Timewatch

Explores the role of British merchant seamen during World War II, through the personal testimony of the men who braved the North Atlantic storms and U-boat attacks to keep Britain supplied with essential provisions.

When Gregori Efimovich Rasputin Rasputin was murdered in 1916, rumour and political expediency set to work to paint him as a villain, responsible for the downfall of the Romanov empire, an insane alcoholic capable of any sexual extravagance. This film biography reappraises the myth of the "Mad Monk", using new information as well as first-hand accounts to rescue Rasputin from unjust historians. "He wasn'ta a Svengali figure, controlling the Tsarina," says producer Laurence Rees. "He didn't force people to kill themselves. That legacy is desperately unfair."

Long before the CIA's Gary Power's U2 was shot down in 1960, the RAF had been flying secret spy flights over the Soviet Union. These "peacetime" missions were dangerous, provocative and part of a 20-year undeclared espionage war waged high over the Soviet Union. Over 40 allied aircraft were shot down and over 250 aircrew lost. British, American and Soviet air force pilots involved tell their story, while relatives of missing air crew are now trying to find out what happened to their loved ones.

In the decades leading up to reform of the divorce laws in 1969, thousands of women suffered the injustices of a system that treated a failed marriage as a criminal offence. In the second of three programmes this week on divorce, Timewatch tells the stories of some of these women, and the terrible price they paid to end their marriages.

Winner of seven international film festival awards, the Polish documentary Birthplace is being shown on British television for the first time. Fifty years ago, the Nazis forced Jewish families into hiding. Henryk Gryndberg was then 6 years old. Tonight's film follows him on a personal investigation as he returns to the Polish village of his birth in an attempt to find some trace of his family.

A debate with representatives from government and the civil service of the 1950s and 60s about the immigration policy and legislation of Great Britain during that period. Participants include Enoch Powell, Merlyn Rees and John Bean, founder of the British National Party.

The question of how the i First World War was started has been one of the great controversies of the 20th century. The flashpoint was the assassination in Sarajevo of Franz Ferdinand , heir to the Hapsburg throne. But it was the reaction to his death of a handful of imperial warlords that led to four years of fighting and the death of over eight million people. The producers of this documentary, marking the 80th anniversary of Franz Ferdinand 's death, have been round Europe - from Sarajevo to St Peters-burg - culling archive film from eight countries to piece together the mysteries and intrigues that led to the Great War.

Through special access to the secrets of the Spanish Inquisition's own archives, a very different version of events from that of popular mythology is uncovered about the Inquisition. It was certainly not blameless and on occasion would be ruthless. However its actions pall in comparison with the scale of persecution in other European countries. In the 16th century for example, 10 times as many heretiocs were burned in England as in Spain. The programme examines and how and why the myth of the Inquisition developed.

In the final few months of the Second World War, Hitler's revolutionary V1 and V2 missiles terrorised southern England. In London alone, 25,000 homes were levelled and 8,000 people killed as this country became the first to suffer major ballistic missile bombardment from beyond its borders. In remarkable film footage, screened for the first time, of the weapons in various stages of planning and production, Nazi archives reveal how Germany established a technological advantage that could have changed the outcome of the Second World War.

A film about the horrors of the English Civil War, using letters, diaries and memoirs of ordinary people in 17th-century England. The historical characters of Parliamentarian Lord Saye and Sele, and Royalist Sir Edmund Verney, are represented by their own descendants. Other characters - a soldier, a lawyer, and a political activist - are represented by their modern day counterparts.

The tale of one man's attempt to rewrite the history of the world by redating Egypt's greatest mystery, the Sphinx. Until now, no one can say for sure why, when or by whom the famous statue was carved. The experts think it is Egyptian and 4,500 years old, but maverick investigator John West claims to have new and conclusive evidence that the Sphinx was constructed many thousands of years before the Pharaohs

In the centenary year of his birth, and using previously unseen home movies, this film explores the contradictions of the Ukranian peasant's son. He contributed to the crises in Berlin and Cuba, yet he hated the arms race. As Stalin's henchman he had plenty of blood on his hands, yet he denounced his former master and ensured that the terrorwould never return.

Niccolo Machiavelli 's name is synonymous with political intrigue, but recent analysis of his work suggests that he was a political pragmatist whose best-known book, The Prince, is as relevant today as it was some years ago in 16th-century Italy. Reading extracts from The Prince is Ian Richardson , who played Francis Urquhart in House of Cards.

tells the story of the woman judged to be such a danger to public health that she was incarcerated by the city of New York for 23 years. In the winter of 1906, Dr George Soper was summoned to Oyster Bay, Long Island, to investigate a mystery. Why had typhoid fever broken out in the house of a rich New York banker? He uncovered an extraordinary trail of sickness and death left by roving Irish cook Mary Mallon. Two of the people who met Typhoid Mary in her isolation hospital speak for the first time about their mysterious friend. Her story quickly became a medical legend which still has resonance today. Faced with an Aids epidemic, does the state have a right to lock up people for the good of society?