This programme contains some strong language
Today, Britain stands at a fork in its crossroads.
And its people are asking questions.
Now we've got our country back, what actually is it?
Who are we? And why?
The best way to find out where Britain's heading is to
look behind us into something called "history",
a sort of rear view mirror for time.
So that's where I'm going.
Back there.
It's a journey that'll take me the length
and width of the country, from the White Cliffs of Dover
to the Scottish high lands of the Scottish Highlands.
From old stone circles to modern stone circles.
From the tranquil beauty of Roman Bath to the
Golden Wonder of Oxford Services.
I'll discover how we went from Ancient Man to Ed Sheer-an,
why Elizabeth I happened,
and solving the mystery of just who Winston Churchill was,
and why he wound up helplessly trapped inside this banknote.
Along the way, I'll be shouting at helicopters
and looking at some of the biggest faces in British history,
and asking other people's faces about them.
Why did they call John Major the Prince of Onions?
Ummmmmm...
And also walking somewhere impressive with my mouth shut
while my voice speaks anyway, like I'm talking aloud in my own head.
All of it taking place in this sceptered isle we call home.
So join me, Philomena Cunk, as I take you right up
the history of the United Britain of Great Kingdom.
This...is Cunk on Britain.
It's hard to imagine while you're standing in it,
but there was a time before Britain. Before Europe.
Before the world, even before the universe.
Nobody can say when it was, because it was also before clocks.
And words. It was a time when nothing existed.
Empty. Without motion, or energy, or light, or hope.
Just like Plymouth today.
Just imagine something like this orange.
And then imagine it's not there.
Then do that one by one, with everything that exists
until there's nothing at all.
That's what Britain was like until the Big Bang.
The Big Bang created the universe in one mad explosion that was
probably deafening, although, luckily, ears didn't exist yet.
Computers think it looked like this, although eyes also didn't
exist back then either so we can't be sure, and it was
so long ago now it's probably best not to keep dredging it up.
Britain was already part of Earth but it was scrunched in along
with loads of other countries in a gigantic land mass called Pangea.
At this time, Pangea was full of Dinosaur, a race of Godzilla
monsters so scary, normal human beings didn't dare exist
until they'd all gone.
Dinosaurs came in many flavours, just like Kettle Chips.
As this actual footage shows, the main ones were the Across ones
who ate grass, and the Up-and-Down ones who ate the Across ones.
This Tyrannical Sawdust Rex is the only real dinosaur left in the
world, which is probably why it's so angry, spending literally every
waking moment of its life roaring helplessly at passing tourists.
People wonder why the dinosaurs became extinct,
although it's hardly surprising they died out
when you see the barbaric conditions they're kept in, in zoos such as
this one, underfed, starving, some of them little more than skeletons.
Luckily, the dinosaurs were soon replaced by different animals.
Animals like me. Man.
But men like me didn't just appear, fully-clothed, on the Earth.
Instead, we had to evolve. Evolution is complicated,
so we've massively slowed it down here so you can see it happening.
And this wasn't the only change that was happening,
Pangea was changing too.
Over time, all the countries decided to split away one by one to
work on solo projects.
And Britain was no exception.
Stones Age man used stones to make basic weapons and tools,
like these hand axes.
As well as boring, these are also shit by today's standards, but
back then they were cutting edge, because they had a cutting edge.
The Stones Age was all rocks, wasn't it?
Are stones made of rock or are rocks made of stone?
Both. A stone is a rock.
Generally a rock... And a rock is a stone.
Yeah, yeah, generally rocks are, uh, more edgy,
more ragged varieties of stone.
The Stone Age lasted a very long time.
In fact, our species spent more time in the Stone Age than any other.
Let's think of it this way, if you look at the human history,
pre-history, as a year and so New Year's Day is where humans
start to use fire, and shape stone tools and this year is the
last split second before midnight at the other end of the year, then
we're in the old Stone Age until about 3pm on the 31st of December.
So rocks are more jaggedy.
You could tell stone age stuff was precious
because they kept everything deep underground.
Why did Stone Age people bury all their stuff underground?
Were they worried someone might steal it?
No, that's how we find it.
It wasn't always underground.
It was on the top.
The reason we find it as archaeologists is that we go
out and we dig it up. Oh.
But not all Stones Age things have to be dug up.
Some are still visible.
Which means you can see them.
This is Stonehenge.
Early man's finest achievement.
To Stones Age Britons, this was a cross between Nemesis
at Alton Towers, in that it was a spectacular attraction,
and the queue for Nemesis at Alton Towers
in that it never fucking moves.
Stonehenge was used to tell the time,
which means Stonehenge is the only clock you can see from space.
Unless you have a clock in your spaceship.
Eventually, primitive cave-boffins discovered new materials.
Early man dropped rocks like a stone,
and got into metal, bronze, and then iron.
Iron Man was born.
But this Iron Man didn't have superpowers like the Iron Man
in films. He couldn't fly or tolerate Gwyneth Paltrow,
so instead he had to go to lengthy measures to defend himself.
Luckily, cave-boffins had also invented the iron spike.
And shortly after inventing the spike,
they invented stabbing each other.
To make sure they stabbed the right people,
Britons formed into primitive gangs, called tribes.
And like many gangs, they got into graffiti,
vandalising the countryside with gigantic doodles
like this badly drawn horse, or this decorative pervert.
Before Snapchat, hills were the most efficient way to distribute
dick pics to a wide audience.
As a result, this site at Cerne Abbas became the second
crudest hill in British history, after Benny.
There's disagreement about how old the Cerne Abbas giant
actually is, especially since he's still young enough to get wood.
What's not in doubt is that he represents
the birth of British art, being the biggest example of a noble
visual tradition that's echoed down the ages.
But this happy land of spikes and hill filth
was about to come under threat from something nobody saw coming.
Romans.
Where did the Romans come from?
To begin with, they came from Rome,
and then they came from the Roman Empire.
Right, but where in Britain did they come from?
Not from Britain, they came from Rome, which is in Italy.
Right, well, this is about the history of Britain, so....
Where in Britain did they come from?
Well, the Romans came from Rome and they headed northwards
and conquered most of Europe. And then they crossed
the English Channel and they conquered about half of Britain.
And where did they go once they were in Britain?
Well, they tried to get to Scotland
but they decided it wasn't worth the effort of going there.
Yeah, I've felt that.
The Romans were so advanced they came with Latin pre-installed.
And they soon taught the primitive locals how to wash
and walk on their hind legs.
The Romans were fearsome in battle but soon found themselves
facing resistance from some British locals known as Celts.
There was heavy fighting, although, according to experts,
it wouldn't have quite looked like this.
Celts famously would... The warriors would strip naked,
paint themselves in designs, and go into battle naked.
They believed that by painting
themselves in designs that they were calling out to their gods,
up in the sky, for protection and for courage and for help.
Did the Romans have chain mail then?
They had, um, armour of a sort.
They had armour and they were naked? Yeah. Who won?
Well... The Romans? The Romans won in the end.
I knew it.
I bet when the Celts turned up naked and saw what the Romans had on,
I bet they were kicking themselves. I bet they felt stupid.
Bet they were like, "Who suggested this?"
Having defeated the Celts,
the Romans set about revolutionising British life.
They built Hard Ian's wall, and put the capital of Britain
in Colchester, were nobody would want to come and get it.
They introduced coins, and invented these primitive 8-bit computer
game graphics, but couldn't make them move.
What the Romans really loved, was bathing, which is
why they built this in the English town of Bathe.
No-one in Britain had seen anything as sophisticated as these baths.
You could think of it as an early example of gentrification,
like when someone opens an artisan bakery in Hull.
Imagine an ancient Briton walking into this place.
He'd scarcely be able to comprehend what he was seeing.
It'd be like Steve McFadden climbing on board Concorde.
Perhaps most impressive of all, the Romans invented roads.
Before roads was invented, you had to travel around by standing
at the edge of your village, and seeing how far you could jump.
Despite all this, some people resisted the Roman invasion.
Queen Boudicca came from Norfolk, like so many rebels.
Myleene Klass.
Ed Balls.
Delia Smith.
Boudicca hated the Romans.
She led a barbarian army in revolt, and attacked Colchester,
turning it from the bustling capital into a smouldering hellhole
full of weeping and despair, which you can still visit today.
Rome was the most advanced warfare machine on the planet.
But Boudicca's army fought back with the weapon they knew best.
Spikes.
And lost, because it's just spikes.
Once Boudicca was crushed, the Romans ruled over
Britain for years, until suddenly they had to rush home because they
remembered they'd left a complete collapse of civilisation on.
Britain was left on its own.
It had taken back control from the unelected bureaucrats of Rome
and was free at last to explore its own proud destiny.
And it did that by immediately entering the Dark Ages.
We don't know a huge amount about what actually happened
during the Dark Ages because the Romans had taken
the last pens with them.
That's probably why it became a time of myth.
And great heroes, like King Arthur.
King Arthur came a lot, didn't he?
I, I think you mean that he's associated
with the court of Camelot. No, it definitely says....
"King Arthur came a lot."
Camelot. Camelot? Yeah, it's it's his court.
Where he, where he held court.
It's, it's a place. Oh, right.
But do we know if he came a lot?
Or, like, just the same as an average man?
Like about a tablespoon.
The only evidence I have in that regard is that he is said to
have had one child. Right.
So probably not. Probably not.
Even though he didn't exist,
King Arthur lived in a castle called Camelot,
where he founded the Round Table,
even though he didn't do that either.
The Round Table was a sort of lazy Susan,
which meant the knights could get at the snacks
they wanted without having to move around in their armour.
But perhaps the greatest British icon to emerge
during the Dark Ages was mega patriot
and dragon slayer St George.
We don't know where or when George slayed the dragon,
but we know it definitely happened
because a bystander took this painting of the event.
And it probably happened somewhere in Wales.
It's one of the few concrete facts to come out of the Dark Ages.
Do we know for certain the dragon was threatening St George
or do we just jump to conclusions
because the of the way the dragon looked?
Um, well, eh, the story of St George killing the dragon
isn't actually true because there are no dragons.
After he killed the dragon, how was he rewarded?
I mean, what's better than a saint?
Well, he didn't kill the dragon, cos dragons don't exist.
It's made up.
But is it true to say he was the greatest Englishman who ever lived?
The thing about St George is that he wasn't actually English.
His father came from the middle of what's now Turkey,
and his mother came from Palestine.
And he never actually came to England.
Oh, you're joking!
But although St George never bothered, lots of other
foreigners did set foot in Britain, as it got invaded again and again.
First by the Angles and the Saxons
and then by the notoriously brutal Vikings, who arrived from
Denmark in long boats, wearing metal helmets which they'd somehow managed
to pull over the terrifying skull horns that jutted from their heads.
British King Alfred of Great fought the Vikings by giving up,
and letting them settle in York,
probably because it had the Jorvik Viking Centre.
Soon, interbreeding meant the Vikings lost their distinctive
horns and became indistinguishable from normal humans.
For a few hundred years, Britain was relatively peaceful,
until one day when a new king, Harold, was getting coronated.
And Halley's Comet, a sort of very short firework display,
appeared in the sky.
The comet has always heralded great events.
It last appeared in our skies in 1986,
the same year the sitcom Brush Strokes started.
# Because of you, these things I do
# Because of you, because of you. #
In King Harold's day, the comet was also a sign
of terrible things to come.
The year was 1066.
1066 and the Battle of Hastings are probably British history's
two most famous events, so it's handy they happened the same year.
Harold had a rival.
In the first example of an EU national coming over here
to take British jobs,
a Frenchman called William set sail to seize the throne,
and become King.
It's amazing to think that only a thousand years ago, this field
was interesting, because it was here
that Harold and William's armies met.
There have been many battles in Britain's history,
but we don't know what happened in most of them.
The Battle of Hastings is different.
We've got an accurate visual record of the whole thing thanks to
a quick-thinking bystander, who took a tapestry of it.
Despite looking like a Game of Thrones season finale
drawn by an eight-year-old boy,
the Baywatch Tapestry captures the full force of the battle.
It's just like being there, but in wool.
Here's the Norman archers steaming in on their blue horses.
Here's a sort of stick fight bit.
Some chopped up people down here.
His head's off, he'll be furious about that.
Some goose monsters in the sky looking down.
A sort of lion thing up here eating its own tail.
Is that its bumhole? I think that's its bumhole.
As you can see, Harold won
when he triumphantly caught an arrow in his eye.
Sadly, it wasn't enough, and he died soon after.
No-one knows why.
This meant that the Normans were victorious.
At last, William the Conqueror's name made sense.
William winning was like Brexit backwards.
Britain was suddenly part of Europe.
And that meant everything had to change.
There were new castles, new cathedrals,
even the Tower of London, and amazingly all built by one man,
Norman Architecture.
The new king wanted a list of everybody in the country,
where they lived, and what stuff they had.
It became known as the Domesday Book
and was very much the internet of its day.
So is this the actual Domesday Book?
This is the actual Domesday Book, yes.
And it's usually under glass, isn't it, this book?
Well, usually it's not accessible at all.
So, it's very rarely on display so this is really quite a special
occasion, that we've got it out, for you to be able to see it today.
So you're not allowed to touch it.
No. I thought that was because of the curse.
The curse? Yeah. I heard that there was a curse on it.
I've definitely not heard that so I, I don't think there's a curse.
I thought it was going to be like, you know, Raiders of the Lost Ark?
Mm-hm. Where that Nazi gets his face melted off.
Yeah, yeah. I thought it was going to be like that.
I'm afraid not. Oh.
So how does the Domesday Book compare to a book like
The Runaway by Martina Cole?
Well, I've not read The Runaway by Martina Cole, but I think...
It's really good. OK...
I think that's a work of fiction so it's a made-up story,
whereas Domesday is recording the land and land holding
in England before the Norman conquest
and after the Norman conquest.
It kind of lists who holds land, and what's within that land
and how much it's worth.
And it does that in a lot of detail.
So Roger holds a land here called,
it's just called Mildehope.
It's probably going to have a different name now.
So how can we free the people living in this book?
Well, they don't live in the book.
But their souls are inside the book.
I don't think that's necessarily true.
I think this records information about them.
But it's not... they're not in there.
It's just, you know, it's just a record about them.
It doesn't sort of contain their being, or anything like that.
We don't need to worry about them.
Are you sure? I'm sure.
The book gives us a unique insight into what life would have
been like in the Middle Ages.
In the middle-evil times, if you were lucky enough to be
a King or a knight or a lady with a pointy hat with all nets on it,
you might have lived somewhere like this.
A castle.
Castles were originally built by kings to protect their land
and to sit in - whereas, today, they're mainly used
as extortionate wedding venues.
Of course, not everyone was a king.
Everyone else was peasants.
Peasants lived in thatched wooden huts full of chicken shit.
The water was filthy, so everyone drank beer,
and the only thing to eat was bread.
It was a particularly challenging time for the gluten-intolerant.
But, luckily, nobody was yet middle class, so they just put up with it.
But life for the common man was about to get better
thanks to the Magna Carta, a sort of terms
and conditions notice King John had to sign against his will,
which limited his powers and gave citizens basic rights.
The Magna Carta kick-started the whole of British political history,
a history so complex even experts can no longer keep track of it.
What's the most political thing that's ever happened in Britain?
Erm...
I'm not sure. I mean, I think...
Gosh, that's...
that's, that's a a tricky question in the sense that
there are definitely degrees of....
Oh, gosh.
What's the most political...? So, I, I...
There are lots of things that are straightforwardly political
and then there are other things that are not.
That are sort of halfway, I guess, but, erm, I can't...
I genuinely can't identify the most political.
Second-most?
Meanwhile, back in history, by the Middle Ages, middle-evil
England was such a big deal, it was even happening in Scotland.
The Scots have always been a proud, confident nation,
ready to complain if they think they've not been given their own
little section in a landmark history programme.
But in 1296,
Scotland was reluctantly under the rule of English Edward I.
One man wanted out, Walliam Willis.
No-one knew what Walliam Willis looked like until 1995
when Hollywood scientists discovered he looked exactly like Mel Gibson
who was, coincidentally, playing a Scottish Apache in a film called
Braveheart, a sort of Scottish reboot of Dancing With Wolves.
That they may take our lives, but they'll never take our freedom!
Sensitively informing modern audiences about a story little-known
outside Scotland, the film emotively and expertly
depicted Walliam as he gathered a band of noble warriors
and defeated the English army at Stirling Bridge,
using facepaint and extreme whittling.
To this day, the words "Stirling Bridge"
conjure pride in every Scotman's heart.
While to an Englishman,
those same words conjure up literally no feelings at all.
But his glory days weren't to last and Willis and his men
were defeated by the English at Falkirk.
With Willis gone, a posh Scotsman called Roberty Bruce
thrashed the English at the Battle of Bannockburn, and took the throne.
Scotland would never again be under English control, for a bit.
Willis meanwhile was eventually captured by the English
and taken to London, where he was publicly hung, drawn and quartered.
This means he was hung by his neck, then while he was still alive,
his guts were chopped out, and his body cut into four quarters.
Something you can ask your local butcher to do to a chicken.
Once it'd stopped screaming, Willis's severed head
was placed atop a pike on London Bridge,
like a sort of gory Scottish Pez.
Willis' execution kicked off a golden age of public entertainment.
As well as watching people die painfully, popular past-times
included bear baiting, shin-kicking and cockfighting,
which isn't what it sounds like, even though I checked twice.
But British culture wasn't just being cruel to animals.
It was also bum jokes.
And the William Shakespeare of bum jokes was Geoffrey Chaucer.
His greatest work was The Canterbury Tales,
which everyone has pretended to have a read at least some of.
His stories feature lots of bawdy shenanigans, a literary phrase
which means knockers popping out, or things unexpectedly
going up your arse accompanied by a sort of swannee whistle noise.
Chaucer's meant to be quite rude, isn't he?
Could you describe a rude bit for me?
So, there's a very famous scene where, um, there's a woman,
a very pretty woman called Alison, who everyone fancies.
And she is in her bedroom with one lover,
and then another would-be lover arrives at the window
to serenade her and begs her for a kiss.
And she sticks her arse out of the window, her naked arse,
and he kisses that very enthusiastically
and then suddenly realises what he's done.
And he's quite upset and runs away.
Right, that's not very rude, is it?
Like, my mate, Paul, told me this joke
about this bloke in prison, who wore a bib round his backside.
And that story went places I wasn't prepared for.
Like, not even funny, just disturbing.
And when I looked up, Paul was crying.
But it wasn't all chuckles in the Middle Ages.
In 1348, Britain was invaded again.
But this time by a plague.
Not a metaphorical plague like a metaphorical plague.
But an actual plague, made of plague.
The Black Death symptoms were disgusting.
Discoloured buboes grew in the groin and armpits,
making even a light workout next to impossible.
If you had sex with someone who had the Black Death, would you
have to use a condom for protection?
It depends what your major concerns were.
Um. But you wouldn't be protecting yourself against infection.
How long would you get off work if you got the Black Death?
Um, in about 70% of cases you'd be off work forever.
Oh, right. Result.
Because you'd be dead. Oh.
Roughly half the population died, which statistically meant that
if you wanted to save your loved ones, you'd have to die yourself.
The Middle Ages started like fancy dress party
and ended like Halloween.
But once it had got its strength back,
and grown some more people,
England descended into 30 glorious years of violent conflict
between rival royal houses - the War of the Roses,
which sounds like a sitcom about florists, but,
perhaps surprisingly, wasn't.
This was an incredibly complex period of history,
which is frustrating because we've got to get it out of the way in this
episode, and we spent too long talking about Mel Gibson earlier.
The War of the Roses is a complicated struggle,
but could you sum it up for my viewers in,
like, three words?
Uh, conspiracy, dynasty, war.
Could you do it a bit more thoroughly than that?
I'll give you ten seconds.
Start.
Uh, it's a struggle to control England and the crown.
You've got a few more seconds.
Between warring and...
Stop.
Perhaps the most violent event of the War of the Roses
was the Battle of Bosworth,
which Richard III tried to escape by burrowing under a car park.
He hid down here for centuries before finally emerging in 2013,
by which point the war was over, and he'd died of tarmac inhalation.
Richard III may have died,
but he gave birth to a series of celebrity kings and queens.
The Tudors, very much the Kardashians of British history.
But that's a story that'll have to wait for now.
Join me next time when I go back in time again.
Not in an exciting way like in a film,
I'm probably just looking at some old pots, or something.
How can we be sure Henry of Eight is who we think he was?
What if he was someone else just pretending to be himself,
who happened to look like whoever he actually was? Uh, well...
Subtitles by Red Bee Media