Secrets of the National Trust

Alan visits Hardwick Hall, the magnificent Derbyshire home of Bess of Hardwick, to tell the story of how she rose from humble beginnings to become the secondmost powerful woman in Elizabethan England. Continuing the family history, Miriam O'Reilly visits nearby Stainsby Mill, Jenni Bond travels to the copper mines at Ecton and Peter Peter Purves visits Oxburgh Hall in Norfolk, where Bess once held Mary, Queen of Scots, in custody.

Alan visits Stowe in Buckinghamshire, the most magnificent landscape garden of late 18th-century Britain and the site of a well-known public school. Pete Waterman discovers the link between Stowe and the Beatles, Dan Jones abseils down Lord Cobham's Pillar at Stowe and Suzannah Lipscomb visits a Norfolk stone masonry to help re-create some of Stowe's iconic statues.

Alan explores a French Renaissance-style chateau in the heart of the Buckinghamshire countryside which was a magnet for the great and the good of the 19th century. Clive Aslet visits Flint House, a striking example of modern architecture, on the same estate. Oz Clarke watches the restoration of a precious Dubois lacquer desk, and Alison Hammond visits Polesden Lacey.

Alan visits Southwell Workhouse in Nottinghamshire and experiences some of the Dickensian conditions that the inmates endured. Jenni Bond learns how a workhouse runaway was punished in Lavenham, Nigel Havers visits back-to-back houses for the poor in Birmingham, and at Sutton House in Hackney Angelica Bell discovers the legacy of squatters in the 1980s.

Alan explores Cragside, a unique estate in Northumberland masterminded and landscaped by the Victorian inventor and pioneering industrialist Lord William Armstrong and filled with the most advanced technical advances of his day. Peter Purves visits Castle Drogo on Dartmoor, Miriam O'Reilly walks through the vast Cragside woodland and Angela Rippon visits the Red House in Bexleyheath, home of William Morris.

Alan visits Castle Ward in Northern Ireland, the setting of Winterfell in Game of Thrones. He learns why the 18th-century mansion was designed in two completely different styles - Palladian on one side and gothic on the other, learns the history of its warring owners and uncovers stories of lunacy, attempted murder, groundbreaking science and tragedy.