseatic League had crystalised its power base and was busy spinning lucrative trading routes right across northern Europe, from the Baltic to the British Isles. Neil travels to the Norfolk town of Kings Lynn, which thanks to the Hanseatic League became the third richest port in England. Two building survive from this time, St George’s Guildhall and the Hanse House, structures that are stunning testament to the wealth and international trade that flowed through Kings Lynn during the League dominance. The Hanseatic League was an ultra-powerful trading bloc, not adverse to dabbling in national politics, that lasted for almost three centuries.

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This Week Neil’s on his home turf delving into the deep history of one of the most glorious castles in the British Isles.

They say Stirling castle is the silver brooch that hitches the Highlands of Scotland to the lowlands. Neil very much regards it as his personal touch stone. It’s a place that was already well trodden by our ancestors when the Roman road builders turned up around AD80.

The castle, which sits atop a geological formation known as a crag and tail, has always been strategically vital, playing a crucial part in the history of Scotland and the British Isles.

Kings and queens have been born and raised there, battles fought, and scores settled in and around it. Jaw-dropping grandeur and beauty, it’s a place full of drama and passion, it’s a place Neil knows & loves well.

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This week Neil marches with us across the wild beauty of Northumberland to a battleground

that broke Scotland’s heart.

In 1513 Margaret Tudor watched as her husband, the glamours renaissance king, James IV of Scotland, set off to invade England and do battle with her brother, Henry VIII. When Henry invaded France James felt duty bound to honour the Auld Alliance, a treaty of mutual assistance between Scotland and France. In retaliation he led the largest Scottish army ever to invade England across the border. James' powerful force bristling with the latest military technology met an English army led by the Earl of Surrey at Flodden. It was a brutal and bloody battle, fought with formidable pikes imported from the continent, cannon fire, slaughter and a deadly arrow to the King’s face.

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This week Neil is taking us aboard the Golden Hind, a legendary ship that sailed around the world and into history.

In 16th century Aldeburgh, which was then an important east-coast port, shipbuilders set to work building a vessel that was to have a profound influence on British history.

Once completed and seaworthy Francis Drake and his crew climbed aboard and set sail on an epic 3 year voyage to circumnavigate the globe. On its return the ship was full to bursting with gold, silver and precious jewels, and Francis Drake received a hero’s welcome and the thanks of his queen, Elizabeth I.

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This week Neil takes us along an Elizabethan jetty to hear one of history’s great speeches.

In 1588, as Sir Francis Drake sailed to meet the mighty Spanish Armada, Queen Elizabeth I travelled down the river Thames to Tilbury fort where she addressed her army. If the powerful Spanish force landed and invaded England these are the men who would defend the country and its queen. Dressed in white and surrounded by her soldiers, Elizabeth delivered a legendary speech that put steel resolve into their hearts and helped define England as a nation. Stirring stuff indeed!

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This week we’re witnessing the final destructive crescendo that put paid to a powerful, but ill-fated invasion fleet bent on conquering England. Queen Elizabeth I stood firm against the mighty Spanish Armada, and the elemental forces of nature came to her assistance.

The Spanish ships sent to invade England were bristling with the latest weapons of war and full of men and treasure. After being attacked by Sir Francis Drake in the channel they were scattered by a powerful storm. Pushed by the weather right around the eastern seaboard of the British Isles, around the tip of Scotland some of the remnants of this once formidable invasion fleet ended up at the Giant’s Causeway on the Irish coast. Here, at this this world-famous stage of staggering natural beauty, they were hit by another deadly storm and finally destroyed leaving Elizabeth I and England safe.

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In this podcast Neil takes us with him, setting foot into a building whose history is inextricably woven into the story of the British Isles.

A landmark building, that’s as beautiful as it is beguiling. In 1944 General Dwight Eisenhower camped beside it and planned the D-Day landings, William Shakespeare and his troop of actors performed in it’s Great Hall, but Henry VIII’s bloated and corrupt shadow falls most darkly on its red bricks.

It’s a palace with panache, a building that’s full of intrigue, politics and high drama. It’s a place that gave birth to a book, but not just any book, a book whose poetic words, cadences, and rhythms made it a cornerstone of English literature – the King James Bible. The elegance of the humanity expressed within its pages helped empower the formation of modern democracy, and this book was conceived within the walls of the magnificent Hampton Court Palace.

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In this podcast Neil takes us to a place where all our modern senses and sterile sensibilities are thrown into shock. London at the turn of the C17th was a major metropolis, a city teeming with life, where pestilence and poverty sat cheek by jowl with great wealth and riches. A major industrial centre it was ripe with every stink of animal and human imaginable, streets crowded and claustrophobic, some lined with the rotting body parts of dismembered criminals.

Striding into this world came William Shakespeare, a man who had the power to entertain the thongs. Conjuring and conceiving magical words and language he became one of the pillars of the English language. His plays and poetry, that have moved and shaped the whole world, were written, read and performed on Bankside at the Globe theatre.

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In this podcast we’re prowling the beautiful coves and bays of the Irish coast with Barberry Corsairs.

On a dark night in 1631 a notorious Dutch pirate known as ‘Captain Murat’, who operated out of Morocco with the blessing of the Ottoman sultan in Istanbul, sailed ashore to Dunashad castle in Baltimore, County Cork. On this one fateful night Captain Murat and his pirates left a dark shadow of violence and slavery over the whole town. All the inhabitants, every man, woman, and child were taken aboard their pirate ships and transported to north Africa to be sold into slavery.

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In this podcast we’re teetering on the brink of a war that would rip the three kingdoms apart.

In what is one of the most significant moments in Scottish history the National Covenant was born. King Charles I of England and Scotland, an imperious and domineering monarch, went heat to head with the Presbyterian Scots who were in no mood to listen to new ideas, not even from a king.

Riots and rebellion swept the country and the King found himself at war with the nation. A resounding clash of religious faiths, a ground-breaking document, rebellion and a blood-soaked island.

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In this podcast we’re travelling the sharp end of a war which ripped the British Isles apart.

King Charles I went head to head with increasingly bold Parliamentarians. Bitter, internecine politics and deadly powerplays led to opposing armies being raised, and a bloody civil war swept across the whole of the British Isles. Families, neighbours and lifelong friends were pitted against each another as people were compelled to pick a side and face each other in the blood and gore of lethal combat.

In the beautiful rolling hills of the west country, near the city of Bath, a brutal battle was fought that throws the personal tragedy of civil war into sharp relief - horror and heroism side by side with the intimate heartbreak of friends fighting against each other to the death. The battle of Lansdown Hill fought in 1643.

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In this podcast we’re landing in Lyme Regis with a swashbuckling Duke who is determined to be the King.

Charles II’s eldest illegitimate son, James Scott, Duke of Monmouth, lands in the west country with a small army of soldiers intent on deposing his catholic uncle, King James II.

The duke’s uprising gains momentum and his army swells to around 8000 strong. Because the majority of the Duke’s new raw recruits are agricultural worker, rather than trained soldiers, it becomes known as the pitchfork rebellion.

The Duke’s and the King’s army meet at Sedgemoor in what is the last battle of any note ever fought on English soil.

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In this podcast we’re walking down the aisle with a couple who fought like cat and dog for years, but are now about to be joined in union.

The Act of Union came into force in 1707 and England and Scotland were finally brought together by the pen and not the sword. The independent parliaments of Scotland & England were united and a prosperous new beginning was promised, but as the Act that would legally bring them together was signed the bells of St Gilles’ Cathedral, on Edinburgh’s royal mile, rang out with the mournful lament, ‘Why am I so sad on this my wedding day?’

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In this podcast I’m taking you to a place that’s part of my ‘origin myth’, it’s a location that witnessed a bloody and brutal battle which is famous around the world. As a wee lad, it was here, that I discovered many of my ancestors from Clan Cameron were killed and buried. This realisation clicked a switch in my young brain and I realised that if I was connected to this part of history then I was connected to every part of it.

The build-up to this battle begins less than a year before when Bonnie Prince Charlie, the dashing young pretender, lands on the Scottish island of Eriskay, striding onto the bloody historical stage. He raises his standard and builds an army around himself, determined to claim the British crown by force. On 16th April 1746, on the beautiful moorland of Culloden his Jacobite army fought what would prove to be the last pitched battle ever to take palce on British soil – the Battle of Culloden.

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In this podcast, it’s 1745 and we’re walking along the cobbled streets of a busy, bustling fishing port, off to buy groceries from a young lad named James Cook.

Staring out at the sea every day from his shop window in Staithes, North Yorkshire the teenage grocers boy, James Cook, dreamt of future that would take him around the world. Staithes is a striking fishing port, filled with beautiful clear light, sharp air and constantly changing weather. It’s full of picturesque higgledy-piggledy houses and has the power to buoy the spirits of anyone who visits. This is the place where Britain’s legendary explorer, who would go on to help shape the future of the British Isles, fell in love with boats and the sea.

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This week we’re setting sail on a legendary voyage of exploration with the greatest navigator ever to come out of the British Isles - Captain James Cook.

We follow James from the beginning of his adventure, when he leaves his job as a grocers lad in Staithes and travels to the hauntingly beautiful port of Whitby to pursue his dreams of a life a sea. It’s here, as a merchant seaman transporting coal up and down the eastern seaboard that he learns his trade. His ambition, dedication and yearning for adventure drive him to sign up and join the Royal Navy where he soon rises through the ranks to become captain of the valiant vessel, HMS Endeavour. Aboard the ship he would make famous he sets off on a number of extraordinary voyages of discovery that would help shape the future of the British Isles and the direction this great seafaring nation would present to the world.

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In this podcast Neil enters a city fizzing with new idea. In the late C18th and early C19th Edinburgh was the beating heart at the centre of what many people have called the Scottish Enlightenment. The intellectual thinking generated here was recognised around the world with men and women of genius said to be on every street with new ways of thinking bussing around every part of the city.

It was here, inspired by the city’s physical location - sat on a volcano - that James Hutton developed revolutionary ideas about how the world was created. Ideas that went counter the accepted thinking of the day. Hutton became known as the father of geology and was one of the first thinkers to contemplate deep time and confront us with our insignificance in the face of eternity.

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In this episode Neil climbs the hill to the Royal Observatory and finds himself at the centre of time & place.

Henry VIII’s hunting lodge where he kept his mistress of the moment once stood here. Then in 1675 Christopher Wren was commissioned to build the Royal Observatory in this spot, a building that stood at the forefront of astronomy and mapping for centuries. It’s here that the prime meridian bisects the planet and a legendary soldier, General James Woolfe, looks out over one of the greatest cities in the world and through thousands of years of history.

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In this episode Neil takes us to the top of one of Scotland’s most beautiful mountains – Schiehallion in Perthshire.

Following in the footsteps of Isaac Newton and a group of intrepid C18th scientists we set off to the wonderful wilds of Rannoch moor to measure the weight of the world.

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In this episode Neil takes us to age simmering with the steadily building heat of technological change and advance. We stride across a landscape of great beauty, full of the things needed to kick start a profound transformation; the natural energy of powerful rivers, land rich with minerals, coal and iron ore. Here in Coalbrookdale, in Shropshire a heady mix of human ingenuity, innovation and the commercial drive of entrepreneurs, built a bridge of mesmerising beauty which was forged in the first fires of a coming Industrial revolution that would transform the whole world!

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In this episode we travel with Neil around the world with the words of Robert Burns, a poet and lyricist whose work has touch millions and directly helped to shape Neil’s own life.

Robert Burns was born in Ayr, lived in Dumfries and went on to be the national bard of Scotland. His brilliant body of work stretches from Auld Lang Syne to his famous epic poem, Tam o’ Shanter – work that continues still to bring people together. With his genius for words he has managed to exert an influence and make the world a better place.

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In this episode Neil takes us to the beautiful coast of Cumbria as it’s attacked by a warship from the United States of America. Angry and dissatisfied with the punitive taxes and harsh rule of the British monarchy the people of America rise in rebellion. Intent on helping his new adopted country throw off the shackles of colonial rule, John Paul Jones captains an American naval ship of war, and in an audacious move crosses the Atlantic to attack Britain.

Guns primed and at the ready he sails with his crew to the thriving industrial port of Whitehaven on the northwest coast of England, and under the cover of darkness launches his attack. This first shot across the bow caused panic in government and gave a bloody nose to the British King.

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In this episode Neil takes us on a very personal journey around his old stomping ground, the Merchant City district in Glasgow. It was built by the mighty Glaswegian Tobacco Lords, men whose trading fortunes made them the Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates of their time. In the late C17th and into the C18th their trading ships ensured great wealth poured into Glasgow and they built huge warehouses, veritable cathedrals to commerce, to store their goods . But these riches came at a deadly human cost, every pound and dollar was made on the backs of African slaves. The Triangular slave trade transported men, women and children from Africa to the American colonies, then tobacco, cotton and other commodities were brought back to Europe on the return trip.

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In this episode we join Neil in1796 as a heavily armed French invasion fleet is spotted off Fishguard in south-west Wales.

Seven years earlier revolution had swept across France. Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette and a great swath of the French aristocracy found themselves on the sharp end of the guillotine. Europe’s royalty reeled in horror and Britain and others sent forces to try and crush the new French Republic. Now in a well-planned and heavily armed, three-pronged attack France strikes back as soldiers of the Black legion land at Carregwastad Point in what is the last invasion of Britain

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In this episode Neil takes us to walk side by side with William Wilberforce, one of the unwavering bright lights who stove to abolish slavery in the British empire.

Nations throughout history have plagued the world with this abhorrent trade, but the British took it to another level in the C18th, growing fat on the colossal profits to be made from African slaves. As opposition to slavery in this country grew immensely powerful forces battled tooth and nail to defend the trade and the riches it brought them. Amongst the people who fought to end this abhorrent practice was the tireless Member of Parliament for Hull, William Wilberforce.

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In this episode Neil takes us on an emotional journey that affected hundreds of thousands of people and systematically destroyed an ancient way of life – the Highland Clearances. Driven by greed the aristocratic landowners brutally cleared people from what they claimed as their land and replaced them with sheep in one of the biggest mass movements of people in all of British history.

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In this episode we’re walking with a hero of mine, Admiral Nelson – a man with a life full of high drama and adventure, violence and great passion.

He was born near the North Norfolk coast in 1758, in the sleepy village of Burnham Thorpe. His father was the local parson and at the ripe old age of 12 he set off to join the Royal Navy and sail the world’s oceans.

Horatio Nelson was an ambitious and fearless naval commander always in the tick of the action; he lost his right eye during the siege of Calvi on Corsica, and the use of his right arm three years later at the battle of Santa Cruz de Tenerife. A master of naval warfare, back on dry land he was swept up by a grand romance to Lady Emma Hamilton before sailing to his most famous victory at the battle Trafalgar in 1805.

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In this episode we’re stepping aboard a legend. A ship built from 6,000 trees, 27 miles of rigging and 4 acres of sail. She fought in the American and French Revolutionary Wars and came to symbolise the Britain’s dominance of the world-ocean as she battled to keep them free. But it was in 1805, with Admiral Nelson at the helm, that she sailed into the history books. With her 104 guns fully loaded and at the ready she led the Royal Navy into action at the world defining Battle of Trafalgar.

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This week Neil spends time on one of the most notorious lighthouses in the world – a place with a profound sense of isolation and a dark history.

The British Isles are home to an island race, and to survive and thrive its people have depended on a mastery of the seaways and protection from its dangerous coasts. Ever since King Henry VIII Britain have made lighthouses their own. Dotted around the coastline these engineering marvels have become part of the landscape, sentinels and beacons of hope.

In this episode Neil weaves the history of lighthouses, the story of the courageous lighthouse keepers who protect lives at sea, with the tragic events that took place on Smalls Lighthouse, off the Pembrokeshire coast.

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In this episode Neil strides across the beguilingly beautiful, wild Yorkshire moors to meet three sisters whose brilliance would shape and change the world of literature.

Tough, strong-willed survivors, the Bronte sisters laid bare the crippling social conventions of the day with perfect prose. Their own lives were edged with hardship and tragedy, but their imaginations, stubborn genius and dazzling creativity lit up the world. The episode is from the Bronte parsonage in Haworth, west Yorkshire.

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In this episode Neil travels to the breathtakingly picturesque seaside side town of Lyme Regis. Sitting on the rugged Jurassic Coast the town was home to a determined, fearless woman called Mary Anning who battled the convention of the day to stake her claim in scientific history. The Jurassic coast is famous for fossil dinosaurs, Ichthyosaurs, Ammonites, Belemnites, and plesiosaurus. Often working in foul weather and precarious locations Mary was a fossil hunter extraordinaire whose great skill and formidable intelligence helped further the scientific understanding of the time.

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In this episode as machines begin to flex their muscles the spectre of human poverty rises darkly and menacingly across the whole of the British Isles.

In C19th Dorset a small group of workers came together to dream of a better future. But for daring to stand up straight, demand dignity and call for a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work they were crushed by the authorities: arrested, tried and transported to work as slave labour in the penal colony of Australia. In their defence a public outcry swept across the country as people fought to save this group who became known as the Tolpuddle Martyrs.

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In this episode a dark shadow falls across all of Ireland. A time of unimaginable pain and suffer, which has caused a deep wound between the British Isles ever after. It is known as An Gorta Mor or The Great Hunger. For years starvation stalked the land and over a million people died of hunger as ships fully laden and brimming with food left the Irish ports.

Standing on the edge of a mass grave in Skibbereen Cemetery Neil comes face to face with the human tragedy.

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In this episode we set sail with Neil, past Fasnet Rock, fleeing the horror of famine.

The Vikings called it Hvasstann-ey, ‘the island shaped like a sharp tooth’, the Irish knew it first as Carraig Aonair, ‘the Lonely Rock’, then as Fastnet, ‘Ireland’s Teardrop’.

A treacherous island, little more than a jagged rock, it has been responsible for countless shipwrecks and deaths at sea. It was the last part of Ireland many emigrants saw as they sailed to North America to escape the Great Hunger and many a teardrop was shed over it.

A rock wreathed in sadness and tears, standing as a fitting memorial to lives lost at sea and the lives driven off to be lived elsewhere.

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In this episode we set sail with Neil and find ourselves at the centre of a devastating hurricane that’s intent on destroying a proud and hardworking fishing port.

In the 1800’s Eyemouth’s fishing fleet found itself battling the elements, bureaucracy and the church. As the harbour remained dangerously inadequate a hated ecclesiastical tax was draining resources. One fateful day bad weather was looming, but under pressure to feed their families and pay the bills, Eyemouth’s brave fisher folk set sail. The whole fleet was out at sea when, sweeping across the North Sea, a hurricane hit, pounding boats to matchwood.

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In this episode we’re in the midst of the great Victorian engineering revolution as the dream to reconnect with Europe begins.

8,000 years ago the Storegga Slide hit and severed the British Isles from the European mainland. To thrive and prosper the new islanders had to develop a mastery of the sea, and those coming to the islands had to be determined and committed. For thousands of years the psyche of the people living on this archipelago was shaped and moulded by it’s ‘separateness’, but in the 1800’s people on both sides of the Channel began to dream of a reconnection.

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In this episode we travel with Neil to meet the man who split the atom!

Ernest Rutherford’s father said to his children, ‘without money we have to think’ – and think Ernest did. Ernest’s brain took him from his childhood home in rural New Zealand to a scientific career that spanned right around the world. In Manchester he assembled a brilliant and diverse team of fantastic minds. He built one of the largest and best equipped laboratories ever seen in the world and with his team set about exploring the infinitely complex universe within the atom. Ernest Rutherford, the father of nuclear physics

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In this episode we stride around the Elizabethan battlements of a town held ready for war!

Berwick-upon-Tweed is a place packed to bursting with thousands of years of rich history.

Celtic Britons made it their home, followed by the Romans and the Anglo-Saxons.

It was a wealthy, flourishing port before any of the modern nation states – England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland – even existed.

Sitting on the border of what became Scotland and England it was coveted and fought over in a deadly tug of war lasting hundreds of years. It’s a place that sharply reminds us, that in the British Isles it’s more often than not the case that local rather than national identities have the deepest roots.

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In this episode we’re putting on our best and strolling along a stylish promenade in Scarborough, the ‘Nice of the North’ to pay homage to the Great British seaside tradition.

The tentacles of Scarborough’s history stretch back thousands of years. On it’s cliffs is an Iron Age Fort. The Viking also took a fancy to the place and much later in the C13th Henry III fortified what was then an important port. But it was the Victorians who made it the place we recognise today.

Attracted by its restorative spa waters, the Victorians added the cast iron, glass, grandeur and glamour, and it becomes Britain’s first seaside town.

Overlooking a stunning long curve of pale sand is what used to be the largest hotel in Europe – built in the shape of a V to honour Queen Victoria and designed to around the concept of time, this week we’re checking into the Grand Hotel in Scarborough.

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In this episode, powered by their fabulous fecundity and political astuteness, the Stuart family line inherited the Scottish and English crowns and spread their power and influence right across the British Isles.

The C19th saw a canny member of the Stuart clan spotted a gilt-edged opportunity in Cardiff. As the industrial revolution swept across the world, iron, steel and coal were in great demand and high-grade coal from the Rhondda Valley in Wales became a very valuable commodity. If you could control the supply of this precious resource, there were fortunes to be made.

From his castle in Cardiff, John Crichton-Stuart developed the port of Cardiff, which become the busiest in Britain, and as the coal bonanza boomed, feeding an insatiable global hunger, vast quantities of the ‘black gold’ were ship out and incredible fortunes poured in.

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In this episode we join Neil as he steps aboard the Titanic, one of the most iconic ships in the world. For Neil this a pivotal moment in history, which marks a point when the world changed forever.

When the Titanic set sail on its maiden voyage it was the largest human-made object that had ever moved across the face of the planet. 900 feet long (240m), 92 feet wide (28m) and weighing in at 50,000 tons. Built in Belfast it was one of a set of near identical triplets. With 2,200 passengers and crew aboard the Titanic heads out into the wild Atlantic ocean, sailing into tragedy as the band played on.

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In this episode we’re travelling over the sea to Skye, an island of ancient jagged crags and rare breath-taking beauty, which feels as though it’s washed in heaven’s tears.

When the first world war was declared, there was a seismic shift and everything changed forever. All of Britain felt it’s pain and devastation, but it hit the Highlands the hardest. A conflict of such magnitude, billions of spent bullets and millions dead, the sorrow and suffering it cause is impossible to comprehend. I’m in Portree, exploring its impact on one small community, trying to come to terms with the magnitude of the Great War.

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In this episode Horatio Herbert Kitchener, the secretary of state for war, declares, Your Country Needs You!

The First World War meant that Britain had to raise a new army from volunteers, so the call was raised. Five strong, stout brothers from the Souls family, who lived in the Gloucestershire village of Great Rissington, signed up to join the army and become soldiers. After training they shipped out for France.

Albert, the youngest brother, was the first to be killed. Fred was the second brother to die, he was killed at the battle of the Somme. Walter was killed next, soon followed by Alfred.

The last of the five brothers alive was Arthur, he was Alfred’s identical twin, and won the Military Medal for valour at the fight to hold Villers-Bretonneux. But during the battle he was fatally wounded.

Five brothers from the Souls family, all lost. A snapshot of a war like no other - tragedy writ large.

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In this episode we are walking down Whitehall, one of London’s most famous streets, to remember the dead of the First World War.

Fabian Ware joined the British army at the outbreak of the war, but because he was 45 years old, the authorities would let him fight on the front line and put him in charge of a mobile ambulance unit instead.

Appalled by the number of casualties and troubled that the dead were not being recorded properly he began keeping note. On account of his efforts, the organization now called the Commonwealth War Graves Commission came into existence. The process of remembrance began.

11 November 1919 was the first anniversary of the war’s end. It was marked with the construction of a temporary memorial called the Cenotaph on Whitehall, a march of remembrance and the return of the Unknown Soldier. The outpouring of emotion at this event and the public’s actions demanded that the temporary Cenotaph be made permanent. And across the whole of the British Isles collective grief propelled the largest public art project ever seen as communities took it upon themselves to build their own local memorials to remember all the dead.

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In this episode we set sail with Neil to visit one of the world’s great natural harbours, Scapa Flow in Orkney. This vast harbour is a beautifully bleak, windswept spot drench in drama, tragedy and power. For thousands of years, it played a vital role in maritime travel, trade and conflict. The Vikings anchored in its safe waters in the C11th. The British admiralty enlisted it in the Napoleonic wars. And in the First World War it was home to Britain’s Grand Fleet, before being pressed into service once again in the 2nd world war. In the First World War the entire, surrendered German navy was scuttled here in an extraordinary act of sabotage.

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In this episode we hear the deafening roar of industry and see the spark fly as some of the world’s great ships are built. We’re on the banks of the river Clyde, a river that powered a city; as the say goes, ‘Glasgow made the Clyde and the Clyde made Glasgow’.

At one time the Clyde shipbuilders build a fifth of all the ships in the world - everything from luxury transatlantic flagships that crossed the world’s oceans to the legendary battlecruisers that would soon face a determined enemy in the coming Great war.

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In this episode we meet Winston Churchill, a man who has helped define the British Isles: a luminary figure, complex, charismatic and inspirational. Prime minister of Britain during World War II he was a man who inspired a nation in its time of need. Neil travels to Blenheim Palace in Woodstock, Oxfordshire, where was Churchill was born, and to the village of Bladon next door, where he is buried.

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In this episode Operation Overlord is go as Allied troops begin practicing for D-Day.

The plans to invade and liberate Europe are drawn up with amphibious landings on 5 beaches in Normandy - Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword. Hitler's defences are well prepared, ready and determined, so allied training rehearsals are vital, and it's crucial they are as realistic as possible.

Neil heads to Slapton Sands in Devon to watch Exercise Tiger unfold - a heady, dangerous mix of live ammunition, miscommunication, German E-boats, secret documents and tragedy.

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In this episode we come face to face with a chilling reminder of just how close Hitler came to conquering Britain. During World War 2 he got a toe-hold on British territory when his army captured the Channel Islands – the first time they’d be wrestled from British control in over 1000 years.

This week Neil travels to Alderney, one of the islands in the archipelago, to witness the terrifying atrocities carried out by the Nazi occupation force. Here they brought in an army of slave labourers to build defences aimed at keeping out liberation from the British. And the horror meted out to them is a satin on all humanity.

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In this episode, as the Cold War and the threat of nuclear Armageddon sends a terrifying chill around the world Neil heads to Orford Ness in Suffolk.

In the early C20th this isolated shingle spit, tucked away from prying eyes, came to the attention of the military who saw it as the perfect location for secret experiments. It was first used as a training base for the fledgling Royal Airforce during the First World War. Later, work on the radar system that would prove to be so vital for the defence of Britain in WWII was conducted here.

The shroud of secrecy, which the military had thrown over this location continued as experiments that would help develop Britain’s first atomic bomb took place in the laboratories here. And in 1967 as Cold War tensions and the threat of nuclear war increased, to counter any Soviet aggression, British and US military scientists started developing a next generation radar system called Operation Cobra Mist.

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In this episode Neil takes us to a set of three tiny spellbinding islands, shimmering with crystal clear water and pristine white sand – his ultimate desert island. This is the place he escapes to in his imagination when he needs to get away from the pressures of the world.

In the C17th smugglers made one of the islands their secret hideaway. Another island was home to a self-styled king who swapped gifts with Queen Victoria – a basket woven from seaweed and filled with fresh fish and royal coat made of blue cloth. It’s a place where is still possible to glimpse magic!

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 In this episode Neil takes us along one of London’s most celebrated and infamous streets, the place that became a byword for the British Press - Fleet Street. We’re in the midst of the pounding heart of the city with gossip, scandal, exposes and politics ringing in our ears – we’re at St Brides Church on Fleet Street.

Named after the river Fleet upon which it was built. In the C16th Wynkyn de Worde and his printing press set up shop on Fleet Street, and the foundations of a tradition were laid.

In 1702 the capital’s first newspaper, the Daily Courant, was published as the street developed from printing books to newspapers. As the penny-press’s popularity skyrocketed a torrent of words started flowing down Fleet Street as the nation’s obsession with news was fed.

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In this episode Neil comes face to face with the exploits of the Solomon Brown lifeboat crew. With a hurricane battering the Cornish coast, 8 men set sail from Penlee Lifeboat Station in an attempt to save the passengers and crew of the Union Star.

As the Union Star was being violently tossed ever closer towards deadly rocks a helicopter rescue pilot witnessed the bravery of the Solomon Brown crew as they attempted to rescue everyone aboard the Union Star – the helicopter pilot described what he saw and the lifeboat men as, ‘truly the greatest eight men I have ever seen’.  

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In this episode the countdown begins; will it be the dawn of a second coming or herald chaos and catastrophe? This week, as the dials turn and the 9s mutate to 0s the new millennium arrives and we’re standing in a landmark building designed by one of the world’s great architects. What does this building tell us about Britain? Hope you’ve got your streamers!

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In this episode a wave of devolution sweeps across the United Kingdom creating assemblies in Northern Ireland and Wales and a new parliament in Scotland.

In 1999 as the balance of power across the whole of the British Isles starts to shift, the foundations are laid to cement a new age in Scotland. At the end of Edinburgh’s Royal Mile work begins on an ambitious building, which will herald Scotland’s move to devolution. Built with oak, sycamore, stainless steel and Caithness stone the finished design for Scotland’s new Parliament Building is celebrated, loved and loathed in equal measure.

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In this episode Neil takes us to meet a great mind; a scientist whose work laid some of the foundations that have helped shape the world we live in. James Clerk Maxwell grew up surround by the soft rounded hills, lochs and handsome woodland in Dumfries and Galloway. From his country upbringing and a slow start at school he went on to dazzle on the scientific stage.

Einstein and the scientists that followed all pay tribute to the great beauty of Maxwell’s mathematics, his theorems, and the ground-breaking work he did showing that electricity, light and magnetism were all covered by the same fundamental and natural laws. Without him the world wouldn’t be as it is today.

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Ep99 The Tower of London

In this episode we’re scaling the walls of one of the most famous fortresses in the whole of the British Isles – the Tower of London. Almost a thousand years old this beautifully kept Roya palace is now spic and span, and surrounded by the steel and glass of a thriving modern metropolis. But for centuries it was a place to dread. Packed to the rafters with history, this week Neil digs down to find the awful secrets that have been buried beneath the floorboards!

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In this episode Neil takes us to the breathtakingly beautiful shingle headland at Dungeness – a place loved by artists, photographers, pop stars and fans of this archipelago’s raw natural coastline.

On this windblown and storm-washed headland, that’s full of sky and sound, Neil explores the concept of how the land we grow up in becomes a part us – part of our actual physical being as well as our ‘souls’.

For Neil, Dungeness Headland is an ever-changing landscape with a fragile feel to it, which strikes a very personal chord and reminds him of the British Isles themselves

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