Lights in the Darkness
In this alternative history of the British Isles, working artists explore an era once known as the 'dark鈥� ages, finding mysterious art that haunts our landscapes and imagination.
This episode immerses us in the turbulent era that followed the Roman occupation of Britain. Once known as the 鈥榙ark鈥� ages, in reality it鈥檚 a time of glittering art and extraordinary cultural fusions.
This alternative history of the British Isles, told through art, brings together encounters between contemporary artists and ancient art, and interviews with experts and curators, to trace how Celtic, Anglo-Saxon and Norse peoples fought for supremacy, leaving behind mysterious fragments of art that still haunt our landscapes and imagination.
Sculptor Antony Gormley meets Spong Man, a unique clay figure that once sat on a 5th-century funerary urn, a mysterious glimpse into the mindset of early Anglo-Saxon settlers. Meanwhile, actor Michael Sheen performs the 7th-century Welsh poem of resistance against the Anglo-Saxons, Y Gododdin, and Scottish artists Dalziel & Scullion wonder at the monumental Aberlemno Stones (c.500-800 AD), believed to mark the hard-fought boundary line of the Pictish kingdom.
Like the stones, the gold artefacts of the Staffordshire Hoard fuse pagan and Christian imagery, and at Stoke鈥檚 Potteries Museum artist Cornelia Parker investigates why they were found so broken and twisted. Spreading alongside such Christian symbols was a powerful new language, English, used to gloss over the Latin in the elaborate Lindisfarne Gospels explored by the Rev Richard Coles. Maria Dahvana Headley analyses how English was used in the epic poem Beowulf and tells us how she has updated the work with a hip-hop feminist translation.
The Anglo-Saxon Mappa Mundi reveals a new sense of the Isles鈥� place in the wider world, and is examined by map artist David McCandless and British Library curator Claire Breay. Graphic novelist Woodrow Phoenix explores how the Anglo-Saxon age came to a dramatic end in 1066 by taking a fresh look at the embroidered propaganda of the Norman conquest in the Bayeux Tapestry.
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鈥淚t actually sends shivers down your spine鈥�
Duration: 01:51
Music Played
Timings (where shown) are from the start of the programme in hours and minutes
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00:05Thom Yorke
Suspirium
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00:09Black Sabbath
War Pigs
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00:14Massive Attack, Horace Andy
Angel
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00:23Nils Frahm
Old Thought
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00:28Emperors New Clothes
Leaders and Believers (Unkle Mix)
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00:29Zbigniew Preisner, Elzbieta Towarnicka, Dariusz Paradowski, Piotr Lykowsky, Piotr Kusiewicz, Grzegorz Zychovicz and Jan Szypowsky
Dies Irae
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00:29Max Richter
Path 5
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00:36Max Richter
Path 19 (yet frailest)
Performer: Ben Russell. -
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00:37Deepcentral
#Dragosteainvin
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00:44Thom Yorke
Black Swan
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00:46Rival Consoles
Pre
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00:48Four Tet
Plastic People
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00:56J贸hann J贸hannsson
The Rocket Builder (Io Pan!)
Credits
| Role | Contributor |
|---|---|
| Narrator | David Threlfall |
| Director | Sam Anthony |
| Producer | Helena Hunt |
| Series Producer | Melanie Fall |
| Executive Producer | Russell Barnes |
| Executive Producer | Denys Blakeway |
| Production Company | ClearStory Ltd |
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