In Search of the Dark Ages - 8. William the Conqueror (BBC)

BBC documentary series. The Norman Conquest is the most famous event in British history. It is also the most controversial. What actually happened in 1066 and why?

Michael Wood concludes his personal history of the so-called Dark Ages by going in search of William the Conqueror in Normandy and England.

In Normandy, William's dukedom, the sense of history is ever present. Where the Normans set off in
1066, the allies landed in 1944. Caen, citadel of William the Conqueror; Bayeux, where the great tapestry reveals Harold's fateful advance to the English throne. St Germain de Montgomery, ancestral home of the Field-Marshal who returned in 1944. In England, the Battle of Hastings and the Conquest represent the climax to this film and the series. As the Normans fastened their hold on England by building motte and bailey castles everywhere, the Anglo-Saxon era came to an end. In the Public Records Office in London is the Domesday Book; here Michael Wood reveals his own sorrow at the passing of the chief makers of England.