Art That Made Us

This episode immerses us in the turbulent era that followed the Roman occupation of Britain. Once known as the ‘dark' ages, in reality it's a time of glittering art and extraordinary cultural fusions.

This alternative history of the British Isles, told through art, brings together encounters between contemporary artists and ancient art, and interviews with experts and curators, to trace how Celtic, Anglo-Saxon and Norse peoples fought for supremacy, leaving behind mysterious fragments of art that still haunt our landscapes and imagination.

Sculptor Antony Gormley meets Spong Man, a unique clay figure that once sat on a 5th-century funerary urn, a mysterious glimpse into the mindset of early Anglo-Saxon settlers. Meanwhile, actor Michael Sheen performs the 7th-century Welsh poem of resistance against the Anglo-Saxons, Y Gododdin, and Scottish artists Dalziel & Scullion wonder at the monumental Aberlemno Stones (c.500-800 AD), believed to mark the hard-fought boundary line of the Pictish kingdom.

Like the stones, the gold artefacts of the Staffordshire Hoard fuse pagan and Christian imagery, and at Stoke's Potteries Museum artist Cornelia Parker investigates why they were found so broken and twisted. Spreading alongside such Christian symbols was a powerful new language, English, used to gloss over the Latin in the elaborate Lindisfarne Gospels explored by the Rev Richard Coles. Maria Dahvana Headley analyses how English was used in the epic poem Beowulf, and tells us how she has updated the work with a hip-hop feminist translation.

The Anglo-Saxon Mappa Mundi reveals a new sense of the Isles' place in the wider world, and is examined by map artist David McCandless and British Library curator Claire Breay. Graphic novelist Woodrow Phoenix explores how the Anglo-Saxon age came to a dramatic end in 1066 by taking a fresh look at the embroidered propaganda of the Norman Conquest in the Bayeux Tapestry.

From the chaos of the Black Death comes creative renewal; survivors finding their voice through satire and a revived literature in English, including breakthrough works by women, and through new craft in cathedral building and stained glass.

The works explored include Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, William Langland's angry satire The Vision Of Piers Plowman, and breakthrough works by women like the pilgrim Margery Kempe.

Poet Laureate Simon Armitage reflects on the poem of loss, Pearl, as a window into the medieval mind; artist Sarah Maple shines a light on the subversive Lincoln Cathedral misericords carved in the wake of plague and writer Maria Fusco explores how the profound faith of female mystic Julian of Norwich is unshaken by illness.

The episode also looks at how tensions rose over taxes on the plague's survivors with the Peasants' Revolt, triggering a counter-reaction from Richard II. Royal photographer Chris Levine dissects the first portrait of a living English king and artist Marc Quinn explores the beautiful but enigmatic Wilton Diptych. This was also a moment of new imagination and new opportunities in cathedral building and music, as people increasingly sought fortunes and patrons in towns and cities. Sarah Brown of the York Glaziers Trust shows the recently restored Great East Window at York Minster and Rory McCleery and the Marian Consort perform John Dunstaple's Veni Sancte Spiritus.

In the 16th century, the British Isles experienced a religious revolution, as the kingdoms of England and then Scotland turned Protestant. Artists and experts today reveal how, during the reign of Elizabeth I, Protestants and Catholics used art, language and new technology to wage a battle for power in the Isles, creating surprising and often radical works. 

Author Stephanie Merritt reassesses John Foxe's grisly Book of Martyrs as a work of history and nationalist propaganda, with passages performed by actress Morfydd Clark, and we meet the indefatigable William Morgan, who undertook the ten-year task of translating and publishing the Bible in Welsh in 1588. 

We discover how England's emblem was the queen herself, with textiles artist James Merry exploring the mysterious Bacton Altar Cloth, now believed to be a fragment of one of Elizabeth's power dresses seen in one of her many portraits. Elizabeth's court swirls with religious intrigue, and the Ora Singers perform the daring, subversive Mass for Four Voices, a Catholic work created by William Byrd, a composer of the Royal Chapel and favourite of Elizabeth. 

The Queen also had a dangerous rival in Mary Queen of Scots. Jewellery designer Shaun Leane examines how Mary promoted her brand through jewels and fine Scottish gold work, while artist Alice Kettle assesses Mary's embroideries and the coded messages in them that would contribute to her downfall. As Elizabeth expands exploration and empire in the 1590s, theatre, an explosive entertainment for the people, fed off the stories of distant lands coming back to the Isles. Artist Phoebe Boswell analyses Shakespeare's attitude to race in his play Othello, supported by performances from actor Martins Imhangbe. 
 

Architect Amanda Levete climbs the Tulip Stairs in the Queen's House, Greenwich, and reassesses Inigo Jones' elegant and innovative design, while portrait artist Tai Shan Schierenberg encounters Van Dyck's monumental portrait of the Earl of Pembroke's family and finds signs of the dysfunction and tensions which point to the civil war to come. This was a war that would be waged across three kingdoms and artist Rita Duffy explores some of the poisonous propaganda it created in Wenceslas Hollar's Teares of Ireland woodcuts, while photographer Platon examines the Puritan aesthetic through Samuel Cooper's ‘warts and all' miniature of Oliver Cromwell. 

The battle between royalist and parliamentary forces brought bloodshed but ultimately the rise of a more questioning culture. Actor Anton Lesser performs excerpts of John Milton's daring Paradise Lost which laments the fall of the Republic through the figure of a charismatic Satan rebelling against God, the king. 

The Restoration of the monarchy saw a new creative flourishing in works by playwright Aphra Behn and the intricate baroque carvings of Grinling Gibbons. But it is the in the rise of a more scientific mindset that creativity would find greatest expression: artist Angela Palmer marvels at the artistry of Robert Hooke's Micrographia and sculptor Thomas Heatherwick reveals the brilliant architectural deceptions in Christopher Wren's dome of St Paul's.

Consumers and Conscience traces the story of Britain in the 18th century, which saw an explosion of creativity and a country with enough money, from trade and conquest, to pay for it. But the money had a dark side: sculptor Thomas J Price visits Harewood House to see the elaborate Robert Adam-designed interiors, Joshua Reynolds portraits and Thomas Chippendale furniture that the slave trade paid for. 

This was also the great age of mockery and artist Lubaina Himid reflects on William Hogarth's scabrous exposure of upper-class hypocrisies, while comedian Stewart Lee analyses the cutting humour of A Modest Proposal, Jonathan Swift's bitter satire about the treatment of the Irish poor, with passages performed by actor Jason Isaacs. 

An age of exploitation was stirring up a growing social conscience. Emma Bridgewater examines how potter Josiah Wedgwood fought a campaign against slavery with teapots and porcelain abolition medallions while Martin Rowson analyses his hero James Gillray's invention of the biting political cartoon, poking fun of all sides. The Georgian era was also a great age of writing, from Olaudah Equiano's searing account of enslavement to Jane Austen's genius in novels. Sculptor Douglas Gordon explores what Robert Burns, his distinctive dialect and poems of ordinary life still means to Scots today. 
 

Rise of the Cities charts the decisive shift of power from countryside to the city during the 19th century. With the industrial revolution transforming the British Isles, a divide opened up between city and country, forcing artists to respond to the upheaval to lives and the landscape. Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson reflects on the inspiration of JMW Turner, arguably the first environmental artist, and we encounter Penry Williams' attempt to capture the beauty of industry with paintings like Cyfarthfa Ironworks Interior at Night. 

Some artists attempt to capture the poverty and squalor caused by the rapid urbanisation around them. Actress Maxine Peake reads from Elizabeth Gaskell's campaigning novel North and South while architect Fiona Sinclair assesses Alexander ‘Greek' Thomson's architecture for the people of Glasgow and artist Jeremy Deller explores William Morris' drive to bring nature back into Victorian homes through his hand-crafted wallpaper designs. 

As art becomes appropriated by commerce in the late 19th century, some artists fight back with new individuality and flair. Writer and drag performer Amrou Al-Kadhi explores the meaning and inspiration of Oscar Wilde's writing and artist Shani Rhys James reflects on the quiet anger that simmers underneath Walter Sickert's Camden Town Nudes, an unflinching vision of the grimy realities of working class lives at the turn of the 20th century. 
 

Wars and Peace explores art at war during the first half of the 20th century, War with the old imperial order, war with convention and with the very idea of what it means to be human. This is a story of artists grappling with the destruction, fighting back and transforming the culture of the Isles. Actress Michelle Fairley performs WB Yeats' poem, Easter 1916, with its resonant phrase ‘a terrible beauty is born', marking a turning of the tide against the British empire. Contemporary war photographer Oliver Chanarin traces the story of William Orpen's subversive protest image, To the Unknown British Soldier in France, picturing a lone draped coffin amid the magnificence of the Palace of Versailles where peace delegates met in 1919. 

Some artists rejected war with their bohemian lifestyles or their utopian visions of a better future for the people. Artist Lachlan Goudie explores the great interwar ship-building project, the Queen Mary ocean liner, and the coming together in it of Glaswegian engineering and art deco luxury. 

As refugees flee Germany in the 1930s ahead of a new war, comedian Eddie Izzard appreciates the radical modernist vision of the De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill, designed by a German and Russian Jewish émigrés, and photographer Hannah Starkey reflects on the outsider's point of view photographer Bill Brandt brought to his images of 1930s poverty, including the seminal Coal-Searcher Going Home to Jarrow. 

With the Second World War bringing new horrors, artists grappled with Nazi atrocities. Film director Andrew MacDonald explores the controversy sparked by The Life & Death of Colonel Blimp, a highly original take on the British war effort written and produced by his grandfather Emeric Pressburger. Artist Ryan Gander examines how sculptor Barbara Hepworth tried to make sense of war by reaching for beauty in abstract human forms and Denzil Forrester looks ahead to the post-colonial aftermath of war, signalled by Indian artist FN Souza's suffering black Christ in his 1959 painting, Crucifixion.

Brilliant Isles, the final episode of the series, explores how the generation of artists who recorded the shocks of global war gave way in the 1950s and 1960s to an explosion of new voices from across the British Isles, reinventing the arts and creating a richer, more diverse culture. Young artists rebelled against the old establishment, kicking against the confines of class, sex, nation and race. Actress Lesley Sharp performs passages from Shelagh Delaney's breakthrough play A Taste of Honey which brought the ordinary lives and unheard voices of working class women to a mainstream audience, while Chila Kumari Singh Burman explores the career of pop artist Pauline Boty. 

As British pop culture seduced the world, other voices lamented for something they felt was being lost. Writer and comedian David Baddiel reflects on Philip Larkin's elegy for the countryside, Going, Going, and addresses the controversy today about Larkin's attitude to immigration and race. Film director Amma Asante meets photographer Charlie Phillips, a photographic pioneer recording the fast changing community of 1960s Notting Hill and we look at the impact of Hanif Kureishi's novel about second generation immigrant life: The Buddha of Suburbia. 

The most striking art of the 1990s chipped away at easy stereotyping and monolithic identities. In Scotland, Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting, rooted in raw Scots dialect and a brutal depiction of Edinburgh life, spoke for a world proudly distinct from its English neighbour while the murals on and around the Belfast Peace Lines became loud spaces for declaration of distinct political allegiance. With digital technology and installation art changing British culture, artist Liv Wynter explores the impact of Tracey Emin's work and how it opened up attitudes to class and gender, while actor Michael Sheen remembers his ambitious 2011 production The Passion of Port Talbot, a fusion of traditional mystery play and a 21st century social media event that could weld a community together. And poet Deanna Rodger reflects on how Stormzy and grime took Glastonbury by storm in 2019, and what it might mean for British identity and inclusion.