Urban stories
Britain’s Most Historic Towns DVD (Spirit Entertainment, £19.99) In a show based on an elegantly simple idea, Dr Alice Roberts looks at the history of Britain by focusing on towns and cities that have become associated with different eras.
In the first of six episodes, Roberts heads for Chester, a Roman fort that became a major settlement and may even, according to some interpretations, have been intended to be a Roman capital. After this, Roberts shows us Viking York, Norman Winchester, Tudor Norwich, Regency Cheltenham and Victorian Belfast. Along the way, there’s plenty of dressing up for living history-style segments, but the engaging Roberts has a more serious purpose too. As a longtime advocate of the importance of archaeological work, she has said about the series: “I wanted to find the hard, material evidence for the period and the physical mark it left on the town.” In Chester, for instance, Roberts is clearly bowled over to see the city’s amphitheatre, the largest that the Romans built in Britain. Throughout the series, a recurring theme is the idea that we would hardly recognise many familiar settlements were it not for the changes they went through at key moments in their history.