Timewatch

In October 1834 the Houses of Parliament burned down. Which architectural style would best express Victorian values? Architects, politicians, and the general public took sides in a fierce debate between the Classic and the Gothic, echoed in today's battle between Classicists and Modernists.

In 1942 the Japanese Imperial Army began construction work on a railway line through the dense jungle between Thailand and Burma. In just 15 months, 26,000 allied PoWs who were forced to labour on the project died from ill treatment, malnutrition and disease. A former prisoner explains that it took many years to be able to come to terms with and understand the experience. But there were other victims of the railway. A quarter of a million Asian labourers were conscripted by the Japanese to work alongside the PoWs. As many as 100,000 of them may have died. One Malaysian recalls: "There were nights when six, seven or even ten people hanged themselves in the latrines." Kwai tells the full story of the "Death Railway", made famous by the 1957 film The Bridge on the River Kwai.

The first of a two-part special to mark the 100th anniversary of Tito's birth. In late 1943 Winston Churchill made what he would later describe as one of the biggest mistakes of the war. On the advice of his special envoy to Yugoslavia, he transferred British weapons and support from the anti-communist resistance under General Draja Mihailovich to the communist partisans, led by Marshal Josip Broz Tito. That decision effectively condemned Yugoslavia to 40 years of communist rule and destroyed the reputation of General Mihailovich, who ever since has been portrayed as a Nazi collaborator.

When Marshal Tito imposed a communist dictatorship on Yugoslavia in 1945, the western allies regretted their support for the wartime resistance leader. But when, three years later, Tito fell out with Stalin, the west backed him once again. Timewatch examines how Tito was able to play east against west to his own advantage and leave behind him a legacy which haunts Yugoslavia to this day.

Until now, the three-man Argentine junta which led the invasion of the Falkland Islands has kept its secrets. Tonight, for the first time, a junta member, Air Force General Basilio Lami Dozo , speaks out. His Exocet missiles were the most deadly threat to the British Task Force. And an in-depth look at the US Secretary of State Alexander Haig 's attempt to avert a war - and save his own job. He promised President Reagan, "We'll walk this kitty back". Shuttling between General Galtieri and Margaret Thatcher - who dubbed him "Woolly AI" - Haig's moments of elation and disappointment, revealed here for the first time, became increasingly desperate as the Task Force steamed steadily southwards - to war.

First of two programmes about the sister of Germany's great philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, the man Hitler and Mussolini claimed was their inspiration. In Paraguay the blond, blue-eyed people of New Germany speak the same Saxon as their ancestors did when they arrived there more than 100 years ago. They are the result of a bizarre racial experiment carried out by Elisabeth Nietzsche, who founded the colony with Bernard Forster, a racist, Jew-baiting schoolteacher. Her relationship with Forster had led her brother to break off contact with her. But when Friedrich Nietzsche was declared insane, it was Elisabeth who returned to Germany to take control of his affairs. Tonight's film visits Paraguay to meet the descendants of the people she chose for their "purity of blood" to form a new Fatherland.

The second part of a two-programme study of Elizabeth Nietzsche, sister of the German philosopher, Friedrich Nietsche. After the suicide of her husband and the failure of their "Aryan utopia" in Paraguay, she returned to Germany to look after her dying brother. Over the next thirty or more years, she falsified his writings and distorted his ideas to such an extent, that to this day his name is still directly associated with European fascism. The programme uses material from the Nietzsche Archive in Weimar, formerly part of East Germany, to reveal that Elizabeth Nietzsche was wooed by both Mussolini and Hitler and how she became one of the most powerful women in the Third Reich.

Examines the planning of the assassination of SS Obergruppenfuhrer Reinhard Heydrich in 1942. Considered to be the most dangerous man after Hitler in Nazi Germany, Heydrich was the architect of the "final solution". His assassination provoked terrible reprisals.

The first of three programmes about `Gladio', the secret terrorist network operating in Europe. Discusses the network's creation, after the end of the Second World War, from a group of Nazis remaining in occupied territories, and in resistance to the rise of communism. Reveals the role of the CIA in the political affairs of post-war Europe through their manipulation of `Gladio' and the network's influence in the internal affairs of almost every European country.

Second of three programmes exploring the influence of `Gladio' a terrorist network organisation operating in Europe. This programme examines the Bologna railway bombing in 1980 ostensibly by the Red Brigade. The programme argues that the Brigade had been inflitrated by right-wing agents who conducted a series of atrocities that so terrified citizens that they called for greater state security.

Third of three programmes exploring the influence of `Gladio', a secret terrorist network operating in Europe. Discusses the development in the 1980s of a type of terrorism which used the media in order to influence public opinion and destabilise democratic society. Includes an examination of the kidnap and subsequent murder of the former Italian prime minister Aldo Moro.

Shows how the Red Scare of the 1950s affected ordinary men and women in America, as they were forced to respond to questions about whether they belonged to the Communist Party. Archive footage paints a picture of suspicion and repression, very different from the saccharine images usually associated with the US in the 1950s.

Presents evidence to suggest that McCartyism should more accurately be called Hooverism since it was J. Edgar Hoover who orchestrated and authorised the surveillance and harassment of many ordinary American citizens on the basis of the flimsiest of pretexts.

The final part of this series contrasts the experiences of those who named names with those who refused to cooperate with the McCarthy hearings.

Continues the story of Ernest Satow, a junior diplomat living in Japan in the 19th century. His unique understanding of the forces struggling for supremacy in Japan enabled him to have a direct influence on the events leading to the Civil War of 1868 and to the restoration of the Mikado.

Drama-documentary based on life of Sir Ernest Satow who travelled to Japan in 1862. He quickly got to know the radical young samurai determined to overthrow the corrupt government of the Shogun and lead Japan into a new age.

Traces the origins of the Cuban Missile Crisis to the American reaction to the Cuban Revolution. This first part tells the story of the various US-inspired attacks against Cuba and the life of Fidel Castro, who is interviewed about those years. Khrushchev decided to protect Cuba by placing nuclear missiles there and Kennedy responded by demanding their removal.

The concluding part of the `Cuban missile crisis' story. October 1962, the dramatic story of the US naval blockade, the shooting down of a US spy plane and the Soviet preparations for a nuclear response to a USA invasion of Cuba is told by insiders from both the Kremlin and the White House and by Fidel Castro himself.

Examines what life was like for the ambitious black man in the southern states of America at the turn of the century, when those who bought land or ran for political office faced the threat of the lynch mob, and smiling at a white woman or talking back to a white boss could end with a man chained to a pile of wood and set on fire. The programme argues that the northern states bear equal responsibility for the rule by lynch law in the south, as northern politicians repeatedly voted against any federal anti-lynching legislation in Congress.

A personal account by actor Kenneth Griffith of the rise and fall of Irish nationalist hero Roger Casement. Knighted by the British for his humanitarian work in Africa and South America, in 1913 Casement switched his efforts to the cause of Irish Home Rule. During the First World War he went to Germany, seeking help from the Kaiser. On the eve of the Easter Rising in 1916, as he returned to Ireland with a shipment of German arms, he was arrested, tried and hanged for treason.