Martin Davidson (Production)

The Pity of War

Professor Niall Ferguson argues that Britain's decision to enter the First World War was a catastrophic error that unleashed an era of totalitarianism and genocide.

Release Date: 2014-02-28

Department: Production

Job: Executive Producer

Vote Count: 1

Caligula with Mary Beard

What is true and what is false in the hideous stories spread about the controversial figure of the Roman emperor Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (12-41), nicknamed Caligula? Professor Mary Beard explains what is accurate and what is mythical in the historical accounts that portray him as an unbalanced despot. Was he a sadistic tyrant, as Roman historians have told, or perhaps the truth about him was manipulated because of political interests?

Release Date: 2013-07-29

Department: Production

Job: Executive Producer

Vote Count: 10

The Machine That Made Us

The printing press was the world's first mass-production machine. Its invention in the 1450s changed the world as dramatically as splitting the atom or sending men into space, sparking a cultural revolution which shaped the modern age.

Release Date: 2008-04-14

Department: Production

Job: Executive Producer

Vote Count: 3

The Genius of Photography

Documentary series exploring the history of photography - from daguerreotype to digital, from portraits to photo-journalism, from art to advertising.

Release Date: 2007-10-25

Department: Creator

Job: Creator

Vote Count: 4

Ocean Odyssey

The largest predator on the planet, the sperm whale, is your host for an amazing exploration of the final frontier – the world at the bottom of the ocean. From the makers of the Walking With series comes this incredible marine tour, in which you'll witness a rarely seen world of hidden mountain ranges, majestic canyons, volcanoes and the beautiful and often deadly creatures that inhabit the deep sea.

Release Date: 2006-05-24

Department: Production

Job: Executive Producer

Vote Count: 5

A History of Britain

Stretching from the Stone Age to the year 2000, Simon Schama's Complete History of Britain does not pretend to be a definitive chronicle of the turbulent events which buffeted and shaped the British Isles. What Schama does do, however, is tell the story in vivid and gripping narrative terms, free of the fustiness of traditional academe, personalising key historical events by examining the major characters at the centre of them. Not all historians would approve of the history depicted here as shaped principally by the actions of great men and women rather than by more abstract developments, but Schama's way of telling it is a good deal more enthralling as a result. Schama successfully gives lie to the idea that the history of Britain has been moderate and temperate, passing down the generations as stately as a galleon, taking on board sensible ideas but steering clear of sillier, revolutionary ones. Nonsense. Schama retells British history the way it was--as bloody, convulsive, precarious, hot-blooded and several times within an inch of haring off onto an entirely different course. Schama seems almost to delight in the goriness of history. Themes returned to repeatedly include the wars between the Scots and the Irish and the Catholic/Protestant conflicts--only the Irish question remains unresolved by the new millennium. As Britain becomes a constitutional monarchy, Schama talks less of Kings and Queens but of poets and idea-makers like Orwell. Still, with his pungent, direct manner and against an evocative visual and aural backdrop, Schama makes history seem as though it happened yesterday, the bloodstains not yet dry.

Release Date: 2000-09-30

Department: Production

Job: Executive Producer

Episode Count: 7

Vote Count: 9