The Age of Revolution

Historian Michael Wood continues his journey exploring the United Kingdom's remarkable past from the perspective of ordinary people. Michael tells the story of the British Civil Wars, seen from the perspective of the people right across the British Isles. In search of their experience he travels to Dublin to uncover the horrors of the Irish Rebellion, to County Down with the Ulster Scots, and to Cornwall where an amazing local project is mapping the battlefield finds of Parliament's greatest defeat. Uncovering little known stories in the arms manufacturing centres of the Black Country and Birmingham, Michael shows how the war split local communities. In Myddle, in Shropshire, a unique village account gives a vivid portrait of the young men who died in the war. In the aftermath with the monarchy overthrown and the king executed, revolutionary movements rise up, Levellers and Diggers, which Michael argues are the roots of our modern British democracy. The episode ends with the monarchy restored, and the British people united under one crown, on the verge of the Age of Industry.