Hawkmoor 1978

Hawkmoor was a 1978 BBC television series created by Lynn Hughes and based on the activities of Twm Siôn Cati, a 16th-century Welsh folk hero.

The 5-part series starred John Ogwen as Twm and Jane Asher as Lady Johane Williams, and also featured Godfrey James as Twm's right-hand man Shanco, Jack May as the English-born Sheriff John Stedman, Tom Owen as the sheriff's son John, Philip Madoc as Vicar Davyd, Meredith Edwards as Sir Tom Williams and Rachel Thomas as Agnes. The series depicted Twm as a Welsh Robin Hood/freedom fighter protecting the Welsh people from the repression of Sheriff Stedman and the cruel (Catholic) Vicar Davyd during the reign of Queen Mary I of England.

A Penguin paperback (ISBN 0-14-004501-5) relating some of the television adventures (and containing a ballad actually written by Twm) was written by Lynn Hughes and published in 1978.

Stalingrad: The Last Letters

The hell of Stalingrad. Parts of this almost two-hour documentary are difficult to watch. But besides the agonizing details of the battle that took place from August 23, 1942 until February 2, 1943, this film provides insight into the fascist mindset. From the indoctrinated soldiers to the families at home and the diabolical leadership, we get a picture of a brainwashed society worshipping a militaristic racist authoritarian death cult. Welcome to Stalingrad.

Stabswachtmeister Lindeman writes "This is the last letter I will be able to send to you. Seems we have run out of luck this time. When you receive it your son will be gone, I mean he won’t be in this world anymore. We are all very serious about that and will continue the fight. For our beloved Heimat, my beautiful hometown, for my family and the Führer."

Another, from Sanitätsunteroffizier Werner Eisenhauer conveys the soldiers' resolute faith amidst the chaos:

"The merciless fight continues and our good lord is helping the brave! Whatever God’s providence will decide, we only ask him for one thing - the power to persevere! One day people shall say of us, that the German Army has fought in Stalingrad like no soldiers of the world have fought before."

Target for Today (1944)

Target for Today is an acclaimed 1944 documentary film produced by the First Motion Picture Unit for the United States Army Air Forces. Directed by William Keighley, the film documents an actual Eighth Air Force bombing mission, detailing the massive logistical effort behind a daylight raid on industrial targets in Nazi Germany.

"Violent Nation - Episode 1 (2005) | Rik Mayall - Documentary"

Presented by Rik Mayall, this history series questions the current belief that violence and violent crime are ont he rise in 21st Century Britain by unearthing the hidden violence in Britain's past.

First Mongrel Nation debunked the myth that Englishness was under attack from a tidal wave of immigration. Now Violent Nation takes on the real bogeyman – violence. Each hour-long show is themed around one aspect of Britain’s violent history: VIOLENT STREETS, VIOLENT STATE and VIOLENT LIVES.

Each programme encompasses its own chronological sweep, focussing on six key events, moving from the 1600s to the first half of the 20th century. These stories shatter the misconception about how dangerous our country has become by revealing the surprising truth about how things really used to be.

First transmitted in 2004.

The Scandalous Lady W (2015)

An 18th-century drama detailing the scandalous life of Lady Seymour Worsley. Starring: Natalie Dormer, Jessica Gunning, Aneurin Barnard.

Lady Worsley was rumoured to have had 27 lovers. In November 1781 she ran off with Bisset, a captain in the South Hampshire militia, who had been Worsley's close friend and neighbour at Knighton Gorges on the Isle of Wight. In February 1782 Worsley brought a criminal conversation case against Bisset for £20,000 (equivalent to £2,918,500 in 2025). Lady Worsley turned the suit in her favour with scandalous revelations and the aid of past and present lovers; and questioned the legal status of her husband. She included a number of testimonies from her lovers and her doctor, William Osborn, who related that she had suffered from a venereal disease which she had contracted from the Marquess of Graham. It was alleged that Worsley had displayed his wife naked to Bisset at the bath house in Maidstone. This testimony destroyed Worsley's suit and the jury awarded him only one shilling (2015: £5.28) in damages.

Bisset eventually left Lady Worsley when it became apparent that Worsley was seeking separation rather than divorce, meaning Seymour could not remarry until Worsley's death. Seymour was forced to become a professional mistress or demimondaine and live off the donations of rich men in order to survive, joining other upper-class women in a similar position in the New Female Coterie. She had two more children: another by Bisset after he left her in 1783, whose fate is unknown; and a fourth, Charlotte Dorothy Hammond (née Cochard), who she sent to be raised by a family in the Ardennes.

Lady Worsley later left for Paris in order to avoid her debts. In 1788, she and her new lover, the biracial composer, conductor and champion fencer Joseph Bologne, the Chevalier de Saint-Georges, returned to England, and her estranged husband entered into articles of separation, on the condition she spend four years in exile in France. Eight months before the expiration of this exile, she was unable to leave France because of the events of the French Revolution and she was probably imprisoned during the Reign of Terror, meaning she was abroad on the death of her and Worsley's son in 1795. In early 1797, she returned to England, and she then suffered a severe two-month illness. Owing to the forgiveness of her mother, her sister and her sister's husband, the Earl of Harrington, she was then able to move into Brompton Park, her previous home, but which the laws on property prevented her from officially holding.

On Worsley's death in 1805, her £70,000 jointure reverted to her and just over a month later, on 12 September, at the age of 47 she married 26-year-old newfound lover John Lewis Cuchet (d. 1836) at Farnham. Also that month, by royal licence, she officially resumed her maiden name of Fleming, and her new husband also took it. After the armistice of 1814 ended the War of the Sixth Coalition, the couple moved to a villa at Passy, Paris where she died in 1818, aged 59. She is buried at the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

Fellini's Casanova (1976)

Fellini's Casanova (Italian: Il Casanova di Federico Fellini, lit. 'The Casanova by Federico Fellini') is a 1976 Italian film directed by Federico Fellini from a screenplay he co-wrote with Bernardino Zapponi, adapted from the autobiography of 18th-century Venetian adventurer and writer Giacomo Casanova, played by Donald Sutherland. The film depicts Casanova's life as a journey into sexual abandonment, and his relationship with the "love of his life" Henriette (played by Tina Aumont). The narrative presents Casanova's adventures in a detached, methodical fashion, as the respect for which he yearns is constantly undermined by his more basic urges.

Shot entirely at the Cinecittà studios in Rome, the film won an Academy Award for Best Costume Design, with the Oscar going to Danilo Donati. Fellini and his co-writer Bernardino Zapponi were nominated for a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar. The film also won BAFTA Awards for Best Costume Design and Best Production Design, and a David di Donatello for Best Score.

The Story of Bryan Cook and Inner City 90s Sydney

Inner city Sydney in the 1980s and 90s was a very special place. I first spent extended amounts of time in Newtown from 1991. The creativity and energy of the community was amazing. Music, art, performance and writing as well as dancing, singing, sculpting and raving were happening everywhere. Large loft-style warehouse spaces could be rented for a few hundred dollars a week and large groups could live in them too. I moved permanently to Sydney in late 1992 and the city was my base late 1999. The city has changed a lot since then and on my first and only visit back since, in 2023, it was almost unrecognisable.

This is the story of Bryan Cook. A local inner city photographer and Australian independent music lover who captured some of the most unique, unseen photos around the inner city pubs like The Hopetoun, The Vulcan, The Sydney Trade Union Club The Evening star, The Strawberry Hills Hotel and more.

His love of film and digital photography inadvertently captured a music scene that was never given a lot of attention or documented by the mainstream press. Dr Gregory Ferris, an esteemed academic from the UTS, discovered Cookie's extensive, extraordinary and rarely seen photos and exhibited them at the Powerhouse Museum in an interactive display that recreated the Hopetoun Hotel. Cookie has confirmed that the total number of photographs taken over the years exceeded 80,000, a monumental achievement.

This video was the concept of Ed Garland and Nick Bleszynski, who were determined to expose to the world the amazing photography of Bryan (Cookie) Cook and his accidental documentation of a unique time in Australian music history.

Interviews: Clyde Bramley (Hoodoo Gurus)

Jon Roberts (The Barbarellas)

Geoff Datson (Samurai Trash)

Susie Beauchamp (Box the Jesuit)

Dr Gregory Ferris (UTS Academic)

Ed Garland (Waxworks)

Credit to Nick Bleszynski for footage at the Moshpit Newtown and the scene with Dr Ferris.

Einsatzgruppen: The Nazi Death Squads

 

The armies of the Adolph Hitler's Third Reich invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941 at the height of World War II. Mobile commandos, the Einsatzgruppen, followed their advance to Stalingrad with the mission of eliminating all Jewish people on the conquered territories. From June 1941 and the end of 1943, these Nazi groups killed close to two million Jews from the Baltic countries to the Black Sea.

00:00 - EP1 - Mass graves (June-August 1941)

Explore in depth the history of the Nazi mobile death squads, including when, how and why they were created.

43:46 - EP2 - Judenfrei (September-December 1941)

A recollection of the actions of Einsatzgruppen in Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and the Baltic states. Due to them, in December 1941 these areas were declared "free of Jews".

01:29:30 - EP3 - The stakes (1942-1943)

As Soviet forces advance, Nazi Germany has the bodies of death-camp victims dug up and burned.

02:08:57 - EP4 - Reckonning (1943-1947)

The series finale recalls the Nuremberg trials. Some faced the ultimate punishment, but many walked free in the 1950s.

Written : Michaël Prazan

Directed : Michaël Prazan

KUIV Production

If there is any doubt about the veracity and deep unimaginable horror that was the Holocaust, watch Einsatzgruppen: The Nazi Death Squads. It is hard work to watch it. The scale and visciousness of what was done by a state to so many millions is hard to comprehend. There is plenty of evidence to consider and everyone should be aware of it. Genocide is still happening today and there is no excuse for this being so.Click on the image above for the entire excruciating history

The Tudor Farm Series

Tudor Monastery Farm is a British factual television series, first broadcast on BBC Two on 13 November 2013. The series, the fifth in the historic farm series, following the original, Tales from the Green Valley, stars archaeologists Peter Ginn and Tom Pinfold, and historian Ruth Goodman. The team discover what farming was like during the Tudor period at the Weald and Downland Open Air Museum. The program also recurringly features other historians, such as Colin Richards (an expert on rural crafts), and Professor Ronald Hutton (who specializes in folklore and religious beliefs).

The team move in, coppice hazel, build a pig enclosure, commission a guild, plough using oxen, make rushlights, make wattle-and-daub barriers, sow peas and barley using broadcasting, and celebrate religious festivals. They take custody of some Tamworth pigs. They hire workmen to scribe and illuminate documents as well as turn wooden bowls and plates.

The team work with sheep: driving, milking and shearing them; make cheese from the milk; sort, grade, card and spin wool. Additional they produce a period cold treatment from herbs, steam-bend wood, and celebrate Whitsun. They take custody of geese and drive them to market. They observe the smelting of iron as well as the weaving and fulling of cloth.

The team wean piglets, cultivate wild yeast, malt barley, make ale and bread, harvest honey and beeswax, dip candles, shave their sheep's hooves, demonstrate period hair care methods, roast lamb, and celebrate both a mass and the midsummer festival. They take custody of a boar to service their sows. They observe the shaping, moulding, and pouring of a bell, learn about period clock mechanisms and observe a wind-powered grain mill.

The team mine, smelt and cast ingots of lead; plait eel baskets and harvest eels; shape stained glass; patronize a pub; pasture their piglets in the forest; paint cloth and manage their garden. Tom sits for a camera obscura portrait.

The team launder bed linen, serve as cooks and stewards, calcine and slake lime, build a lime-ash floor, churn, press, and salt butter; sanitize the dairy, plait rushes for floormats, lay and press rag paper; prepare lye from ash; harvest tree hay for the animals; harvest and thresh their pea crop, cook a feast and make brandy. They observe period typesetting, printing and bookbinding.

The team harvest and stook and store their barley; extract salt from brine, celebrate Michaelmas, carve decorative stone, form and decorate floor tiles, produce blackpowder for Roman candle fireworks, a Damson and Bullace Melomel beverage, and perform a mystery play. The Christmas Special On 25 November 2013, the BBC announced that Tudor Monastery Farm would have a Christmas special which explored the festive season as part of BBC Two's Christmas scheduling. The episode was broadcast on 31 December 2013 and overnight figures showed that it attracted 1.57 million viewers (8.06% of the viewing audience). Official figures raised the number of viewers to 1.76 million.

The Vietnam War - PBS 2017

This 10-part, 18-hour documentary series from directors Ken Burns and Lynn Novick presents firsthand accounts of the Vietnam War from nearly 80 witnesses, including Americans who fought in the war and some who opposed it, as well as Vietnamese combatants and civilians from both sides. Digitally remastered archival footage, photographs, historic television broadcasts and home movies offer different perspectives on the conflict. Also providing insight are audio recordings from inside the administrations of Presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon.

Under the 1954 Geneva peace accords, reunification elections were to be held in Vietnam within two years. Prime Minister Diem rejected the election promise and took excessive steps to repress any opponents. The strategic hamlets were not welcome by the peasant population and by 1964, supplies were flowing south along the Ho Chi Minh trail. Viet Cong guerrillas supported by the Army of North Vietnam attacked American installations in Saigon. The bombing of the North started in 1965 in reaction to the Gulf of Tonkin incident. The Marines that began arriving in 1965 were not seen as liberators by the people. The North launched a major attack in 1965 on the airbase at Da Nang. It was eventually recognized that the bombing campaign, Operation Rolling Thunder, had failed.

The campaign in Vietnam by the US comes across as being vast, expensive (in every respect) and doomed to fail. This was a colonial war fought by people who believed they were in a virtuous struggle, Meanwhile enormous resources were being used to annihilate entire populations. Torture, sabotage, incompetence and corruption supplied the supporting cast for this disaster.

Anti-war protests began early in the Johnson administration though the vast majority of Americans at the time supported the administration. The initial protests were led by civil rights activists, the old left, women's groups and the clergy. Religious organizations had a difficult time as they were conservative by nature. As well, college students could avoid the draft if they remained in school. Blacks were joining the military but activists decried those who claimed they were trying to save people of color. Passive resistance and draft card burning were increasing. The October 1967 march on the Pentagon was denounced as anti-American as were most protests against the war. However, 55,000 participated and over 600 were arrested. The climate soon began to change. Johnson had to raise taxes and the economy was doing poorly and by December 1967 a poll showed that a majority of Americans now thought the war was a mistake. Senator Eugene McCarthy became popular by proposing an end to the war. He nearly defeated Johnson in the New Hampshire primary and his success led to Bobby Kennedy's entry into the Presidential race. Martin Luther King spoke out against the war and riots broke out across the US after his assassination. The Chicago protests at the Democratic convention and the police response led to bloodshed on all sides. During the election, Nixon attacked Humphrey based on his support of Johnson's war policies. Every Thursday, the number of Americans killed in Vietnam was released to the media. Nixon won the election by a slim margin and the Vice President Spiro Agnew began attacking the media as biased. Soon however, the public learned of the massacre at My Lai and even Vietnam Veterans began protesting the war.

The entire series is worth watching. 

Britain's Outlaws: Highwaymen, Pirates and Rogues

This documentary begins with the arrival of a new breed of gentleman criminal out of the ashes of the English Civil War - the highwayman. Heavily romanticised in literature, these glamorous gangsters became a social menace on the roads and a political thorn in the side of the creaking British state - threatening to steal our wallets and our hearts. But underneath the dashing image of stylish robbers on horseback lay a far darker reality.

Then, we take to the high seas in search of the swashbuckling pirates of the golden age of piracy during the early 18th century. Following in the wake of the infamous Captain Kidd, Blackbeard, Calico Jack and others, we see the devastating impact these pirates had during an era of colonial expansion and how, by plundering the vast network of seaborne trade, they became the most wanted outlaws in the world.

Finally, we get a look at urban crime, fraud and corruption in the 18th century, uncovering a fascinating rogues gallery of charmers, fraudsters and villains. Charmers like thief and serial escapee Jack Sheppard, so notorious that almost a quarter of a million people turned up to witness his hanging.

The Net - the Unabomber, LSD and the Internet

 

Ultimately stunning in its revelations, Lutz Dammbeck's THE NET explores the incredibly complex backstory of Ted Kaczynski, the infamous Unabomber. This exquisitely crafted inquiry into the rationale of this mythic figure situates him within a late 20th Century web of technology - a system that he grew to oppose. A marvelously subversive approach to the history of the Internet, this insightful documentary combines speculative travelogue and investigative journalism to trace contrasting countercultural responses to the cybernetic revolution.

"Culloden"

Written and Directed by Peter Watkins for the BBC in a quasi-newsreel style and with nonprofessional actors. It first aired in the UK on December 15th 1964. It is a highly detailed and authentic reconstruction of the April 16, 1746 Battle of Culloden - the final confrontation of the Jacobite rising of 1745. Here, the Jacobite army of Charles Edward Stuart was decisively defeated by a British government force under William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, on Drummossie Moor near Inverness in the Scottish Highlands. It was the last pitched battle fought on British soil. The documentary was unique at the time as it broke the “fourth wall” with historical participants commenting as if modern TV cameras were present.

With a shoe-string budget and a troop of amateur actors, Peter Watkins created a controversial and grim look at the decaying Scottish clan system and the British occupation of Scotland. During the duration of the film Mr. Watkins takes no side and scathingly shows how both sides of the battlefield are morally and socially corrupt. Prince Bonnie Charles Stuart (pretender to the throne) on the battle field against the superior forces of the House of Hannover. The Jacobites didn't really stand a chance against the World's greatest army. Stupidity and jealousy ruined any chance they had.

Peter Watkins also showed the aftermath of the battle and the devastating effects the battle had on the surrounding communities. He shot this film in his trademark faux-documentary style. Even with a small budget, Mr. Watkins still manages to create a very important film. One that he spent months on researching and planning. The film also reflects how the media treated combat as we have one the field reports from the attacking army and interviews with the soldiers and their views on the enemy.

Culloden Moor, known then as Drummossie Muir, was the site of the last pitched battle on the British mainland on 16 April 1746.

The Jacobites were pulling back into the Highlands, ending their siege of Stirling as they headed for Inverness. Despite their victory at Falkirk, Jacobite morale was declining. Hunger saw the men spreading out wide to find their own food, some of them breaking ranks for home.

Most of their artillery had been ditched since reinforcements from France were growing more unlikely.

Things were very different for the Duke of Cumberland, now leading the Hanovarian army. His army was being well supplied by sea as he followed Prince Charles up the east coast.

Lord George Murray advised his Prince that the Jacobites would be best dispersing into the hills to use guerrilla strikes, bringing the army back together in the summer. Charles chose however, to reject the tactics the Highlanders knew best and opted to meet the enemy again in an open area.

On the night of the 15th, a mismanaged strike was launched on Cumberland’s camp which achieved nothing, resulting only in sleepless, hungry Highlanders for the next day. When they met on the Moor near Culloden, the Jacobites numbered four and a half thousand to Cumberland’s nine thousand Hanovarians.

Restricted by flanking dykes, the Jacobites presented a narrow, dense front. For the first twenty minutes of the hour-long battle the Hanovarian cannons pummelled the crowded area. When the Jacobites advanced the men in the centre found themselves having to squeeze to the right to avoid soft ground. There were so many men in such a small area that muskets could not be used. Nevertheless they butchered on through the Hanovarian left only to meet another regiment behind.

The Jacobite left had not joined the attack, and with two-thirds of the men now in difficulties, Cumberland’s cavalry had little trouble sweeping in to end the battle by two’o’clock. Working at their leisure, they proceeded to slaughter every Jacobite they had until the following day and continued to kill in round-ups for weeks following.

The fatalities numbered three hundred Hanovarians and two thousand Jacobites.

This was the end of the second Jacobite Rising.

Battle of the Somme (WW1 Documentary)

 

A stunning drama documentary that uses letters and diaries of those that participated.

The Somme-A Lost Generation

Think of your Mam and bite your lip

Be strong lad, Go thee well

And make your peace with Jesus

As they send you into Hell

“We are your ghosts, in this game played by monkeys, organised by lunatics”

The British Lost an Entire Generation During This One World War I Battle

Early in the morning of July 1, 1916, a mist blanketed the lolling hills of the Somme region of northwestern France. Larks flittered and sang in the air as the haze burned off to reveal a brilliant summer’s day. On the British side of the front lines, crimson poppies and yellow grass swayed in a slight breeze. Across the wire, however, the earth heaved and shook as artillery shells slammed into the German trenches. The barrage rose to a shrieking fury as British troops, gathered in their jumping-off trenches, pressed into the chalky earth awaiting the shrill whistles of their officers telling them to go over the top.

At 7:30, the devastating barrage lifted as British officers, eyes on their watches, blew their whistles and the men crawled up ladders, walking shoulder to shoulder into No Man’s Land. After a few yards, undamaged German machine guns opened up, catching the neat rows of slowly moving troops by surprise as they attempted to weave through the barbed wire emplacements, cutting them down in droves. “I am staring at a sunlit picture of Hell,” observed 2nd Lt. Siegfried Sassoon as he watched the attack unfold. Within a few hours 60,000 men had fallen, 20,000 never to rise again, in the worst single day of action in British military history. [To put this in some perspective, the Allies on D-Day 1944 attacked with 170,000 airborne and infantry, suffering 10,000 casualties, of which 4,000 were deaths; on America’s bloodiest battle day, the Battle of Antietam, 4,700 soldiers died.] 

The Great Plague

The Great Plague of 1665 killed 100,000 Londoners – one in three of the people living in the city. While kept diaries have provided terrifying testaments to the horrors of that summer, other stories have been hidden in the archives of London churches for centuries. Rare documents unearthed in some of the cities oldest places of worship now tell the story of what it was like for an ordinary person, more often than not living in poverty, as the plague swept through London. This factual drama follows the lives of those living in Cock and Key Alley, one of the dank and dismal yards squeezed between Fleet Street and the Thames – and brings to life 17th Century London at one of its most frightening moments.

Sophie Scholl: The Final Days (Full Film)

Sophie Scholl – The Final Days (German: Sophie Scholl – Die letzten Tage) is a 2005 German historical drama film directed by Marc Rothemund and written by Fred Breinersdorfer. It is about the last days in the life of Sophie Scholl, a 21-year-old member of the anti-Nazi non-violent student resistance group the White Rose, part of the German Resistance movement. She was found guilty of high treason by the People’s Court and executed the same day, 22 February 1943.

The film was presented at the 55th Berlin International Film Festival in February 2005 and won Silver Bear awards for Best Director and Best Actress (Julia Jentsch). It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Kingdom of Heaven (Directors Cut)

Kingdom of Heaven is a 2005 epic historical drama film directed and produced by Ridley Scott and written by William Monahan. It stars Orlando Bloom, Eva Green, Ghassan Massoud, Jeremy Irons, David Thewlis, Brendan Gleeson, Iain Glen, Marton Csokas, Liam Neeson, Edward Norton, Michael Sheen, Velibor Topic and Alexander Siddig.

The story is set during the Crusades of the 12th century. A French village blacksmith goes to the aid of the Kingdom of Jerusalem in its defence against the Ayyubid Muslim Sultan, Saladin, who is fighting to claim the city from the Christians; this leads to the Battle of Hattin. The screenplay is a heavily fictionalised portrayal of the life of Balian of Ibelin (ca. 1143–93).

Filming took place in Ouarzazate, Morocco, where Scott had previously filmed Gladiator and Black Hawk Down, and in Spain, at the Loarre Castle (Huesca), Segovia, Ávila, Palma del Río, and Seville's Casa de Pilatos and Alcázar. The film received mixed reviews upon theatrical release. On 23 December 2005, Scott released this director's cut, which received critical acclaim, with many reviewers calling it the definitive version of the film. 

Immortal Egypt: The Road To The Pyramids

The Road to the Pyramids. Immortal Egypt with Joann Fletcher. Episode 1 of 4. Joann Fletcher explains how ancient Egypt's story fits together. In the first episode, she goes in search of the building blocks of Egyptian civilisation.

The Battle for Brixton

April 1981: unprecedented violence erupts on south London streets, as thousands of local residents fight a pitched battle with the capital's police in a racially motivated conflict that would shock Thatcher's Britain to the core. Compelling first-hand accounts from rioters, looters, police officers and bystanders caught in the mêlée piece together 48 extraordinary hours that pushed tension in Brixton beyond bursting point. Director/Producer Helen Littleboy

The Wrong Empire

Simon Schama traces the steps of the empire-makers to tell the extraordinary story of how a small set of islands off the coast of Europe came to rule an empire that stretched around the globe.