Timewatch

The Timewatch strand returns with the story of how, in July 2007, 61 men and women set off on an extraordinary voyage to sail the world's largest reconstructed Viking ship from Denmark to Ireland. This film follows their seven-week journey and reveals the emotional and physical challenges the crew face as they cope with having less than a square metre each in which to work, live, eat and sleep - with no shelter from the weather. In their efforts to sail like the Vikings of old, the crew are pushed to the limit when they encounter larger waves and stronger winds than they've ever faced before.

Researchers and historians are still arguing about why Omaha Beach was the hardest beach to capture in the D-day landings. Presenter Richard Hammond analyses the latest theories with Dr Simon Trew of the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst.

In January, the MSC Napoli ran aground, spilling its cargo on Branscombe beach in Devon. The public were delighted, but the authorities were determined to police opportunists. Looters of the Napoli were reviving a centuries' old tradition: 'wrecking'. Author Bella Bathurst discovers the social history of a national crime.

Dr Saul David investigates the violent world of the medieval melee tournament. Unlike the better known joust, this was a brutal brawl with sharpened weapons, few rules, and one undisputed champion- William Marshal. Saul investigates Marshal's life, discovering his epic rise from a tournament champion to the Regent of England who saved a kingdom on the battlefield. Saul also experiments with Marshal's weapons.

More than 3000 years ago, the rebel Pharaoh Akhenaten marched his people from his capital Thebes to build a new city in the desert. It took 20 years to build. The people of this city worshipped in the world's first monotheistic religion, overseen by Akhenaten and his beautiful Queen Nefertiti. The city was designed as a religious utopia. But, after 25 years of digging, experts are suggesting that Akhenaten was nothing but a despot.

The stories of the one million post-war Britons who paid ten pounds to emigrate to Australia under the Assisted Passage Scheme. It was one of the biggest planned migrations of the twentieth century. The catch was that they had to stay for a minimum of two years. Many loved their new country, but one quarter fled home disillusioned, fleeing 'pommy bashing' or believing that they had been sold a lie.

An investigation into a radical theory that Stonehenge, far from being a place of burial as is commonly assumed, was in fact a place of healing - a Bronze Age Lourdes. The investigation takes in forensic testing of bones excavated over the past decades and hard-won permission for the first dig in 50 years at the Henge, watched live online by millions of viewers around the world. Does the theory of the healing stones bear up to modern-day forensic science?

Tsunamis are among the most destructive forces known to Man, but most of us in Britain think they are one thing we don't need to worry about. Professors Simon Haslett and Ted Bryant have already challenged this view with their belief that the Bristol Channel flood of 1607, one of Britain's greatest natural disasters, was in fact a tsunami. But the story doesn't stop there. In Britain's Forgotten Floods, Simon and Ted investigate evidence for what they believe are at least four more British tsunamis.

Timewatch exclusively reveals the dramatic true story behind the Boxer Rebellion of 1900, when Imperial troops and Chinese rebels laid siege to the diplomatic quarter in Beijing. Told through Chinese sources and the diaries and memoirs of the outnumbered European defenders, the siege helped to bring down the imperial monarchy, precipitating a century of destruction, revolution and ultimate renewal.

The story of how an unassuming little girl rose to be the most powerful woman in the world. At her birth few believed Princess Victoria would ascend the throne, but a number of untimely deaths and the failure of her uncles to father any children meant that Victoria became heiress to the British throne. The battle between her and her mother the Duchess of Kent, however, was to become a fierce maternal struggle, as the duchess schemed to share in the power and riches that would one day be Victoria's.

Michael Palin tells the story of how the First World War ended on 11th November 1918 and reveals the shocking truth that soldiers continued to be killed in battle for many hours after the armistice had been signed. Recounting the events of the days and hours leading up to that last morning, Palin tells the personal stories of the last soldiers to die as the minutes and seconds ticked away to the 11 o'clock ceasefire.