This Sceptred Isle –
The Twentieth Century
This was the account BBC Radio 4 chose for their year long coverage of the end of the millennium to tell the story of the previous hundred years. The idea was to take year by year and decade by decade to show how the British Isles had changed in the 20th century and who were the people who had created that change. The theme is change, not decline, as some would have us believe. It is the story of monarchs from Victoria to Elizabeth II, of two world wars, the invention of passenger flight, the discovery of penicillin (0ne of the two or three most important moments in the century), the inevitability of nuclear weaponry and space flight, the intrusion and influence of television, the freedoms brought about by improved medicine, The Pill, votes for everyone and the biggest change of all to Britain’s position in the world – the collapse of the British Empire. The idea was that everyone should effectively have a record of the century that touched them and their parents and grandchildren. It really turned out that way.
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