Icons (2019)

Leaders (1x1)

Air date: Jan 08, 2019

The series begins with leaders, and sees a well-known figure, passionate about the subject, examining the achievements and legacies of the people whose decisions affect all our lives. 20th century leaders oversaw great victories, unimaginable hardships, sweeping social change, and the worst conflicts in human history. This film charts some of the qualities that made the century's most iconic leaders stand out, and we quickly learn that the scale of their responsibilities at times of great social change mean that their legacies are often far from straightforward. The programme also demonstrates how leadership changed over the course of 100 years - and the role emerging communication technologies played in that shift. In part because of what we wanted from them - our rulers went from men of empire, determined to maintain an established world order - to people with newly found freedoms, equally determined to start a new way of doing things. Newly emerging technologies affected what we saw and heard of the people in charge - and what we wanted from them. Trevor examines the lives of Winston Churchill, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Margaret Thatcher and Nelson Mandela. He discovers exactly what made each of them stand out, and how we are still living with their legacies to this day. Churchill - From the battlefields of the Boer war, to the blitzed streets of wartime London, Trevor examines the qualities that made Churchill such a towering figure in 20th Century leadership. Roosevelt - Paralysed from the waist down, FDR's bold social and economic reforms turned a country on the brink of catastrophe into a superpower, and helped end World War Two along the way. Thatcher - Britain's first female prime minister, Thatcher was marked out not only by her gender, but for pushing through reforms so bold they have shaped the political landscape ever since. Mandela - At the trial that saw him sent to prison, Mandela made a speech that galvanised international c