Season 5

1972 · 25 episodes

Episodes

1Lee Kuan Yew Of SingaporeThe Prime Minister of Singapore talks to Lord Chalfont about his life and times. He was born in colonial Singapore in 1923, to a family that came from northern China over a century ago. He saw Singapore fall in 1942 and was there under the Japanese occupation. He took a brilliant degree at Cambridge. He became a successful lawyer and founded his own People's Action Party in 1954. He became the first Prime Minister of Singapore in 1959 when only 35. He is now a senior Commonwealth Prime Minister and undoubtedly one of the most attractive and controversial statesmen in world politics today.
2A Place Of Your OwnThe increase in house prices during the past year has been the greatest on record, and in the South East of England the scramble for property has, in the words of one building society, reached the proportion of ' almost panic buying.' This is the stuff to make the headlines. But it's only the latest turn in the hitherto silent revolution by which home ownership has spread in 50 years from one family in ten to more than half the population. The building societies, which have made it happen, are unique institutions. The embodiment of capitalist respectability, yet they make no profit and take pride in their origins in the building clubs formed by resolute and radical working men last century.
3Whatever Happened To Rolls-Royce?John Pearson investigates the story of a lame duck that flies. Just over a year ago Britain and the rest of the world woke up to find Rolls-Royce had gone bust. Newspapers said it was the greatest blow to national prestige since the sinking of Hood in 1941. What did happen to Rolls-Royce? Why did it happen? Who was responsible? What is happening now? What future is there for the national institution that went bankrupt? JOHN pEARSON-biographer of such other national institutions as Ian Fleming and the Kray Twins-pieces together the jigsaw puzzle of the Rolls-Royce story.
4Undersea Strike!In Holland the discovery of an immense reservoir of natural gas has started what could be an economic and industrial revolution. Farther north, the Norwegians have found themselves being called 'The Libyans of Europe' because off-shore oil drilling seems certain to provide , them with four times their domestic needs. Tonight's film takes the viewer into a world where investment runs into thousands of millions of pounds and, at the same time, shows what it's like for the rough-necks and roustabouts, the divers and helicopter pilots who are taking part in one of the world's great treasure hunts.
5A Month Of Sundays - Portrait of a Durham Mining VillageShotton Colliery is one of the few remaining pit villages in South West Durham. After 150 years of production the seams are running out. A Month of Sundays was filmed in Shotton during the miners' strike in February, and shows a community under the twin stresses of the strike and the imminent closure of the pit. Each day is a Sunday - a time for rest and relaxation; but now particularly a time for the miners and their families to reflect on the way of life carved out by a century and a half of mining and on their hopes and fears for the future. A mining village-a community whose hearthrob is the colliery. People who live and think and have their being because of the colliery.
6Sob SistersFour advice columnists talk to Dr Stephen Black 'Advice columns are all written by cynical middle-aged male journalists who make up the letters between trips to the pub ...', or so runs the popular mythology. The reality is not quite so cosy. Every year in Britain more than half a million troubled people seem to find that they have no one else to turn to. They all get an answer, and the tiny percentage of letters that appear in print give only the palest indication of the avalanche of sexual ignorance, personal anxiety, guilt and loneliness that the columnists are, every day, called upon to cope with. Who then, are these people who have to find all the answers - what is the reality behind those reassuring bylines?
7Lawrence In ChinaFor 16 years-years when China was largely forbidden territory to Westerners - Anthony Lawrence was forced to watch the People's Republic solely from the outside. Now Lawrence, the BBC's chief China-watcher and doyen of all Far Eastern correspondents, has at last got into the country he has studied for so long. Major operations performed with only acupuncture for anaesthetic; exchanging compliments in Mandarin over tea with Chinese peasants; a school where the children learn to pour steel; a dam being built by human hands alone: all these are part of this personal account of the people behind the People's Republic - an account that Anthony Lawrence 's long study of China makes unique in television.
8Pointing The Way (1959-1961)In this programme HAROLD MACMILLAN recalls some of the outstanding events of the period: the Summit breakdown after the disastrous U-2 incident; Prime Minister Khrushchev's famous shoe-banging interruption at the United Nations; his first meeting with President Kennedy; how he came to make the 'Winds of Change' speech in South Africa; the weekend President de Gaulle spent with him at his Sussex home; and why he decided that Britain must apply for membership of the Common Market.
9The War We're In Danger Of WinningFor a week now politicians from more than a hundred nations will gather in Stockholm for the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment. The Conference's intention is to get action where before there has been only talk. Ecologist Gordon Conway gives his personal view of the significance of this by looking at the situation of six people in Britain - a farmer in Lincolnshire; a fisherman at Whitby; an executive at ICI, Billingham; a line worker at Fords, Dagenham; a housewife in Swansea; and an unemployed man on Tyneside.
10Treasures Of TutankhamunTutankhamun has become one of the talking points of 1972-almost as though the young Pharaoh himself had been in residence at the British Museum. The treasures buried with him at the end of .his short life have been on display there for almost three months and still the visitors pour in to see them. Now that this marvellous exhibition has reached the half-way point, viewers are invited into the British Museum to look again at some of the ' wonderful things ' found by Howard Carter in the Valley of the Kings, 50 years ago. Introduced by Magnus Magnusson with Dr I. E. S. Edwards , Keeper of Egyptian Antiquities What lingered in the mind was the glitter of the gold necklaces, the intense blue of the lapis lazuli, and the vulnerable face of the young Egyptian?
11The Question Of Ulster: The People TalkingOn St Patrick's Day this year The Question of Ulster - The People Talking was broadcast on BBC1. In a London studio a large group of ordinary men and women from that murderously divided country talked, quietly and sincerely, about the problems of daily life - and some hopeful signs for the future. After the broadcast there were many demands for another programme, to continue the same theme - and to follow up some of the points raised. So tonight, Catholics and Protestants: housewives, schoolchildren, students, teachers, doctors, nurses, businessmen, shopkeepers, trade unionists and employers come together again. Not just the voices of those who live in the beleaguered areas, but also voices not often heard.
12Farouk - Last Of The PharaohsA film by PETER BATTY to mark the 20th anniversary of the Egyptian Revolution. The signs were auspicious when the handsome 16-year-old Prince ascended the throne of Egypt in 1936, but within a very few years Farouk had grown fat and depraved, clashed with his patrons, the British, and angered his protectors, the Egyptian army. Tonight's film traces the rise and fall of the ill-starred playboy monarch through the eyes of people who knew him well.
13The ClansThe Truth Behind the Tartan Whether you live in Surbiton or Scrabster, there is a sporting chance that you have a Granny called MacLeod or Macpherson or Mac-' Something '. Do you care? An American tycoon came to Scotland - to find to his delight that he was a long-lost Clan Chieftain. Another Clan Chieftain is a West Indian living in Jamaica. So what price the Clan system in Scotland today? Is it a sentimental memory of Jacobite days -or a tartan-tinted tourist trap? Magnus Magnusson meets the people who keep the Clan idea alive.
14The Best Kept SecretNext year sees the start of a complete reorganisation at local government. Some counties will disappear and boundaries will change. But who cares? Apart from the dustman and rate demands, local government to most people is a closed book. Yet a small army of part-time amateurs is responsible for spending over £6,000-million on determining the quality of our lives from cradle to grave. What exactly do they do for our money? And how do they set about doing it? To provide some answers to these questions tonight's documentary concentrates on just one county - Cheshire. Not because Cheshire is typical but perhaps it's more representative than most.
15A Question Of Inflation: The People TalkingInflation is a word we read every day. Politicians and commentators talk endlessly about it, but what do ordinary people think? As prices go up and wages go up, the pound seems to be worth less. Desmond Wilcox asks ordinary people in Birmingham what inflation means to them. Young couples say they can'afford homes of their own; pensioners say they can'afford the weekly shopping bill. One car-worker claims he is worse off today than he was 20 years ago. Is there an answer? Does it lie with the politicians or the people?
16Dieppe 1942The Combined Operations raid on Dieppe 30 years ago was a tactical defeat that sowed the seeds of victory. Tonight's programme tells the story of one of the most controversial operations of the Second World War: with Admiral of the Fleet Earl Mountbatten of Burma KG, GCB, OM, DSO, then Chief of Combined Operations Lord Lovat, DSO, MC leader of the only successful part of the raid The late Vice-Admiral John Hughes-Hallett, DSO Naval Force Commander Col C. C. Merritt, vc (Dieppe) South Saskatchewan Regt Col P. Porteous, vc (Dieppe) No 4 Commando and Officers and men of Canadian Regiments, the Royal Navy, the Royal Marine Commandos and German officers who give their impressions, supported by archival film.
17The BlockA moving film about people who live below the poverty line and their struggle to keep afloat. In the London Borough of Southwark the tenants of Chaucer House, a decrepit half-way house for homeless families, reach breaking point. Angry that once more Southwark had failed to deliver on their promise to tear down the flat block and provide adequate alternative accommodation they stage a demonstration and wait for the officials next move. At the heart of their demonstration is a plea for better housing, better treatment, more understanding and above all a better future. This highly acclaimed documentary examines the way the officials deal, not only with the tenants of Chaucer, but with those living on or below the poverty line - people subjected daily to interrogation, investigation - those who seem to have been rejected by society. Following the release of the documentary, Chaucer House was demolished a year later.
18A Right To A ChildHas every couple an unconditional right to have a child? Advances in human genetics make it possible to predict the odds of certain couples producing genetically handicapped children. Combined with artificial insemination from a donor, and egg transfer from one woman to another, these genetic discoveries pose a whole series of ethical, social and legal issues. In this programme a MEDICAL DOCTOR discusses these issues with: A HARLEY STREET SPECIALIST in artificial insemination A CHILD SPECIALIST in Genetic Defects BERNARD WILLIAMS , a Cambridge Professor of Philosophy CANON CARPENTER, Archdeacon of Westminster Abbey FR GERARD HUGHES , a Jesuit priest MRS MARGARET puxon , a barrister and DR ANNE MCLAREN , who pioneered egg transfer in animals
19To The Promised LandFrom Russia to Israel At five o'clock every morning, the Chopin Express crosses the border into Austria - the last two coaches filled with Jews from Russia who have been allowed to emigrate to Israel. For more than a year this unprecedented exodus has been taking place. In 1972 it is expected that more than 30,000 Soviet Jews will be granted exit visas. This documentary follows the journey by train and air from the Czechoslovakian border to the arrival in Israel. The immigrants have had to leave almost all their possessions in Russia. How do they learn to live, not with the dream of a Promised Land but with the reality of modern Israel?
20Cancer: Meeting The ChallengeProfessor Sir David Smithers introduces on the curability of cancer. The most dramatic example of the increasing success of the new treatments is in children. In leukaemia, the most tragic of all cancers, can we now begin to talk about cures?
21Skipper Pitts Goes To WarThe story of what actually happened during the opening days of the Cod War, filmed at sea aboard trawlers and warships. On 1 September Iceland laid claim to the seas within 50 miles of her coast. Charlie Pitts from Hull - aged 42, at sea since he was 16, a skipper for 14 years - was one of seventy and more British trawler skippers who defied the Icelanders and kept on fishing despite being buzzed by aircraft and harassed by gunboats. At one stage his crew fought off a gunboat with fire-hoses. British tempers boiled over when the Icelanders cut away their nets. The skippers charged a gunboat and set off to attack the Icelandic trawler. All to the strains of Rule, Britannia! blaring from loud-hailers.
22Our Own CorrespondentBBC Foreign Correspondents report to us continuously from all corners of the world. What is it like to be a BBC man living abroad - a British observer among foreigners? How does he get to grips with a strange country and come to understand its people? This documentary - Richard Caw ston's first since Royal Family - centres on the Far East, the United States and Europe. Through the eyes of just a few of the BBC's 19 Foreign Corres. pondents, we see how Britain's place in the world is changing and what other people think of us.
23Looking InA personal look by Robert Vas at 30 years' output of BBC Television, compiled from material in the BBC archives and with the opinions of British TV viewers. More than 100,000 hours of television have been transmitted by the BBC since 1936. In its archives, among 270,000 cans of film and 24,000 boxes of video-tape, the makers of television history sit side by side, from Richard Dimbleby to Muffin the Mule, from the News in Ulster to the Eurovision Song Contest. What is its impact on our lives and what role does it play in our society? What does it give and what does it take? Tonight's programme is a thoughtful, affectionate and sometimes irreverent browse along the archive shelves.
24The Price Of ViolenceEvery wound and every death that has resulted from the fighting has caused a suffering that is universal. In Northern Ireland today, violence affects everybody. '... It's a tremendous price to pay for nothing - because there's nothing been done ... I can see a terrible lot of things going on here in Ireland and they're just not getting through. For three years people have been shot, maimed, blown up - everything. It's just taken as an everyday occurrence ... ' (Belfast bomb victim who lost both legs.) Harold Williamson talks to the losers in Northern Ireland -the widows, the children, the injured, the frightened, the dispossessed; the soldiers; people of different religions, different politics, but spokesmen for neither; and the ordinary people who are paying the price of violence.
25How To Win The Nobel PrizeThe Nobel Prize has been won by some of the century's most distinguished but controversial figures: Sir Alexander Fleming didn't really discover that penicillin could cure; Alexander Sol Zhenitsyn can't leave Russia to receive his prize. Every year, a handful of the world's greatest scientists, writers, and peace-makers receive about £42,000 and a gold medal. But for each man on the platform in Stockholm last week, there are dozens who could have won the most prestigious prize on earth. But they never will, for reasons dictated by the paradoxical Will of Alfred Nobel , and the punctilious caution of the men who judge the winners. So in case you wonder why the telegraph boy never calls, this film draws up a list of eight rules.