BBC - Andrew Marr's History of Modern Britain (2007)

Andrew Marr's History of Modern Britain is a 2007 BBC documentary television series presented by Andrew Marr that covers the period of British history from the end of the Second World War onwards. The series is highly praised and resulted in a follow up series covering the period 1900 to 1945 called Andrew Marr's The Making of Modern Britain. A book released by Marr at accompanying the series and bearing the same name also details this period of history.

Chapter 1: Advance Britannia
Andrew Marr revisits Britain in 1945 and finds the country victorious, but badly beaten up and nearly bankrupt. With astonishing archive and telling anecdote, he tells the story of Britain's extraordinary struggle for national and cultural survival in the post-war world.
As the newly elected Labour government sets out to build 'New Jerusalem', Britain is forced to hold out the begging bowl in Washington. Back in Britain, Ealing Studios attempts to hold back the tide of Hollywood with a series of very British comedies.
There is a spirit of hope and optimism in the air, but the shortage of consumer goods and the British people's growing impatience with austerity threaten to take the country from bankruptcy to self-destruction.
A stirring story of Britain's battle against the odds to retain its world power status.

Chapter 2: The Land of Lost Content
Explodes the popular image of the 1950s as a golden age of order and prosperity, and of lost content. A Conservative government is back in power. The economy appears to be improving. New homes are being built, the age of mass car ownership is dawning and people have money in their pockets. But 1950s Britain is not as calm as it looks, or as strong.
Andrew Marr describes a relentless build-up of pressure from frustrated, resentful people who are hungry for change. This is a Britain of growing racial tensions, of working-class teenagers who don't want to know their place any longer, of CND protesters and a new breed of scathing satirists. It's a country which is learning to laugh at its rulers and starting to distrust them. Especially after their prime minister takes them to war in the Middle East on the basis of a lie.
When a working-class girl called Christine Keeler meets the Secretary of State for War John Profumo in a swimming pool one hot summer's evening in 1961, the closed world of the British establishment collides with the cocky new Britain growing up around it. The sixties spirit of change is in the air and Britain will never be governed in the same way again. This is the fascinating story of the perfect political storm.

Chapter 3: Paradise Lost
Andrew Marr examines the age of Harold Wilson's classless society; a country excited by new technology, modern architecture and the scary futurism of Doctor Who. Wilson attempted to connect with the 60s spirit of progress by conjuring up the image of a future driven by science and the white heat of technology. But while the swinging sixties unleashed dreams of a fairer, liberated future, the Wilson governments presided over years of industrial conflict, stagnation and decline.
By the 1970s, as the sixties dream turned sour, industrial malaise, class and generational conflict, Vietnam, racial unrest, government paranoia and the shadow of the Soviet threat all added up to a sense of national crisis, and there were serious fears for the future of democracy in Britain. Under Edward Heath, British industry was reduced to working a three-day week, and homes were lit by candlelight during an enforced rationing of electricity. As Heath raised the question 'Who governs Britain?', the people's response came: 'Not you, mate!'.

Chapter 4: Revolution
Andrew Marr revisits the Britain of Margaret Thatcher and comes to some surprising conclusions about the British national character.
Promising to restore order, confidence and national pride, Margaret Thatcher unleashed a dramatic and divisive transformation of British society. In a period of extreme ideological polarisation, British identity was redefined by the global market, and striking miners and sections of the Trade Union movement were demonised as the enemy within. Imperial visions stirred again as the fleet sailed for the Falklands. Having won power with the promise to restore traditional British values, the Thatcher government unleashed a whirlwind of privatisation and deregulation that amounted to a cultural, economic and political revolution. Heroic national rescue operation or final act of self-destruction?
This film explores the extent to which British people are all now the children of Margaret Thatcher.

Chapter 5: New Britannia
Britain enters the uncharted waters of the post-Thatcher era. Many have done well during the Thatcher years but now boom is turning to bust. Britain feels more vulnerable than ever to rapid international change - from the influence of powerful new global market forces to global warming. Just when many in post-war Britain are getting used to the good things in life, it seems we are going to have to start giving up our big cars and foreign holidays - or at least go back to some form of rationing. But who could persuade us to do this? Churchill had that kind of power in the 1940s, but which politician would we trust and follow today?
Step forward the unassuming Brixton boy John Major and New Labour's smiling master of spin Tony Blair. From Black Wednesday to war in Iraq, from the British inventor of the World Wide Web to millennium fever, this is Andrew Marr's up-to-the moment story of Britain's extraordinary transformation from imperial power to an island at the heart of the global economy.