Voices of the Powerless, Volume Two

In this second part of his fascinating journey through British history, Melvyn Bragg selects six more key moments from the last millennium and travels through this country and beyond, speaking to historians and experts about the life of the ordinary citizen in each period.Beginning in urban Lancashire, where he examines how the warp and weft of the Industrial Revolution fashioned men's and women's lives, he moves on to the historic dockyard of Chatham to explore the life of a seaman in Nelson's navy. Still on the high seas, he voyages to Tasmania to find out what a sentence of transportation to Van Diemen's Land really meant to those who survived the journey 'beyond the seas'. He stops off in Mull to investigate the Highland Clearances and travels to East Yorkshire to tell the story of the Wolds Wagoners, a regiment of British tommies sent 'over the top' in World War one. Finally he visits Merthyr Tydfil to look at the plight of the miners in the Depression.These programmes were first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 from 24 July to 28 August 2003.