The BEST episodes directed by Paul Tilzey
#1 - The Man Who Ate Everything
BBC Documentaries - Season 2010 - Episode 10
Andrew Graham-Dixon presents a personal profile of the legendary food writer Alan Davidson, one of the unsung heroes of the culinary world. Davidson's greatest work, The Oxford Companion to Food, took him 20 years to write. It's an encyclopaedia of everything a human being can eat, from aardvark to zucchini, all catalogued in 2,650 separate entries. But it is much more than just a food reference book; it is a portrait of the whole human race, its many cultures, customs and histories, all revealed through the stories of what we eat. If you want to understand why the Genoese enjoy dolphin, how to cook a warthog, why the French call dandelions 'piss-en-lit' or who invented Spam, then 'The Companion', as it is known by aficionados, is the place to look.
#2 - The Secrets of the Black Diaries
BBC Documentaries - Season 2010 - Episode 155
Are the so-called Black Diaries forgeries by MI5 to ensure the execution of a British traitor? Or are they the genuine and lurid homosexual accounts of an Irish hero and fearless campaigner for human rights? In 1916, Sir Roger Casement was sentenced to be hanged for trying to enlist German help in the Easter Rising. A powerful lobby of writers such as George Bernard Shaw and Arthur Conan Doyle appealed for leniency because of his humanitarian work against the evils of colonialism. Then MI5 circulated the Black Diaries and Casement went to the gallows in disgrace. Ever since, Irish Nationalists have claimed the diaries were forged by British Intelligence and until recently the Home Office kept them under lock and key. Now the truth is out. The Black Diaries have been submitted to forensic tests and the findings are revealed.
#3 - Treasures of Heaven
BBC Documentaries - Season 2011 - Episode 113
Andrew Graham-Dixon explores the ancient Christian practice of preserving holy relics and the largely forgotten art form that went with it, the reliquary. Fragments of bone or fabric placed inside a bejewelled shrine, a sculpted golden head or even a life-sized silver hand were, and still are, objects of religious devotion believed to have the power to work miracles. Most precious of all, though, are relics of Jesus Christ and the programme also features three reliquaries containing the holiest of all relics - those associated with the Crucifixion. The story of relics and reliquaries is a 2,000-year history of faith, persecution and hope, reflected in some of the most beautiful and little known works of art ever made. Featuring interviews with art historian Sister Wendy Beckett and Neil MacGregor, Director of the British Museum.
#4 - Britain's Most Fragile Treasure
BBC Documentaries - Season 2011 - Episode 188
Historian Dr Janina Ramirez unlocks the secrets of a centuries-old masterpiece in glass. At 78 feet in height, the famous East Window at York Minster is the largest medieval stained-glass window in the country, and it was the creative vision of a single artist - a mysterious master craftsman called John Thornton, one of the earliest named English artists.
#5 - Rupert Murdoch - Battle With Britain
BBC Documentaries - Season 2013 - Episode 85
In the wake of the phone-hacking scandal, Rupert Murdoch has been accused of corrupting British media and contaminating politics. Yet the caricature image of him as the 'Dirty Digger', the sinister head of a global media empire, in fact obscures deeper, more significant truths - not least about Britain itself. Rupert Murdoch can be seen as an agent of change, a revolutionary almost, who has been a vital part of the transformation of Britain over the last 45 years. He rode the wave of social change that swept a gloomy postwar country into the modern world and his ability to understand what people wanted and give it to them made him rich and powerful. Yet his part in this cultural, political and industrial revolution also brought Rupert Murdoch into conflict with the establishment and vested interests in all their guises. It may even have ultimately cost him his life's ambition - to see the business he has built carried on inside the family by one of his children. Steve Hewlett tells the story of Rupert Murdoch's 40-year battle with Britain.
#6 - Prince John: The Windsors' Tragic Secret
Channel 4 (UK) Documentaries - Season 2008 - Episode 18
Prince John was born in 1904 as the youngest child of George V and died in 1919 after a severe epileptic seizure. This is the story of the young prince's tragically short life.