1815 - 1837, Regency and Reform

The award-winning story of Britain, from the arrival of Julius Caesar in 55BC to the death of Queen Victoria in 1901, specially written for BBC Radio 4 by Christopher Lee, narrated by Anna Massey and featuring extracts from Sir Winston Churchill's History of the English Speaking Peoples read by Peter Jeffrey.From the end of the Napoleonic Wars to the beginning of Victoria's long reign, George III was still king as he had been since 1760; but now his madness meant that his son, the Prince of Wales, was acting as his Regent until he became king as George IV. George was the king who banned his own wife from attending his coronation, and was succeeded by his brother William IV who until then had been living happily with an actress in the country.A period of prosperity, wit and elegance, scandal, change and social ferment, it was the time when the Duke of Wellington became Prime Minister and Sir Robert Peel began the Metropolitan Police. Slavery was abolished in the British Empire and the Tolpuddle Martyrs achieved immortality as the new working classes began to make their political presence felt and the new middle classes set in motion the juggernaut of parliamentary reform towards today's government.