Face of Britain by Simon Schama

Simon Schama looks at portraits of the famous and investigates what the celebrated faces of Britain's past and present tell us about our national character. From images of our first national hero - the pirate Francis Drake - to iconic photographs of Princess Diana, he explores the popular craving for larger than life characters to populate our national story. Simon studies the fine line between fame and celebrity, visiting the country house of Stowe to see our first national portrait gallery of greats, and explores how actor David Garrick used his image to become our first genuine star of the stage. He shows how saucy depictions of 18th century pin-up Kitty Fisher made her a public sensation and George Romney's obsessive depictions of Emma Hart turned her into the most recognized woman in Britain, helping her win the heart of national hero Horatio Nelson. Schama explains how fears that industrial Britain was losing its soul inspired the formation of the National Portrait Gallery and how the invention of cigarette cards put portraits of the famous into the palms of our hands. He looks at how the seductive photographs of Cecil Beaton fed our desire to stare into the lives of the rich and famous, while the tragic fate of Princess Diana leads him to consider the dark side of our collective addiction to famous faces.

Simon Schama explores how love portraits allow us to fulfil our craving to keep the ones we love close to us. By fixing their faces in time, we can defy separation, distance, time, even death. Beginning with the extraordinary story of Sir Kenelm Digby's attempts to bring his beloved wife Venetia back to life through a series of breathtaking portraits, the film explores the images at the centre of some of our most compelling love stories - the portrait miniatures that were instrumental in the love affair between the Prince of Wales and Maria Fitzherbert, and Thomas Gainsborough's portrait of his daughters that reveals the power of art made for love not money. Schama will explore Charles Dodgson's, otherwise known as Lewis Carroll's, attempts to stop time in his photographs of Alice Liddell, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti's use of portraiture to possess Jane Morris, the wife of his business partner William Morris. Francis Bacon's posthumous portraits of his lover George Dyer and the final photograph of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, taken hours before his death, show the power of portraiture to immortalize love.

In this film, Simon Schama explores the complex motivations behind some of our most intriguing self-portraits, looking at what they say about both the creative minds of the artists who produced them and the human condition. From Tracy Emin's bed, a relic of our confessional age, to Lucien Freud's searing examinations of his ageing body, the film will explore how all self-portraits stand on a knife edge between self-indulgence and self-scrutiny. Schama explores the daring first glimmers of self-portraiture in a 13th-century manuscript and how the incarceration of the artist Gerlach Flicke led to the creation of the first English self-portrait that looks us straight in the eye. He shows how the frustrated potential of artist Isaac Fuller led to a self-portrait of unprecedented poignancy and how the romantic imagination of Samuel Palmer created works of visionary beauty. Laura Knight's use of her own image to defy the male-dominated art establishment and William Orpen's painted search for his own identity during World War I reflect the complex motivations that have driven artists to make themselves the subject of their work. Visiting the hundreds of figures that make up Antony Gormley's monumental sculpture Another Place, Schama reflects on this collective self-portrait that inspires us all to contemplate our place in the world.