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Michael Wood's Story of England

Michael Wood's Story of England is a six-part BBC documentary series hosted by Michael Wood, telling the story of one place, the Leicestershire village of Kibworth, throughout the whole of English history. The Leicestershire village of Kibworth is a place that lived through the Black Death, the Civil War and the Industrial Revolution and was even bombed in World War Two. The series focuses on tracing history through ordinary people in an ordinary English town, with current residents of Kibworth sharing what they know of their ancestors and participating in tracing their history.

Episode 1 Episode 2 Episode 3 Episode 4

Episode 5 Episode 6

Episode 1 - Romans to Normans
Michael uncovers the lost history of the first thousand years of the Leicestershire village of Kibworth, featuring a Roman villa, Anglo-Saxons and Vikings and graphic evidence of life on the eve of the Norman Conquest.

Episode 2 - Domesday to Magna Carta
Wood's unique portrait moves on to 1066 when the Normans build a castle in Kibworth. He reveals how occupation affected the villagers from the gallows to the alehouse, and shows the medieval open fields in action in the only place where they still survive today.

Episode 3 - The Great Famine and the Black Death
Wood's fascinating tale reaches the catastrophic 14th century. Kibworth goes through the worst famine in European history, and then, as revealed in the astonishing village archive in Merton College Oxford, two thirds of the people die in the Black Death.

Episode 4 - Peasant's Revolt to Tudors
Wood's gripping tale moves on to dramatic battles of conscience in the time of the Hundred Years' War. Amazing finds in the school archive help trace peasant education back to the 14th century.

Episode 5 - Henry VIII to the Industrial Revolution
The tale reaches the dramatic events of Henry VIII's Reformation and the battles of the English Civil War. We track Kibworth's 17th century dissenters, travel on the Grand Union Canal and meet an 18th century feminist writer from Kibworth who was a pioneer of children's books.

Episode 6 - Victora to the Present Day
Helped by today's villagers, Michael Wood uncovers the secret history of a Victorian village more colourful than even Dickens could have imagined.