Ian Hislop's Olden Days - The Power of the Past in Britain: Heroes for All Times

The satirist explores the nation's obsession with the past to reveal how and why the British have continually plundered the `olden days" to make sense of and shape the present. He begins by examining the various spins put on the lives of King Arthur and Alfred the Great through the ages. He finds out how Arthur has been variously depicted as a wild Celtic warlord, a chivalric hero and a piously questing king, while Alfred's character was manipulated to suit the purposes of tricky medieval lawyers, a Tudor archbishop and a Georgian Prince of Wales