Many of the week's top shows are featured in our new On The Couch weekly podcast, which looks at what we've watched and all that's best in the coming seven days.
Andrew Marr's A History Of Modern Britain is an epic account of the events that have shaped our lives since the end of the Second World War. Using archive, anecdote and analysis, this saga charts the evolution of Britain's place in the world since 1945. Drawing on his detailed knowledge of contemporary politics and his first-hand experience of the people who rule Britain today, Andrew Marr helps us make sense of ourselves in the context of our modern history.
In this episode, victorious but war-weary and nearly bankrupt, the British people respond to Churchill's rallying cry of "Advance Britannia" by ejecting him from office in favour of a radical Labour Government. Clement Attlee's eccentric band of high-minded socialists and idealists set out to build a "New Jerusalem", to create a social revolution and to re-define Britain's post-imperial role in the modern world.
On the home front, Labour set aside huge sums of money to deliver their ambitious programme: the creation of the Welfare State and the nationalisation of major industries. At the same time, efforts were made to finance a new role for Britain as a world power in the post-war landscape: maintaining the British zone of occupation in Germany, buying the bomb and signing up for war in Korea - costly endeavours that jeopardised the heroic vision of a "New Jerusalem".
As India, the "jewel in the crown" of the Empire, won independence, Britain's struggle to recover from the War intensified. The country suffered the worst winter in living memory, with smaller food rations even than in Wartime. Britain's archaic industrial base, a shortage of consumer goods and the population's growing impatience with austerity threatened to take the country from bankruptcy to self-destruction. This is the story of an extraordinary national struggle for survival.
Many of the week's top shows are featured in our new On The Couch weekly podcast, which looks at what we've watched and all that's best in the coming seven days.
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