Secret History was a long-running British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 television

Television

Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...

 documentary

Documentary film

Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...

 series. Shown on Channel 4

Channel 4

Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...

, the Secret History brandname was used as a banner title in the UK, but many of the individual documentaries can still be found on US cable channels (like Discovery Times

Discovery Times

Investigation Discovery is a television network that is owned by Discovery Communications. The channel features documentary-style programming dealing with criminal investigations , and other crime-related documentaries.-History:The channel launched in 1996 under the name Discovery Civilization...

 or The History Channel International) without the branding. It can be seen as Channel 4's answer to the BBC

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

's Timewatch

Timewatch

Timewatch is a long-running British television series showing documentaries on historical subjects, spanning all human history. It was first broadcast on 29th September 1982 and is produced by the BBC, the Timewatch brandname is used as a banner title in the UK, but many of the individual...

.

Production

Secret History is "the home of single, hour-long history documentaries that shed new light on some of the most intriguing stories from the past. New evidence from excavation, research and investigation reveal strange, forgotten stories, and shed new light on the events we thought we knew well."

Secret History programmes "challenge accepted views of key events in history. Sometimes concealed, sometimes manipulated by the media, the truth has been submerged behind the headlines and the propaganda. From Roman legions to Nazi television, the series re-examined contemporary evidence, focusing on often shocking first-hand accounts and the ground-breaking views of leading experts."

In 1992, the show won the Royal Television Society award for Best Documentary Series.

Series 1

• The Hidden Hand (14 Nov, 1991)
• Unquiet Graves (21 Nov, 1991)
• Ratlines (28 Nov, 1991)
• Bloody Sunday
  Bloody Sunday (1972)
  Bloody Sunday —sometimes called the Bogside Massacre—was an incident on 30 January 1972 in the Bogside area of Derry, Northern Ireland, in which twenty-six unarmed civil rights protesters and bystanders were shot by soldiers of the British Army...
  
   (5 Dec, 1991)
• Murder in Mississippi
  Mississippi civil rights worker murders
  The Mississippi civil rights workers murders involved the lynching of three political activists in Neshoba County, Mississippi on June 21, 1964, during the American Civil Rights Movement....
  
   (12 Dec, 1991)
• Prisoners of Propaganda (19 Dec, 1991)

Series 2

• Deep Sleep
  Deep Sleep Therapy
  Deep sleep therapy , also called prolonged sleep treatment or continuous narcosis, is a psychiatric treatment based on the use of psychiatric drugs to render patients unconscious for a period of days or weeks.-History:...
  
   (29 Jun, 1992)
• Birds of Death
  Gas in Mesopotamia
  It has been claimed that the British used toxic gas against the Kurds in Mesopotamia, during the Ath Thawra al Iraqiyya al Kubra or Iraqi revolt against the British in 1920, in the period of the British Mandate of Mesopotamia...
  
   (6 Jul, 1992)
• Drowning by Bullets
  Paris massacre of 1961
  The Paris massacre of 1961 was a massacre in Paris on 17 October 1961, during the Algerian War . Under orders from the head of the Parisian police, Maurice Papon, the French police attacked a demonstration of some 30,000 pro-FLN Algerians...
  
   (13 Jul, 1992)
• The Last Days of Aldo Moro
  Aldo Moro
  Aldo Moro was an Italian politician and the 39th Prime Minister of Italy, from 1963 to 1968, and then from 1974 to 1976. He was one of Italy's longest-serving post-war Prime Ministers, holding power for a combined total of more than six years....
  
   (20 Jul, 1992)
• The Hidden Holocaust
  Armenian Genocide
  The Armenian Genocide—also known as the Armenian Holocaust, the Armenian Massacres and, by Armenians, as the Great Crime—refers to the deliberate and systematic destruction of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire during and just after World War I...
  
   (27 Jul, 1992)
• Death of a Democrat
  Jan Masaryk
  Jan Garrigue Masaryk was a Czech diplomat and politician and Foreign Minister of Czechoslovakia from 1940 to 1948.- Early life :...
  
   (3 Aug, 1992)
• Bad Blood
  Tuskegee Syphilis Study
  The Tuskegee syphilis experiment was an infamous clinical study conducted between 1932 and 1972 in Tuskegee, Alabama by the U.S. Public Health Service to study the natural progression of untreated syphilis in poor, rural black men who thought they were receiving free health care from the U.S...
  
   (10 Aug, 1992)
• The Robert Kennedy Assassination
  Robert F. Kennedy assassination
  The assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, a United States Senator and brother of assassinated President John F. Kennedy, took place shortly after midnight on June 5, 1968, in Los Angeles, California...
  
   (17 Aug, 1992)

Series 3

• The Soviet Wives Affair (20 Jan, 1994)
• White Lies
  Canon John Collins
  John Collins was an Anglican priest who was active in several radical political movements in the United Kingdom.Educated at Cranbrook School, Kent and the University of Cambridge, Collins served as a chaplain in the Royal Air Force during World War II and was radicalised by the experience...
  
   (27 Jan, 1994)
• The Dambusters Raid
  Operation Chastise
  Operation Chastise was an attack on German dams carried out on 16–17 May 1943 by Royal Air Force No. 617 Squadron, subsequently known as the "Dambusters", using a specially developed "bouncing bomb" invented and developed by Barnes Wallis...
  
   (3 Mar, 1994)
• Dead or Alive? (10 Feb, 1994)
• The Lynchburg Story (17 Feb, 1994)
• Suicide Island
  Battle of Saipan
  The Battle of Saipan was a battle of the Pacific campaign of World War II, fought on the island of Saipan in the Mariana Islands from 15 June-9 July 1944. The Allied invasion fleet embarking the expeditionary forces left Pearl Harbor on 5 June 1944, the day before Operation Overlord in Europe was...
  
   (24 Feb, 1994)

Special

• The Roswell Incident
  Roswell UFO incident
  The Roswell UFO Incident was the recovery of an object that crashed in the general vicinity of Roswell, New Mexico, in June or July 1947, allegedly an extra-terrestrial spacecraft and its alien occupants. Since the late 1970s the incident has been the subject of intense controversy and of...
  
   (28 Aug, 1995)

Series 4

• The Battle of Goose Green
  Battle of Goose Green
  The Battle of Goose Green was an engagement of the Falklands War between British and Argentine forces. Goose Green and its neighbour Darwin are settlements on East Falkland in the Falkland Islands. They lie on Choiseul Sound on the east side of the island's central isthmus...
  
   (11 Jul, 1996)
• The Whitechapel Murders
  Jack the Ripper
  "Jack the Ripper" is the best-known name given to an unidentified serial killer who was active in the largely impoverished areas in and around the Whitechapel district of London in 1888. The name originated in a letter, written by someone claiming to be the murderer, that was disseminated in the...
  
   (25 Jul, 1996)
• The Voyage of the St Louis (1 Aug, 1996)
• Mutiny in the RAF
  Royal Air Force Mutiny of 1946
  The Royal Air Force Mutiny of 1946 was a mutiny on dozens of Royal Air Force stations in India and South Asia in January 1946 over conditions of slow demobilization and conditions of service following the end of World War II...
  
   (8 Aug, 1996)
• Harold Wilson - the Final Days (15 Aug, 1996)
• Konkordski
  Tupolev Tu-144
  The Tupolev Tu-144 was a Soviet supersonic transport aircraft and remains one of only two SSTs to enter commercial service, the other being the Concorde...
  
   (22 Aug, 1996)*

* Originally scheduled for 18 Jul, the day after the crash of TWA Flight 800

TWA Flight 800

Trans World Airlines Flight 800 , a Boeing 747-131, exploded and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean near East Moriches, New York, on July 17, 1996, at about 20:31 EDT, 12 minutes after takeoff, killing all 230 persons on board. At the time, it was the second-deadliest U.S...

 - replaced with repeat of The Soviet Wives Affair.

Special

• Hello Mr President (21 Jan, 1997)

Series 5

• Lords of the Underworld (23 Jun, 1997)
• The Tragedy of HMS Glorious (30 Jun, 1997)
• Breaking the Sound Barrier
  Miles M.52
  The Miles M.52 was a turbojet powered supersonic research aircraft project designed in the United Kingdom in the mid 1940s. Design work was undertaken in secrecy between 1942 and 1945. In 1946 the Air Ministry prudently but controversially changed the project to a series of unmanned rocket-powered...
  
   (7 Jul, 1997)
• Gold Fever
  Klondike Gold Rush
  The Klondike Gold Rush, also called the Yukon Gold Rush, the Alaska Gold Rush and the Last Great Gold Rush, was an attempt by an estimated 100,000 people to travel to the Klondike region the Yukon in north-western Canada between 1897 and 1899 in the hope of successfully prospecting for gold...
  
   (14 Jul, 1997)
• Spying for Love (21 Jul, 1997)

Specials - Indian Summer season

• The Forgotten Famine
  Bengal famine of 1943
  The Bengal famine of 1943 struck the Bengal. Province of pre-partition India. Estimates are that between 1.5 and 4 million people died of starvation, malnutrition and disease, out of Bengal’s 60.3 million population, half of them dying from disease after food became available in December 1943 As...
  
   (12 Aug, 1997)
• The Cawnpore massacres
  Siege of Cawnpore
  The Siege of Cawnpore was a key episode in the Indian rebellion of 1857. The besieged British in Cawnpore were unprepared for an extended siege and surrendered to rebel Indian forces under Nana Sahib, in return for a safe passage to Allahabad. However, under ambiguous circumstances, their...
  
   (14 Aug, 1997)
• A Bloody Partition
  Partition of India
  The Partition of India was the partition of British India on the basis of religious demographics that led to the creation of the sovereign states of the Dominion of Pakistan and the Union of India on 14 and 15...
  
   (25 Aug, 1997)

Series 6

• The Voyage of the Exodus
  Exodus (ship)
  Exodus 1947 was a ship that carried Jewish emigrants, that left France on July 11, 1947, with the intent of taking its passengers to the British mandate for Palestine. Most of the emigrants were Holocaust survivor refugees, who had no legal immigration certificates to Palestine...
  
   (11 May 1998)
• The Porn King, the Stripper and the Bent Coppers (18 May 1998)
• The Chair (1 Jun, 1998)
• Dad's Army
  British Home Guard
  The Home Guard was a defence organisation of the British Army during the Second World War...
  
   (8 Jun, 1998)
• Killer Flu
  Spanish flu
  The 1918 flu pandemic was an influenza pandemic, and the first of the two pandemics involving H1N1 influenza virus . It was an unusually severe and deadly pandemic that spread across the world. Historical and epidemiological data are inadequate to identify the geographic origin...
  
   (15 Jun, 1998)
• The Berlin Airlift
  Berlin Blockade
  The Berlin Blockade was one of the first major international crises of the Cold War and the first resulting in casualties. During the multinational occupation of post-World War II Germany, the Soviet Union blocked the Western Allies' railway and road access to the sectors of Berlin under Allied...
  
   (29 Jun, 1998)
• The Purple Secret - In Search of Royal Madness (6 Jul, 1998)
• Winter of Discontent
  Winter of Discontent
  The "Winter of Discontent" is an expression, popularised by the British media, referring to the winter of 1978–79 in the United Kingdom, during which there were widespread strikes by local authority trade unions demanding larger pay rises for their members, because the Labour government of...
  
   (13 Jul, 1998)
• Witch Hunt
  Helen Duncan
  Helen Duncan was a Scottish medium best known as the last person to be imprisoned under the British Witchcraft Act of 1735.-Early life:...
  
   (20 Jul, 1998)
• D-Day Disaster
  Exercise Tiger
  Exercise Tiger, or Operation Tiger, were the code names for a full-scale rehearsal in 1944 for the D-Day invasion of Normandy. During the exercise, an Allied convoy was attacked, resulting in the deaths of 946 American servicemen....
  
   (27 Jul, 1998)
• Kinsey's Paedophiles (10 Aug, 1998)

Series 7

• The Great Train Robbery
  Great Train Robbery (1963)
  The Great Train Robbery is the name given to a £2.6 million train robbery committed on 8 August 1963 at Bridego Railway Bridge, Ledburn near Mentmore in Buckinghamshire, England. The bulk of the stolen money was not recovered...
  
   (10 Aug, 1999)
• The Hidden Jews of Berlin (17 Aug, 1999)
• Hitler's Search for the Holy Grail (19 Aug, 1999)
• Mau Mau
  Mau Mau Uprising
  The Mau Mau Uprising was a military conflict that took place in Kenya between 1952 and 1960...
  
   (24 Aug, 1999)
• The People's Duchess
  Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire
  Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire , formerly Lady Georgiana Spencer, was the first wife of the 5th Duke of Devonshire, and mother of the 6th Duke of Devonshire. Her father, the 1st Earl Spencer, was a great-grandson of the 1st Duke of Marlborough. Her niece was Lady Caroline Lamb...
  
   (31 Aug, 1999)
• Sex and the Swastika
  Political Warfare Executive
  During World War II, the Political Warfare Executive was a British clandestine body created to produce and disseminate both white and black propaganda, with the aim of damaging enemy morale and sustaining the morale of the Occupied countries....
  
   (7 Sep, 1999)
• The Bunny Years
  Playboy Bunny
  A Playboy Bunny is a waitress at the Playboy Club. The Playboy Clubs were originally open from 1960 to 1988. The Club re-opened in one location in The Palms Hotel in Las Vegas in 2006...
  
   (14 Sep, 1999)
• Miracle on the River Kwai
  Death Railway
  The Burma Railway, also known as the Death Railway, the Thailand–Burma Railway and similar names, was a railway between Bangkok, Thailand, and Rangoon, Burma , built by the Empire of Japan during World War II, to support its forces in the Burma campaign.Forced labour was used in its construction...
  
   (21 Sep, 1999)
• Killer Fog
  Great Smog of 1952
  The Great Smog of '52 or Big Smoke was a severe air pollution event that affected London, England, during December 1952. A period of cold weather, combined with an anticyclone and windless conditions, collected airborne pollutants mostly from the use of coal to form a thick layer of smog over the...
  
   (28 Sep, 1999)
• Execution at Camp 21 (5 Oct, 1999)

Series 8

• The Duchess and the Headless Man (10 Aug, 2000)
• Funny Money
  Decimal Day
  Decimal Day was the day the United Kingdom and Ireland decimalised their currencies.-Old system:Under the old currency of pounds, shillings and pence, the pound was made up of 240 pence , with 12 pence in a shilling and 20 shillings in a...
  
   (17 Aug, 2000)
• Last Train from Budapest (24 Aug, 2000)
• Prisoners of the Kaiser (31 Aug, 2000)
• Mutiny - The True Story of the Red October
  Soviet frigate Storozhevoy
  Storozhevoy was a Soviet Navy 1135 Burevestnik-class anti-submarine frigate . The ship was attached to the Soviet Baltic Fleet and based in Riga...
  
   (7 Sep, 2000)
• Natural Born Americans
  Native Americans in the United States
  Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...
  
   (14 Sep, 2000)
• Children of the Iron Lung
  Polio vaccine
  Two polio vaccines are used throughout the world to combat poliomyelitis . The first was developed by Jonas Salk and first tested in 1952. Announced to the world by Salk on April 12, 1955, it consists of an injected dose of inactivated poliovirus. An oral vaccine was developed by Albert Sabin...
  
   (21 Sep, 2000)

Series 9

• The Secret History of Hacking (22 Jul, 2001)
• Orphans of the Airlift (9 Aug, 2001)
• The Search for the Struma
  Struma
  The Struma was a ship chartered to carry Jewish refugees from Axis-allied Romania to British-controlled Palestine during World War II. On February 23, 1942, with its engine inoperable and its refugee passengers aboard, Turkish authorities towed the ship from Istanbul harbor through the Bosphorus...
  
   (16 Aug, 2001)
• The Lost Legions of Varus
  Publius Quinctilius Varus
  Publius Quinctilius Varus was a Roman politician and general under Emperor Augustus, mainly remembered for having lost three Roman legions and his own life when attacked by Germanic leader Arminius in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest.-Life:His paternal grandfather was senator Sextus Quinctilius...
  
   (23 Aug, 2001)
• Television in the Third Reich (30 Aug, 2001)
• Wartime Crime (6 Sep, 2001)
• Armada
  Spanish Armada
  This article refers to the Battle of Gravelines, for the modern navy of Spain, see Spanish NavyThe Spanish Armada was the Spanish fleet that sailed against England under the command of the Duke of Medina Sidonia in 1588, with the intention of overthrowing Elizabeth I of England to stop English...
  
   (13 Sep, 2001)

Series 10

• Charge of the Light Brigade
  Charge of the Light Brigade
  The Charge of the Light Brigade was a charge of British cavalry led by Lord Cardigan against Russian forces during the Battle of Balaclava on 25 October 1854 in the Crimean War. The charge was the result of a miscommunication in such a way that the brigade attempted a much more difficult objective...
  
   (6 Jun, 2002)
• The Comet Cover-Up
  De Havilland Comet
  The de Havilland DH 106 Comet was the world's first commercial jet airliner to reach production. Developed and manufactured by de Havilland at the Hatfield, Hertfordshire, United Kingdom headquarters, it first flew in 1949 and was a landmark in aeronautical design...
  
   (13 Jun, 2002)
• Witchfinder General
  Matthew Hopkins
  Matthew Hopkins was an English witchhunter whose career flourished during the time of the English Civil War. He claimed to hold the office of Witchfinder General, although that title was never bestowed by Parliament...
  
   (20 Jun, 2002)
• Magic at War
  Jasper Maskelyne
  Jasper Maskelyne was a British stage magician in the 1930s and 1940s. He was one of an established family of stage magicians, the son of Nevil Maskelyne and a grandson of John Nevil Maskelyne. He could also trace his ancestry to the royal astronomer Nevil Maskelyne...
  
   (27 Jun, 2002)

First World War sub-series:

• The Crucified Soldier
  The Crucified Soldier
  The Crucified Soldier refers to the widespread story of an Allied soldier serving in the Canadian Corps who may have been crucified with bayonets on a barn door or a tree, while fighting on the Western Front during World War I...
  
   (4 Jul, 2002)
• The War That Made the Nazis (11 Jul, 2002)
• Horror on the Home Front (18 Jul, 2002)
• Dogfight - The Mystery of the Red Baron
  Manfred von Richthofen
  Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen , also widely known as the Red Baron, was a German fighter pilot with the Imperial German Army Air Service during World War I...
  
   (25 Jul, 2002)

Series 11

• Brighton Bomb
  Brighton hotel bombing
  The Brighton hotel bombing happened on 12 October 1984 at the Grand Hotel in Brighton, England. The bomb was planted by Provisional Irish Republican Army member Patrick Magee, with the intention of assassinating Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet who were staying at the hotel for the...
  
   (15 May 2003)
• Hitler of the Andes (22 May 2003)
• Costa Del Crime
  Costa del Sol
  The Costa del Sol is a region in the south of Spain, in the autonomous community of Andalusia, comprising the coastal towns and communities along the Mediterranean coastline of the Málaga province. The Costa del Sol is situated between two lesser known costas: Costa de la Luz and Costa Tropical...
  
   (29 May 2003)
• The Affair (5 Jun, 2003)
• The Strangest Viking
  Ivar the Boneless
  Ivar Ragnarsson nicknamed the Boneless , was a Viking leader and by reputation also a berserker. By the late 11th century he was known as a son of the powerful Ragnar Lodbrok, ruler of an area probably comprising parts of modern-day Denmark and Sweden.-Invader:In the autumn of AD 865, with his...
  
   (12 Jun, 2003)
• The Nazi Officer's Wife (19 Jun, 2003)

Specials

• Brinks Mat - The Greatest Heist Part 1
  Brinks Mat robbery
  The Brink's-MAT robbery occurred on 26 November 1983 when six robbers broke into the Brink's-MAT warehouse at Heathrow Airport, London. The robbers thought they were going to steal £3 million in cash; however, when they arrived, they found three tonnes of gold bullion...
  
   (24 Nov, 2003)
• Brinks Mat - The Greatest Heist Part 2
  Brinks Mat robbery
  The Brink's-MAT robbery occurred on 26 November 1983 when six robbers broke into the Brink's-MAT warehouse at Heathrow Airport, London. The robbers thought they were going to steal £3 million in cash; however, when they arrived, they found three tonnes of gold bullion...
  
   (21 Dec, 2003)
• Who Killed Shergar?
  Shergar
  Shergar was an acclaimed Irish racehorse, and winner of the 1981 Epsom Derby by a record 10 lengths, the longest winning margin in the race's 226-year history. This victory earned him a spot in The Observer newspaper's 100 Most Memorable Sporting Moments of the Twentieth Century...
  
   (18 Mar, 2004)

Series 12

• Beasts of the Roman Games (7 Jun, 2004)
• Britain's Boy Soldiers (14 Jun, 2004)
• The Royal Mummy
  Ramesses I
  Menpehtyre Ramesses I was the founding Pharaoh of Ancient Egypt's 19th dynasty. The dates for his short reign are not completely known but the time-line of late 1292-1290 BC is frequently cited as well as 1295-1294 BC...
  
   (21 Jun, 2004)
• Sex Bomb
  Sefton Delmer
  Denis Sefton Delmer was a British journalist and propagandist for the British government. Fluent in German, he became friendly with Ernst Röhm who arranged for him to interview Adolf Hitler in the 1930s...
  
   (28 Jun, 2004)
• Sink the Belgrano
  ARA General Belgrano
  The ARA General Belgrano was an Argentine Navy light cruiser in service from 1951 until 1982. Formerly the , she saw action in the Pacific theater of World War II before being sold to Argentina. After almost 31 years of service, she was sunk during the Falklands War by the Royal Navy submarine ...
  
   (5 Jul, 2004)
• The Nazi Expedition (12 Jul, 2004)

External links

• Secret History episodes at tv.com