BBC - Seven Ages of Britain (2010) Part 6 Age of Empire

Seven Ages of Britain

David Dimbleby charts a landmark history of Britain’s greatest art and artefacts over 2000 years in Seven Ages of Britain. Produced in partnership with The Open University, Seven Ages of Britain looks at our extraordinary past through the Arts - both as treasures that have often played a decisive part in events and as marvels of their age. From painted images and monuments of stone and gold to religious relics, weapons of war, instruments of science and works of art; often they are artefacts of great beauty and craftsmanship, but sometimes they are simple, everyday things which have a powerful story to tell. Over the seven one hour programmes, David roams far and wide - including Italy, Germany, Turkey, India and America - tracking down astonishing artefacts that both encapsulate events or originate from the UK, and yet ended up leaving our shores. Jay Hunt Controller of BBC One said: “The Seven Ages of Britain is a hugely ambitious arts series for BBC One. David brings the subject matter alive with journalistic endeavour and a twinkle in his eye.”

Part 6: Empire

The story of the British Empire from 1750 to 1900, revealed through its art and treasures. David Dimbleby travels through Britain, America and India, tracing the descent from adventure and inspiration into moral bankruptcy as the Empire became a self-serving bureaucratic machine. In Britain, David looks at William Hodges' paintings of Captain Cook's famous voyages, Sir Hiram Maxim's original machine gun, the relics of General Gordon brought back from the Sudan, and some of the priceless trophies plundered in foreign campaigns: Tipu's mechanical Tiger and the Benin Bronzes. In Philadelphia, he explores William Penn's utopian Old Town, the Liberty Bell, and painter Benjamin West's pictorial white-washing of history in Penn's Treaty with the Indians. In India, David looks at the colonial architecture of Calcutta, and some fabulous frescoes in a Rajasthan village mocking British customs and personalities. The programme ends at the Victoria Memorial in front of Buckingham Palace, not so much a monument to the British Empire as its mausoleum.

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