Season 3

1970 · 37 episodes

Episodes

1The Duke And Duchess Of WindsorIn this Tuesday Documentary the Duke and Duchess speak of their life together - glimpse into the private world of the man who was King Edward VIII for a few short months. The Duke on the Establishment, his father, golf, blood sports, and his great-niece. The Duchess on children and their parents, careers for women, loneliness, and the Duke's bad habits.
2War Under The SeaThe story of the submarine, with contributions from some of the world's submariners. The experiments of early inventors and the hardship of life in their boats - when the white mice died of petrol fumes and foul air it was time to come up; the revolutionary effect of the submarine on the war at sea' underhand, unfair, and damned un-English the experience of long, hazardous wartime patrols by men engaged in the most dangerous form of sea service. The faith and devotion both of the inventors of submarines and of the submariner has turned a frail midget into the capital ship of the present age - ingenious, expensive, unimaginably destructive. Written by CORRELLI BARNETT Narrator JOHN STOCKBRIDGE Produced by HARRY HASTINGS
3A Woman's PlaceWhat's a lifetime worth if marriage is the only experience you've had within it? There is that biological difference but whether you make that the lynch pin of your argument - that because they can be pregnant and breast feed, women must therefore be only mothers and wives - depends on what you want in your society.
4The VaticanSpiritual headquarters for 700-million Roman Catholics. Home of the Pope and his civil service. Storehouse of some of the greatest treasures in the world. The Vatican has never been the subject of so much interest or controversy as it is today, yet it remains a mysterious place. This film looks at the Vatican from the inside. For the first time, film cameras have been allowed to penetrate behind the splendid facade to show what the Vatican is really like-from the magnificent throne rooms in the Papal Palace to the tiny overcrowded offices. It looks at the place, and the men who work in it-from the humblest young priest to the Pope himself. Has this unique institution a role to play in the twentieth century?
5Nurse, NurseYou have almost certainly been in hospital at least once, if only to be born. The chances are that one of the nurses at your bedside was a young trainee. For every three qualified hospital nurses there are two in training, and without them hospitals would close down. In tonight's documentary we look at some of these teenage girls and examine some of their future problems and patients. For years it has been thought of as a vocation. But it is just an ordinary job. It is a very difficult job, it's a job that very few people understand unless you are actually there in the middle of it - doing it ... Tonight, at a time when nurses are fighting their way into the headlines, they get a chance to explain what this ' ordinary job involves.
6The Quiet InvasionThere are some 15 million Chinese in South-East Asia. They can play an extremely useful role as catalysts in the process of modernising our economies. Lee Kuan Yew, Prime Minister of Singapore A lot of people talk about the Chinese as the Jews of South-East Asia, it isn't fair to the Jews, it isn't fair to the Chinese. P.G. Lim, Barrister Racial integration is not a problem exclusive to the Western world. Tonight's documentary, specially filmed in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines, looks at this problem through Eastern eyes. The Chinese emigrant communities, formed by the breakup of the old Chinese empire, provide a nucleus of people with the drive, energy and business acumen to drag South-East Asia into the 20th century. But the price of their economic and political success has been the envy, fear and often hatred of the peoples among whom the emigrant Chinese now choose to live.
7The Philpott FileThe File on A Pension of Sunshine A film from the series with Trevor Philpott The number of British people going abroad to retire is doubling every year. The Englishman's dream of a pleasant old age is no longer one of roses around a cottage door in Devon. It is more likely to be geraniums around a Mediterranean balcony. He wants a little place where the taxes are low, the living is easy, and the sun is always shining. A vast industry has grown up to make his dream come true, an industry which has grown fat selling plots of sunshine all the way from Greece to the Caribbean. And every year when retirement day arrives, thousands of ordinary British people sell up their homes in Britain and head for the sun to live in a foreign land amongst foreigners. They are looking for a warmer, brighter, happier life. Do they find it? What is the price they have to pay?
8The Court Of Last ResortWidoiv loses pension rights - a healthy man dies in his prison cell - war heroes fight for German compensation - Government buys farmer's land for £40 per acre, sells for over £400 - taxpayer defended against tax inspector. Magnus Magnusson presents these cases and puts questions about his job to Sir Edmund Compton Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration Almost three years ago-on 1 April 1967-the British Ombudsman began work. Has the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration (as he is officially known) measured up to the expectations of ordinary people who want their complaints taken to him, of mps to whom he is responsible, or of the experts who campaigned for the appointment?
9A Year Ago Tonight…On 17 March last year, the Longhope lifeboat was called out. Next day, the lifeboat was found capsized. Her eight crewmen were dead. All these men came from a tiny hamlet called Brims in the Orkney Islands, a place so small that it was left with only a couple of able-bodied men. Overnight, Brims became a village of women and children. The men went to sea in the lifeboat as volunteers - not for money, not for glory, but because they simply had to go: it was what Brims had always done for mariners in distress on one of the worst stretches of water in the world - the Pentland Firth, off the northernmost cliffs of Scotland. The women and the children still live within the remorseless sound of the Firth. Tonight's film is the story of a community living by this ferocious sea - and how they survive under the tragedy that has bled them of their menfolk.
10The Man Between Germany And The WorldThe extraordinary life and times of Paul Schmidt , Hitler's interpreter for ten dramatic years. A remarkable linguist, Dr Paul Schmidt was present at all the Fuhrer's meetings with foreign statesmen, from Lloyd George to Molotov. In the 10 years before Hitler came to power, he was the senior interpreter at the German Foreign Office and was a member of the German delegation received into the League of Nations in 1926. He thus witnessed at close hand the rise and fall of a great nation, from the hopes of Geneva to the final degradation of the Nuremberg war crimes trials. In tonight's documentary Dr Paul Schmidt talks to Donald McLachlan , former editor of the Sunday Telegraph and a foreign correspondent in Germany in the 1930s.
11AfrikanerA film by HUGH BURNETT who looks at the strange white tribe that rules South Africa. The British invented apartheid. The Afrikaner legalised it. The British were the first to set up concentration camps. Boers were the inmates. For a hundred years the British tried to ban the Afrikaans language. Contemptuous of the rough peasant pioneers, the British defeated them, then handed South Africa over to them. Next week South Africa goes to the polls. The Nationalist Government, regarded by many as the greatest racialist regime, is accused by its own right wing of leftism and compromise. Tonight's documentary, Hugh Burnett 's fourth film about South Africa, looks at the society of the Afrikaner - the country that provides the ostrich feathers for the Folies Bergeand an ideological scapegoat for the world.
12Australia The Last Of LandsTwo hundred years ago Captain Cook sailed his ship Endeavour into Botany Bay, and claimed the great continent of Australia for the white man. In this special bicentenary programme Michael Charlton returns to his native country to report on Australia now, after two centuries of white settlement. Today, over twelve million people are proud to call themselves Australians. What have they made of that huge opportunity that history and the superior seamanship of Captain Cook presented them with? They call her a young country, but they lie; She is the last of lands, the emptiest (A. D. HOPE)
13The Jesuits - The Hated SocietyGive us a child when he's 7 and he will be ours for the rest of his mortal life. True or false? But it is certain that the Jesuits are the most misunderstood, the most militant order of the Roman Catholic Church and the most formidable company of men in the last 400 Years of world history. Reporter Macdonald Hastings This special BBC film has been made with unprecedented cooperation from the Jesuits themselves and is presented at a time when the Vatican is battling with a major crisis of confidence. Macdonald Hastings , himself taught by the Jesuits and now an agnostic, looks behind the walls of a Society whose power was so great that they influenced every court in Europe - not only in a religious sense, but in the impact they made on politics, exploration, astronomy and sociology. The Jesuits played a huge part in shaping the modern world. Not certain any more that they can find the recruits to fight for the old faith, the question now is whether they have a future.
14Shetland: Britain's Farthest NorthIn the vast expanse of sea between Scotland and Norway lie ' the islands of Shetland, a 70-mile-long tangle of rock and cliff which provides home and livelihood for 17,000 British citizens. Yet though politically British, these people are first and foremost Shetlanders, who have never forgotten that Shetland once belonged to the Norsemen of Scandinavia until it was pawned to the Kingdom of Scotland as part of a thoroughly dubious marriage settlement 501 years ago. This is the story of one midwinter month in the life of these unique islands- January 1970; a month which began with snow, continued with storm and ended in a strange almost miraculous calm; a month which culminated in the great Viking fire-festival of Up-Helly-Aa, when 700 torchmen marched through the streets of Lerwick and the dragon-galley Ormrinn Langi perished heroically in a gigantic funeral pyre.
15Son Of Iron HorseThe Great Train Revival For years the world's railways steadily declined. Now trains are facing their biggest revolution since the discovery of steam and the age of the Iron Horse. The prospect - a railway revival in the 70s that may change our habits, even affect the / place we live in. In Japan, there's a 130 mph train, going as fast as an airliner when it lands. It covers the equivalent distance between London and Edinburgh in just over three hours. British Rail plan to introduce a 150 mph train soon. Speed pays. In Japan, Passengers have trebled in five years. When the super-train comes to Britain, cities like London, Manchester and Bristol will come within commuting distance of each other.
16Gale Is DeadGale was beautiful, intelligent and - according to everyone who knew her-had much to offer; everything to live for. Recently, aged 19 and a drug addict, she was found dead in the basement of a derelict house in Chelsea.Harold Williamson and a Man Alive team first met her when making a programme about people who had been brought up in children's homes. What was apparent, even then, was her total loss of hope, her disbelief in any future. Now, the people who were in her life and who cared for her in and out of various institutions ask: need she have died?
17Europe - A Continent Fit To Live InEven today Europe has some weird and wonderful wildlife, some remote and unknown wildernesses. In this varied continent, stretching from Iceland to Turkey, from Portugal to Russia, flamingoes, porcupines, pelicans, bison, and polar bears still survive. But for how long? Threah to their existence can affect us all, for we share the same environment. This programme, filmed in 14 countries, follows the migration of the shy and elegant crane across a fast-changing Europe.
18India The Bewildered GiantThe political climate of India today takes one 200 years back to the country that existed before the British came. It is as though, in the 23 years since Independence, the decades of British rule have been forgotten. India seems to have reverted to the old concept of small states, the people owing loyalty to their states rather than to the country. Can this huge country with its 550 million people remain the stronghold of democracy in Asia/ Tonight's film is an impression ot India as it now strikes Dom Moraes , the Indian-born poet and author. Dom Moraes left India 16 years ago and returned last year to see his own country through western eyes.
19Lord GoodmanA profile of the Adviser Extraordinary He's a huge man - 6ft 2ins and 20 stone - hugely talented and with an enormous sphere of influence. The newspapers once dubbed him ' Mr X,' puzzled by a man of such immense authority with so little notoriety. But in the past five years he has entered the Lords, taken up the chairmanships of the Arts Council, British Lion Films, and the Observer Trust, become a member of a government board to streamline industry, and been baptised under strike fire as the new chairman of the Newspaper Publishers Association. But long before accepting public office he was advising influential men and politicians of all parties, arbitrating in union disputes, paving the way for government negotiations -and acting privately for Harold Wilson , whose solicitor he is. Lord Goodman is shy of television and public appearances, so tonight's programme is a rare occasion in which he has agreed to discuss, with DESMOND WILCOX , his many roles and the ideas that motivate him.
20The Sugar DiseaseIn Britain one person in every hundred is a diabetic and knows it. A further one in a hundred is a diabetic and doesn'know it - yet. Diabetes appears to run in families yet two thirds of all diabetics report no previous family history. Although it's one of the oldest diseases known to man its cause remains a mystery. Until 1921 diabetes was a painful killer - often within a few weeks in children, usually within two years in adults. Then, nearly 50 years ago, two young Canadian scientists, Frederick Banting and Charles Best , made one of the most dramatic discoveries in the whole history of medicine. They isolated a substance called Insulin which today keeps some ten million diabetics alive. In the programme Dr Charles Best , now aged 70, describes that dramatic discovery.
21The Retail GameA film by don HAWORTH The multiples and chain stores have been growing since the beginning of the century. In the past 15 years they have grown very fast. Today more than a third of all the money spent by shoppers in Britain goes to the multiples. This film tells the story of their growth and the way they play the retail game. It shows in detail what goes on behind the scenes of two well-known organisations which have become household words. Many of the multiples have been created by strong individualists, men of character who have built their empires their own way. Now the personalities of the retail game are being superseded by the calculators and the computers but their methods are usually still those of the street market - buy cheap, sell cheap, put everything you've got on display and the turnover will pay for the pilfering. It's a thought that has made quite a few millionaires.
22Be Fruitful And Multiply"Be Fruitful and Multiply" was a BBC Tuesday Documentary broadcast on Tuesday, July 28, 1970 at 9:10 PM. The program explored the global population explosion and growing environmental concerns surrounding rapid human growth and resource consumption.
23Soldiers Of PityA film from the Philpott File series with TREVOR PHILPOTT The Salvation Army was born to save the souls of the inhabitants of the Victorian East End - and it was literally more like warfare than religion. General Booth's ' soldiers ' suffered humiliation, injury, even death. They saw the devil in poverty, drunkenness and disease - and they fought him with bands playing and banners flying. The bands are still playing, the banners still flying. But what devil are they fighting now, in the days of council housing and bingo, national health and package holidays? How much has the Salvation War changed - and how much is it still the same?
24The Devil Takes The YoungestA film from the Philpott File series with TREVOR PHILPOTT The second of two Files on the Salvation Army. Their bonnets and their brass bands may have a Victorian quality - but most of the men and women who become serving officers sign the ' Articles of War' in the heat of their youth. They renounce for a lifetime all career ambition and all hope of wealth, and they will ' fight,' for a pittance, on whatever grimy battlefield their commanders choose to send them. They know well enough the traps the devil sets, and they know he sets the most tempting ones for the young. And much of their most difficult work is done amongst suburban wives, runaway provincial girls and the bewildered young men to whom a steady job seems like a form of death.
25Beloved WildernessThe Scottish Highlands are Britain's great land of contrasts: huge sporting estates and small unworkable crofts; islands littered with deserted ruined cottages and others thriving on a successful fishing fleet; a tourist trade that has grown as relentlessly as the population has fallen. CHRISTOPHER BRASHER goes to the Highlands to meet their ' overlord,' Professor Sir Robert Grieve , Chairman of The Highlands and Islands Development Board, who has tried to give better opportunities to people who want to make a living in their difficult homeland. Professor Grieve grew up in Glasgow and learned as a boy to enjoy the Highlands as a huge playground - just as outsiders do. Now he is due to go back to Glasgow-back to university at the end of his five-year term. He looks at the Highlands and their people and their problems with a unique knowledge and insight and with vast affection.
26Test PilotThe test pilot is one of the 20th-century's hero-figures. The mere name conjures up images of nerveless courage, death-defying heroism, ' the dashing gallant lad,' as one of them put it. But is he really like that? Or is he a much more skilled and calculating man? In this programme - presented in the week of the Farnborough Air Show - you can fly with the pilots, live with them, see how they are trained, and find out whether the myth remotely matches reality. The BBC got willing help from the pilots. This was just as well since in some cockpits three is more than a crowd; remotely operated cameras mounted on various parts of the aircraft were also used to give some picture angles which have not been seen before. Among the pilots appearing are such veterans as JEFFREY QUILL, who test flew the Spitfire a few days after its first flight in 1936, and JOHN CUNNINGHAM, still flying from Hatfield, where he pioneered the Comet.
27The Ealing ComediesThe story of a handful of young men who wrote a chapter of cinema history. In just 10 years, from post-war austerity, they produced a series of film comedies which were so original and funny that the name of their quiet, residential London borough became world famous. In their own peculiar way they put Ealing on the map.
28The Jolly CopperFor many, the British policeman is still the ' friendly bobby.' His image is envied by his counterparts abroad. But the policeman has little to be jolly about today. Police are harder-pressed than at any time since their creation a century and a half ago. Of the 1.500,000 indictable offences committed in Britain last year, more than half were never cleared up. We demand more of our police but complain when they seem too efficient. The policeman's world grows harsher. Can he hope to outlive these changes?
29Beyond The Wall: The Other GermansIgnorant of democracy but hungry for the West they cannot visit, the 17 million East Germans are a force that could decide the fate of Russia's European Empire. For most of the past decade they have been isolated by the Berlin Wall and a fortified border over 600 miles long. Cold War attitudes have been slowest to melt in East Germany but this summer for the first time the German Democratic Republic opened its borders for three weeks to let in a BBC film crew. Tonight we see the first full-length report by a British television team on the life of the other Germans 'Beyond the Wall'.
30Pollution Is A Matter Of ChoicePollution is increasing all over the North American continent. Nature is being killed off ... rivers and lakes despoiled ... coastal water contaminated with oil and waste. Industry and jet-aircraft are fouling the air in ever increasing proportions. More cars, refrigerators, air-conditioners, television sets, transistor radios are being purchased. To meet the demand industry grows ever bigger, creating more jobs, but more pollution. Easy, fast travel is demanded. The result is more airports near populated areas, and more giant jets pouring their noise and filth into the air of America. What can be done to hold back the pollution and its effect on the quality of life? What are the choices Americans must make if they want to save their country? This award-winning programme from New York tries to answer those questions.
31Everest 1924: The Mystery Of Mallory And IrvineA new BBC film, including material which has never been televised before, about the ill-fated expedition to Everest in 1924. On 8 June of that year, two climbers, George Mallory and Andrew Irvine , disappeared during the final assault on the world's highest mountain. Their names have gone down in history. What happened to them? Did they reach the summit? How did they die?
32A Walk In The Sun - The Flying WallendasKarl Wallenda is probably the world's most famous high-wire walker. It was his daring in developing the seven-man-high pyramid that put the name Wallenda on the pinnacle of circus fame. When his terrifying act collapsed from 40 feet killing two members and crippling a third young man for life it seemed that the Wallenda dreams were over, but his leadership broke through all family objections to restore the performance one year later. In July of this year Karl Wallenda , at the age of 65, once again challenged death - this time on his own. He attempted a walk over a 700-ft gorge, a thousand feet wide in North Georgia, with no possible means of saving himself should he slip. Tonight's film is the story of Karl Wallenda and a fantastic day of show business in the hot sun.
33Lloyd's Of LondonA film by Anthony de Lotbiniere For the first time television viewers can see behind the scenes of one of the most extraordinary market places in the world - The Risk Market at Lloyd's. In one very large room in the heart of the City of London some 300 underwriters sell £3-milllion worth of insurance cover every working day. There's nothing they won'insure-from a wine taster's palate to a hijack policy -and there's no disaster in the world, be it the failure of the potato crop in Manchuria or an earthquake in Peru, that doesn't affect the remarkable men who operate this unique market.
34A Man Called Willy BrandtWilly Brandt , Chancellor of West Germany talks to Lord Chalfont about his life and times. He was born Herbert Frahm in Liibeck in 1913. He worked in the anti-Nazi underground under the assumed name by which he has been known ever since. By the age of 19 he was a man on the run. He spent 12 years in exile in Scandinavia. He became world-famous as governing Mayor of West Berlin at the height of the Cold War. Now he is the first Socialist Chancellor of the West German Federal Republic and indisputably one of the greatest Europeans alive today.
35The Strange Case Of Rudolf HessRudolf Hess landed by parachute in wartime Scotland on Saturday night, 10 May 1941. He was then Deputy Fuehrer of Nazi Germany at the height of its power; today he is the last-Nazi leader left in prison at Spandau, West Berlin. The questions posed by his mysterious flight and his subsequent behaviour remain unanswered, locked in Hess's mind. His curious actions were attributed to mental unsoundness. But was he really unsound? Or were his symptoms and loss of memory merely a sustained and successful hoax-as he himself afterwards maintained?
36Japanese GeorgeA Cockney in Japan GEORGE WHYMAN, ex-East End, ex-British soldier, ex-apprentice piano maker, went to Japan as a judo pilgrim 15 years ago. Then he was a third Dan. He wrestled with the language, the Judo masters, and poverty - living on £11 a month. Now he is a fourth Dan, still a bachelor with three girl friends, a catamaran, and manager of a Tokyo advertising agency ' For the first five years to build up business contacts, I played mah jong nearly every night....' Tonight we follow the boy from Hackney and some of his Japanese clients in Tokyo -the world's most aggressively competitive business country where wealth comes second to health and happiness is another sale.
37The Truth About HoudiniHARRY HOUDINI , the greatest escapologist of all time: the man nothing could hold. He escaped from handcuffs, straitjackets, sealed packing - cases, riveted steel boilers, thief-proof safes, milk churns filled with water, maximum security jails and even the sewn-up belly of a dead whale; but always the vacated prison was found to be still locked and intact! His exploits made this once penniless son of a Hungarian Rabbi a millionaire, and his name has entered the language and the dictionaries of the world. He became a legend, occult powers were attributed to him and Hollywood's film version of his life simply added to the confusion between truth and myth. Tonight, with four Americans who have spent their lives studying the escapologist, we present the real-life, extraordinary Harry Houdini , 1874-1926.