Cragside House was built by the industrialist Lord Armstrong. How and why was it created, and what does it tell us about Victorian life and taste?
Dr Irene Ridge, Open University, visits the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. She explains the principles underlying the structures of seedlings, shoots, herbaceous plants, trees and leaves. This programme considers how these structural principles are deployed in water and desert plants to cope with their very different environment.
Everything you wanted to know about the English language - from A for accent to Z for zero. A - Accent B - BBC English C - Code Switching D - Dialect
The Roman games are regarded as bloodthirsty, cruel and voyeuristic. To the Romans, however, there were not so much entertainment as part of the judicial system. Five classicists discuss how we have arrived at our image of the games and what the games really meant to the Romans.
Victoria Terminus Train Station Gothic Revival Architecture Bombay India British power & wealth cultures architecture decoration. Built as a symbol of British power, Bombay's Victoria Terminus Station shows just what happens when East meets West. Also includes footage of the Midland Grand Hotel at St Pancras Station and Salisbury Cathedral, comparing details on these two buildings with each other and the Victoria Terminus Station. Discusses how the architecture had to be modified to suit the Indian climate, how the Hindu masons traditional methods influenced the VT Station decorative carvings despite the tightly controlled Western methods they were trained to adhere to for the project. Covers Hindu and Islamic architecture in India and their contribution to the design of the VT and other buildings constructed in Bombay during British rule.
A programme for the first level course A103, which explores two central aspects of the Colosseum in Rome, namely: what the remains of the massive amphitheatre can tell us about the way in which it was built, and the significance of the activities that went on in it on the life of ancient Rome and the wider Roman Empire.
For many years our place in the universe was the subject of theologians and philosophers, not scientists, but in 1960 one man changed all that. Dr Frank Drake was one of the leading lights in the new science of radio astronomy when he did something that was not only revolutionary, but could have cost him his career. Working at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Greenback in Virginia, he pointed one of their new 25-metre radio telescopes at a star called Tau Ceti twelve light years from earth, hoping for signs of extra-terrestrial intelligence. Although project Ozma resulted in silence, it did result in one of the most seminal equations in the history of science - the Drake Equation - which examined seven key elements necessary for ET intelligence to exist, from the formation of stars to the likely length a given intelligent civilisation may survive. When Frank and his colleagues entered the figures, the equation suggested there were a staggering 50,000 civilisations capable of communicating across the galaxy. However, in the 50 years of listening that has followed, not one single bleep has been heard from ET. So were Drake and his followers wrong and is there no life form out there capable of communicating? Drake's own calculations suggest that we would have to scan the entire radio spectrum of ten million stars to be sure of contact. The answers to those questions suggest that, far from being a one off, life may not only be common in the universe but once started will lead inevitably towards intelligent life. To find out about the equation's influence, Dallas Campbell goes on a worldwide journey to meet the scientists who have dedicated their lives to focusing on its different aspects.
