A History of Scotland (2008)
Presented by Neil Oliver, A History of Scotland is a television series first broadcast in November 2008 on BBC One Scotland and later shown UK-wide on BBC Two during January 2009. The second series began on BBC One Scotland in early November 2009, with transmission at a later point on network BBC Two. Along with the series, BBC Scotland planned a range of radio programmes, a new website, an interactive game, and concerts. The Open University, in collaboration with the BBC, also created a series of audio walks around historic locations in Scotland, with narration from Oliver. In Australia, series one aired on SBS One Sundays at 7:30pm from 6 December 2009 to 3 January 2010. Series two commenced on 24 October 2010 running until 21 November in the same Sunday night Lost Worlds strand. It has since been repeated.
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Episode 1 - God's Chosen People
Release Date: 2009-11-08Neil Oliver continues his journey through Scotland's past with the story of the Covenanters, whose profound religious beliefs were declared in the National Covenant of 1638. This document licensed revolution, started the Civil War that cost King Charles I his head, cost tens of thousands of Scots their lives and led to Britain's first war on terror.
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Episode 2 - Let's Pretend
Release Date: 2009-11-15Bitterly divided by politics and religion for centuries, this is the infamous story of how Scotland and England came together in 1707 to form Great Britain. Over time the Union matured into one of the longest in European history, but it very nearly ended in divorce. Exploiting the Union's unpopularity, the exiled Stuarts staged several comebacks, selling themselves as a credible and liberal alternative to the Hanoverian regime. Neil Oliver reveals just how close they came to succeeding.
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Episode 3 - The Price of Progress
Release Date: 2009-11-22Through the winning and losing of an American empire and the impact of the Scottish Enlightenment, Neil Oliver reveals how in the second half of the 18th century Scotland was transformed from a poor northern backwater with a serious image problem into one of the richest nations on Earth. This was the dawn of the modern age when Scotland made its mark on the world by exporting its most valuable commodities - its people and ideas.
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Episode 4 - This Land Is Our Land
Release Date: 2009-11-29At the start of the 19th century, everything familiar was swept away. People fled from the countryside into the industrial towns of Scotland's central belt. Rural workers became factory workers - in some of the worst conditions in Europe. This new Scotland became a seedbed of revolution. But it wasn't just force that kept the Scottish people in their place, it was fantasy. Neil Oliver reveals how Sir Walter Scott created so powerful a myth, it haunts the Scots collective imagination to this day.
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Episode 5 - Project Scotland
Release Date: 2009-12-06As a partner in the British Empire, Scotland began the 20th century with an advanced economy and a world-beating heavy industry. But in the closing decades its sense of Britishness was in doubt and a Scottish Parliament sat in Edinburgh for the first time since 1707. Charting Scotland's darkest century, Neil Oliver discovers a country driven to self-determination through a series of economic crises so deep that her most striking export became her own disillusioned population.