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National Treasures Live round-up

Sunday, August 14th, 2011
  • National Treasures Live – Beaulieu Motor Museum

    The National Motor Museum at Beaulieu has been chosen as one of the locations for a new, peak time series on BBC1, starting on August 10 and fronted by historian Dan Snow and BBC Breakfast presenter Sian Williams. In a lively mix of film reports, Dan and Sian, together with a team of celebrity reporters and historians, will reveal some of the country’s most mysterious, surprising and compelling stories.

    The programme, to be broadcast live from Beaulieu at 7.30pm on Wednesday, 31st August, will tell the story of early motoring and feature a number of vehicles from the museum’s collection including a replica of the first practical motor car, the 1886 Benz, and the Grenville Steam Carriage, the earliest passenger carrying road vehicle still running.

National Treasures Live – HMS Warrior

Sunday, August 14th, 2011

From here:

Wednesday 17 August
7.30-8.00pm BBC ONE
Ep 2/5

Live from the majestic HMS Warrior in Portsmouth, Dan Snow and Sian Williams continue their series celebrating the best in British history. They experience what life was really like on board a nineteenth century warship, whilst Masterchef’s Gregg Wallace investigates the ingenious recipes that were cooked up during rationing in the Second World War. Plus, Joe Crowley makes a remarkable discovery in a two thousand year old Roman grave.

From here:

Dan Snow and Sian Williams continue to bring history to life – live to the nation’s living rooms. Broadcast from Britain’s most striking historical locations, the series throws open the doors to some of the UK’s most exciting venues, including restorations, digs and heritage sites, giving viewers unique access to events happening across the country.

Tonight, the team is in Portsmouth, on the mighty HMS Warrior. Here, they explore what was, at the time of its launch, the most sophisticated war ship ever built.

In a lively mix of film reports, a team of reporters and the nation’s favourite celebrities reveal some of the country’s most mysterious, surprising and compelling stories. Tonight, Gregg Wallace explores the weird and wonderful recipes people used in the Second World War to work around rationing restrictions.

National Treasures Live is part of BBC Learning’s Hands On History. Details are available at bbc.co.uk/history/handsonhistory.

Staffordshire Hoard round-up

Friday, August 5th, 2011

National Treasures Live round-up

Friday, August 5th, 2011
  • Filming begins at heritage sites for new BBC show

    Historian Dan Snow has been filming at Housesteads Roman Fort in Northumberland this week in preparation for National Treasures Live, a new programme that will give BBC viewers unique access to some of Britain’s most exciting venues, including restorations, digs and heritage sites.
    […]
    Dan said: “Housesteads Roman Fort is arguably one of the most interesting and picturesque sites along Hadrian’s Wall and as a World Heritage site steeped in Roman history, it made perfect sense for us to include it within the episode dedicated to Romans.

    “We look forward to the show being broadcast and hopefully viewers at home will be able to take away as much from the series as both Michael and myself have and visit Housesteads Roman Fort for themselves.”

  • National Treasures Live on Twitter
  • National Treasures Live page on the BBC website
  • BBC Press Release

National Treasures Live – Dover Castle

Friday, August 5th, 2011

From here:

Wednesday 10 August
7.30-8.00pm BBC ONE
Ep 1/5

Britain’s fascinating history is all around us. Around the UK there are amazing places to visit and incredible ways to uncover the stories of our shared past. Now historian Dan Snow and BBC presenter Sian Williams are bringing this history to life – live to the nation’s living rooms.

Broadcast from Britain’s most striking historical locations, the series throws open the doors to some of the UK’s most exciting venues, including restorations, digs and heritage sites, giving viewers unique access to events happening across the country

Dover Castle is the setting for the opening programme. King Henry II’s magnificent castle will take centre stage as well as the huge array of secret tunnels cut into the White Cliffs underneath it. These tunnels were where the Dunkirk rescue mission was masterminded from and they housed a fully functioning hospital, barracks and secret telecommunications hub.

Dan and Sian are joined by a team of reporters and, throughout the series, by some of the nation’s favourite celebrities who are on hand to share their passion for history and the way we used to live. In a lively mix of film reports, Sheila Hancock, Lenny Henry, Larry Lamb, Gregg Wallace and Ruby Wax reveal some of the country’s most mysterious, surprising and compelling stories.

National Treasures Live is part of BBC Learning’s Hands On History. Details are available at bbc.co.uk/history/handsonhistory.

Win tickets to see Dan on National Treasures Live

Friday, August 5th, 2011

English Heritage are offering the opportunity to go down to Dover and check out Dan in action for Wednesday night’s National Treasures Live.

Check it out here.

Tamworth Castle on TV

Saturday, July 2nd, 2011

From the Tamworth blog:

The BBC’s ‘History Hunter’, Dan Snow, visited Tamworth Castle in a bid to unlock historical secrets behind the Staffordshire Hoard.

The programme which airs on Sunday July 3 (BBC One, 6pm), will see TV historian Dan Snow travel across the old Kingdom of Mercia, unravelling the secrets of the Staffordshire Hoard – one of Britain’s most significant discoveries.

Dan spent the morning at Tamworth Castle, exploring the significance of the Staffordshire Hoard and the important historic role Tamworth has in the story.

Staffordshire Hoard

Saturday, July 2nd, 2011

This programme will air tomorrow (Sunday 3rd July) at 6pm on BBC1 – however it looks like it will only be on BBC One West Midlands. The rest of us will have to catch it on iPlayer!

From here:

TV historian Dan Snow travels across the old Kingdom of Mercia unravelling the secrets of one of Britian’s most significant discoveries – the Staffordshire Hoard. The Hoard offers 1,500 new clues into the Dark Ages and Dan pieces together the lives of the people living in those long-forgotten kingdoms.

The Staffordshire Hoard shone a dazzling light into the shadowy world of the Dark Age Midlands.

One thousand six hundred years ago the Romans abandoned Britain. A new, mysterious era in British History began – the ‘Dark Ages’.

‘Dark Age’ Midlanders left precious little evidence that they had ever been here at all, until very recently.

New light was shone on the period following an unremarkable request from a man with a metal detector to explore a field in Staffordshire.

Metal detectorist Terry not only struck gold, he made the find of a lifetime.

When the experts arrived the true extent of the hoard started to become clear. This was a find unlike anything they’d seen before.

Suddenly there were over 1,500 new clues into the Midlands’ Dark Age past – pommels from tops of swords, pieces of warrior helmet, strange serpents and mangled crosses.

The hoard was huge, and packed with beautifully crafted artefacts from one of the darkest periods of the Dark Ages. But what did it actually tell us?

Could one lucky find really revolutionize our thinking of Anglo-Saxon England?

And is it so significant that the history of the Dark Age Midlands will now have to be completely re-written?

Dan Snow explores work of artist Arthur Spooner

Saturday, July 2nd, 2011

From BBC News:

Dan Snow

Dan Snow looks at Arthur Spooner's Goose Fair, housed at Nottingham Castle


Nottingham-born artist Arthur Spooner was a painter who recorded events in the city of his birth.

A BBC One programme has retraced the career of Spooner (1873 – 1962) whose paintings are scattered across Nottinghamshire.

Hidden Paintings of the East Midlands was fronted by Dan Snow and looked at Spooner’s work housed at Nottingham Castle, Portland College and Welbeck Abbey.

“Paintings are not always what they seem,” said The One Show presenter.

He added: “I’m fascinated by paintings that can be used as a historical source and if you’re interested in the history of Nottingham, there’s a name that crops up again and again, Arthur Spooner.”

Spooner’s most famous painting was of a scene from Nottingham’s renowned Goose Fair.

The work, painted in 1926, shows one of the last times the event was held in the city centre, before it moved to the Forest Recreation Ground.

Spooner was not an internationally renowned artist.

His work was considered old fashioned but he carried on, regardless of what his peers thought, documenting life in Nottingham.

As a result, we can learn more about events in Nottinghamshire.

But did he always paint the scene as it happened?
Accurate representation

One of Spooner’s commissions involved depicting life at Welbeck, in North Nottinghamshire, for the Duke and Duchess of Portland.

Welbeck had been turned into an auxillary hospital during the First World War and Spooner’s scenes depict soldiers’ rehabilitation in the idyllic surroundings of the estate.

It could be a case of Spooner providing good PR for the Duke and Duchess but Derek Adlam, the curator of the Portland art collection said this was not the case.

“I’m sure they are an accurate representation of what was here,” said Mr Adlam.

“The kindness of the Duchess, the facilities of the hospital… We don’t really know whether the nurses were dealing with serious trauma or more in the nature of a convalescence hospital.

“[Spooner] was a sound pair of hands when you wanted an occasion painted or an [accurate] record made.”

However, just to show you cannot always trust the artist, Spooner revealed in a newspaper interview in 1960, that the prominent figure of a clown in his Goose Fair picture was in fact a self-portrait.

Check out the episode on iPlayer.

Dan Snow: ‘The trick of life is only do what you’re good at’ – interview

Saturday, July 2nd, 2011

From the Guardian:

Historian Dan Snow, son of Swingometer Peter, on canvases, castles and why he’s not ‘a complete loon’
   Dan Snow at Conwy Castle in Wales. Photograph: Howard Barlow for the Observer
The 32-year-old historian Dan Snow is the precocious son of Peter “Swingometer” Snow, a three-time veteran of the Boat Race and the BBC’s all-action heir to Schama and Starkey. In November he married the prison-reform campaigner Lady Edwina Grosvenor, Lady Diana’s goddaughter, and has a habit of turning up in the news – last year, for a swashbuckling rescue mission to Calais, where, inspired by a programme he made on the 70th anniversary of Dunkirk, he rocked up in France with three boats to pick up Brits stranded by the Iceland volcano; more recently for his one-man quest to make the AV referendum intelligible with YouTube tutorials. This invites the obvious question: Dan Snow, is there anything that you are not really good at?

“That’s complete nonsense! I’m rubbish at most things,” he snorts, standing neo-heroically, high on the battlements of Conwy Castle in north Wales. “My resumé is actually very narrow, it’s all to do with talking nonsense. I’m terrible at languages, science, ball sports, all sorts of the things, but the trick of life – as I learned from military history – is to reinforce success, only do what you’re good at.”

So, we can add self-effacing to the list. Tonight, we can also see Snow in a slightly different guise. He is one of 11 celebrity presenters given the chance to raid the public-owned art stash for BBC1’s Hidden Paintings. The premise is that 80% of the paintings that belong to us are not on regular display and Snow has chosen to dig out the work of the little-known photo-realist Arthur Spooner from Nottingham (this means, confusingly, that Snow’s film will only be broadcast in the BBC East Midlands region, but all 11 programmes will be available on iPlayer).

“We were lucky enough to go down to the bowels of Nottingham Castle, and Aladdin’s Cave is a term too often used in history television, but there were these dusty, frameless canvases, thousands of works of art of great value,” he says. “It’s a reminder that we have precious museums all round the country and a timely one because they are in real trouble at the moment, on the frontline of the cuts.”

Next up is a series about great castles, which sent Snow to Syria, Poland and now Conwy, and he is developing an interactive TV-internet hybrid that will “hopefully be a bit groundbreaking, but God knows”. You sense, however, that what drives him is the recognition of his peers. “With my last book, some of them started to think I might not be a complete loon after all,” he says. “I’ve got a long way to go, but that’s the dream.”

Check out the episode on iPlayer.