Treasure Houses

'Walking in the Zoo is the OK thing to do' was top of the pops in the 1860s. Mark explores the fascination with wild animals, from the day when the King's beasts were kept in the Tower, to London Zoo's release of a herd of Pere David 's deer back into the wild - in China

Those strange ruined towers that cling to the cliff tops in Cornwall were once the Power houses of Britain's greatest industrial county. They housed the engines that Powered the pumps and hauled up the tin from mines that reached out under the Atlantic Ocean. William Crago was 9 years old when he first went to work down the mine. He left behind a diary which tells the story of the day he climbed 1,600 feet down a rung ladder to the dark pit streaming with water which was to be his place of work for the next ten years.

The Abbey Church is called a 'Royal Peculiar,' which means that the Dean and Chapter are responsible to no one but the monarch. It has been the theatre for royal dramas for almost 1,000 years. Mark tells some of the backstage stories of splendour, intrigue and murder, from William the Conquerer's coronation to the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of York.

Charles Dickens, one of the world's most famous writers, always remembered the 'very queer, small boy' he once had seen. Mark goes to his house in London and his birthplace in Portsmouth, on the trail of the boy whose tragic childhood inspired him to write stories which would hold the nation spellbound. But the shadow of his early life that gave him his inspiration also denied him true happiness.

At the beginning of the century, Europe was ruled by kings and queens. They were rich and powerful and their crown jewels were the symbols of their strength. Mark tells the stories of intrigue, ambition, of sorrow and disaster that lie behind a strange collection of facsimiles of the imperial jewels of the world.

'A perfect little paradise' is how Queen Victoria described Osborne House - the get-away-from-it-all holiday home by the sea.