David Dimbleby starts his journey in Ely in the spectacular cathedral that dominates the Fens. He explores the world of medieval knights at Hedingham Castle, travels to Norwich to discover the workings of a great medieval city and visits Lavenham which grew fat on the cloth trade. Join him on a pilgrimage to Little Walsingham and a visit to a rabbit warrener's lodge before finishing at Cambridge University, the jewel of East Anglia.

David Dimbleby looks at how England was transformed by the extraordinary flowering of architecture, ideas and exploration of the Elizabethan Renaissance. Take a journey that tracks the newly rich to stately homes like Burghley House and follows those who hid, in fear of their lives, in the secret spaces in Harvington Hall. Discover the bizarre secret codes of Triangular Lodge and the wonders of Chastleton House, one of Britain's most complete Jacobean houses.

David Dimbleby travels north of the border to find out how Scotland developed a style of building quite different from that in England. Join him on a journey from the extraordinary visions of Stirling Castle to the Scottish baronial of Dunrobin; from the crofter's community of Gearrannan on the Isle of Lewis to Charles Rennie Mackintosh's masterpiece, The Glasgow School of Art; and ending up at the new Scottish Parliament building in Edinburgh.

David Dimbleby encounters the grace and elegance of the Georgian terraces of Bath and Bristol, the magnificent country houses of Blenheim and the gardens of Stourhead. He discovers where the seeds of the Industrial Revolution were sown, in the canals and locks of the West Country and the tin mines of Cornwall. He also travels across Wales to Thomas Telford's Menai Bridge and to Ireland to tell the story of Georgian Dublin.

At the start of Victoria's reign, the north of England seemed out of control. Enormous industrial cities lacked basic amenities whilst many of their inhabitants lived in slums. David Dimbleby travels to Manchester, Leeds, Newcastle and the Tower Ballroom, Blackpool, to tell the story of Britain's greatest construction boom. Find out how factories, town halls, sewers, churches, hospitals and dance halls were built in a dramatic attempt to deal with the rapidly expanding urban population.

David Dimbleby completes his journey through Britain, discovering how the nation's history has shaped its buildings, in the south of England, exploring its dramatic transformation in the 20th century. Modern technology opened up new worlds to ordinary people, changing the way they worked, lived and played. He begins in Metroland, part of the suburban explosion of the 1920s and 1930s, with its 'Tudorbethan' houses and sumptuous cinemas like Moorish palaces, traces the arrival of the bold new modern style at a glorious public swimming pool on the south coast, and sees what effect the war had on what we built – from much-loved prefabs to high-rise blocks. And he visits the new temples of money in the City of London – breathtaking towers of steel and glass – and asks how many of them will still be there one hundred years from now.