Join British historian Bettany Hughes as she examines a long-buried chapter of European history--the rise and fall of Islamic culture in what is now Spain and Portugal. Although generations of Spanish rulers have tried to expunge this era from the historical record,...
What is Islam? Who is Muhammad? This is a documentary narrated by Ben Kingsley about Islam and attempts to answer these questions. The first part deals with the life of the Prophet Muhammad, his early life, his encounter with God Almighty and the birth of the Islam. 1....
Did Hannibal carelessly squander the power of Carthage? Were the ingenious strategist’s legendary victories paradoxically the reason for the downfall of this incredibly rich trading empire? Why did Hannibal, at the very height of his triumphant campaign, refrain from...
Two thousand years ago, the Roman Empire was the strongest and most powerful assembly of people on Earth. In the year 73 BC, they boasted the greatest army in the ancient world, but their army was to be taken down many times over by Spartacus – an unlikely hero who...
This documentary examines the bloody career of Vlad the Impaler, the 15th-century prince of Wallachia who took no prisoners in his resistance to the spread of the Ottoman Empire. Known as Dracula, he learned the arts of war as a hostage of the Turks, but asserted his...
Based on Jared Diamond’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book of the same name, Guns, Germs and Steel traces humanity’s journey over the last 13,000 years – from the dawn of farming at the end of the last Ice Age to the realities of life in the twenty-first century....
Europe, eighty thousand years ago, for countless generations the kingdom of a remarkable and mysterious creature, Neanderthal. A species of human in many ways so similar to us, and yet also very different. Tonight we've brought together a crack team of experts to...
The storied mythical history of Ancient Greece is profiled in the Discovery Channel's Seven Wonders of Ancient Greece. The sites covered in the film: The Palace of Knossos - A labyrinth on the island of Crete, said to have been built by the King Minos...
It's one of the greatest stories ever told. The legend of Helen of Troy has enchanted audiences for the last three thousand years. In May this year a Hollywood film staring Brad Pitt and Orlando Bloom will be launched in Britain. But is there any reality to the myth?...
For nearly two decades he strode the world stage like a colossus - loved and despised, venerated and feared. From his birth on the rugged island of Corsica to his final exile on the godforsaken island of St. Helena, Napoleon brings this extraordinary figure to life....
On September 11, 1973, he was overthrown by a military coup... The dictator of Pinochet crushed that democracy which had perfected itself over two centuries, and destroyed, day after day, for 18 years, the country I knew. Thousands of Chileans were murdered and...
Hidden from Parliament and the U.S. Congress, the deal was this: the Americans wanted the island, in their words, swept and sanitized. An entire population was declared expendable; all of them were to be deported. Stealing a Nation (John Pilger, 2004)...
