Michael Wood’s Story of England

Michael Wood with documents in Merton Library

PBS

Visit the village of Kibworth, Leicestershire, with historian Michael Wood as he tells the 2,000-year-old story of this one settlement throughout English history. Kibworth, located in the heart of England, lived through the Black Death, the English Civil War, the Industrial Revolution and World War II. Intertwining the local and national narratives, Wood presents a moving and informative picture of one local community through time.

At 8 p.m., Michael Wood’s Story of England: Romans to Normans, looks at the lost history of the first thousand years of Kibworth, featuring a Roman villa, Anglo-Saxons and Vikings, and evidence of life after the Norman Conquest.

At 9 p.m., Michael Wood’s Story of England: Peasants’ Revolt and the Black Death, follows the story of Kibworth as it reaches the catastrophic 14th century. The village goes through the worst famine in European history, and then, as revealed in the astonishing village archive in Merton College Oxford, two-thirds of the people die in the Black Death.

Michael Wood’s Story of England on PBS-HD 6.