Michael Wood's Story of England
Once again we only had time for one programme for TV night - and we decided to start on the recent Michael Wood series that we'd recorded most of. The series follows the history of one village, Kibsworth, throughout the history of England. We'd not managed to record the first episode (which I gather seems to've primarily covered the Romans & the Anglo-Saxons), so we started with the second episode. The time period covered was the Norman Conquest through to Magna Carta - which is approximately the same timespan as the history book I'm currently reading, so it dovetailed nicely with that :) I'd been a little concerned when it became clear there was a lot of "local participation" but actually it was rather well done. It started off by showing us where there might've been a Norman castle in the village, which was the one bit I wasn't entirely sure about - they didn't find any evidence, but said it might've been there anyway and moved swiftly on ;) I particularly liked the bit about the Gar Tree - and that there was still a tree in the right place within living memory, a customary meeting place that had survived for a thousand years or so. This seems an interesting series, shame we missed the first one but I guess I'll buy the book at some point (I have a stack a mile-high to read first tho) and then I can find out what was covered in that one.