Yesterday's Witness (1969)

This film was made with HH Ranee of Sarawak in Barbados last summer - just a few months before her death. She tells of her life as Queen of the Headhunters in North Borneo when she became the wife of Vyner Brooke, third and last White Rajah of Sarawak. Says her friend and neighbour Claudette Colbert, who narrates the film: If you wrote a film story about the Ranee's extraordinary life, nobody would ever believe it.' 'No one could have married a more wonderful man,' she says. He made my life... completely and absolutely made it.' 'I loved being a Ranee. I liked the traffic stopping wherever I went; I liked all the fuss. I loved every minute of it.'

April 6, 1972, midnight

Only 40 years ago hundreds of English farmers decided to withhold their Tithes from the Church - and the Law fought back. A poster that sums up the feelings of the time claimed: "It's 'dearly beloved brethren' on Sunday. It's confiscation of corn stacks on Monday." But the farmers fought with more than words. Among those who tell of the battles and why they were 'being as obstructive as we could, within the law' - are: Lady Eve Balfour, Mr and Mrs Roland Rash, Philip Butler and A.G. Mobbs

May 25, 1972, midnight

Once a Lord Mayor of Leipzig, he has gone into the records as a man of the anti-Nazi German Resistance. He was tried and eventually executed, as one of the conspirators in the 1944 Bomb Plot. What is little known is that before the war he journeyed to Britain to plead for British help for the dissident generals, insisting that a firm British stand could prevent the war. A.P. Young, Frank Ashton-Gwatkin, Robert J. Stopford and Lord Ritchie-Calder were all involved personally, and with his daughter, Dr Meyer-Krahmer, they tell how one man tried to change history.

June 1, 1972, midnight

Eighty years later, West Country eye-witnesses describe "the gravest atmospheric disturbance of the century..." and the days that followed. Most of them were, of course, quite young and memories of 'terror and destruction' have largely disappeared. They remember more important things, like, 'It was seven weeks before we went back to school!' But the 'star' of the programme is Mrs Lilias Williams who remembers the Great Blizzard of 1891 very vividly, for she was already a young woman. On her last birthday she was 103!

June 8, 1972, midnight

In December 1941 the Americans entered the war; and not only did they play a considerable part in winning it, they did a lot to cheer the British women up. With their smart uniforms, smart patter and supply of 'luxury' goods like cigarettes and nylons, it could definitely be said they had a way with the girls. In Suffolk, where there were more than 30 US airbases, hundreds of girls became wartime GI Brides. The first one to leave Saxmundham found, like so many, that America wasn't quite like they showed it in the Hollywood films.

June 15, 1972, midnight

Captain's log, 15 July 1919: 'Hendon to Paris, Le Bourget. Flying time 165 minutes, flying at 200 feet. Rain and low clouds all the way. The first civil machine to the Continent' That is Capt 'Jerry' Shaw's laconic entry, recording this historic charter flight. His plane was 'a converted de Havilland light day bomber. The gun ring and the bomb racks had been taken out to make room for passengers.' Regular passenger flights to Paris began six weeks later - the first daily scheduled international air service in history. Five of the pilots who flew on the Paris run tell the story of the first hectic months. There were plenty of people able and willing to pay £20 for the adventure of travelling to Paris - by air - with: Capt Jerry Shaw, Mr A.C. Campbell Orde, Capt A.S. Wilcockson, Capt Walter Rogers and W/Cdr R.H. McIntosh

June 22, 1972, midnight

21 March 1945: the date of one of the RAF's most daring and difficult low-level raids. The target: Shell House in the centre of Copenhagen, which the Gestapo had commandeered as their headquarters. Here they were collecting more and more damaging information about the Danish Resistance which was in danger of being wiped out. To destroy the Gestapo records meant precision bombing at its most accurate, for not only was Shell House in the middle of a heavily populated area but the Germans had put captured Resistance leaders in cells on the top floor - as hostages against possible attack from the air. Air Chief Marshal Sir Basil Embry, other senior RAF officers who took part in the raid and wartime members of the Danish Resistance tell of the success - and tragedy - of that day.

Aug. 20, 1973, midnight

The Spanish Civil War, in the late 30s, could be said to be the first of the ideological wars of our time. Nazi Germany and fascist Italy used Spain as a rehearsal ground for the greater war to come. Thousands of volunteers poured into Spain to take up arms on the other side against Franco. Of the 2,000 volunteers who went from Britain, 500 were killed. The members of the British Battalion of the International Brigade were mainly workers: railwaymen, miners, trades unionists. In this programme they - and others who supported them - tell the story of the Civil War as they saw it.

Aug. 27, 1973, midnight

The extraordinary story of a teenage girl on the run from the Gestapo in wartime Europe. One sunny day in May 1940 the 16-year-old Gergana Taneva was out walking with some friends 'when suddenly there were screams of German voices and we found that the street from all sides was closed. A big lorry drove in front of us and then another and another one. We were panic-stricken. We started to run...' It was the start of a five years' nightmare.

Sept. 3, 1973, midnight

By the end of the First World War the Isle of Lewis, with a population of only 30,000, had lost 800 men in land and sea battles throughout the world. And then this Hebridean island was dealt the heaviest blow of all. A further 200 men, nearly all of them natives of Lewis, died in one night - a few weeks after the war, after the fighting had stopped. In the early hours of 1 January 1919, in a rising storm and pitch darkness, the Admiralty yacht Iolaire, carrying naval ratings home on New Year's leave, was wrecked right at the mouth of Stornoway harbour, right on the shores of the Isle of Lewis itself. One man, John F. Macleod, managed to swim ashore with a rope and altogether some 70 men were saved. In this programme Macleod, some of the other survivors, and men and women of Lewis tell the story of that tragic night.

Sept. 10, 1973, midnight