Yesterday's Witness (1969)

It was October 1941 and the English Trader, aground on a sandbank, was being pounded to pieces by tremendous seas. Forty-four men were huddled on the bridge, and they saw a huge wave hit the approaching Cromer lifeboat, sweep half her crew overboard and come within inches of capsizing her. They knew then that they had little chance of being saved. But this was the legendary Cox'n Henry Blogg of the Cromer lifeboat-in the lifeboat that wouldn'give up. Taking part the present coxswain of the Cromer lifeboat -'SHRIMP' DAVIES DICK DAVIES, KATHLEEN DAVIES ROSE DAVIES, ' KELLY ' HARRISON and one-time gunlayer of the English Trader - WILLIAM HICKSON

April 21, 1971, midnight

On 29 August 1930, the most isolated community in the British Isles leapt into the headlines. The island of St Kilda had been evacuated. A hundred and ten miles from the Scottish mainland, cut off and ignored, her tiny population had been struggling to survive. Finally they had given up. In tonight's film four of the islanders, the resident nurse, and the missionary's daughter describe life on the island in those last years and the events which led up to the evacuation.

April 28, 1971, midnight

Yes, We Have No Bananas ...or much of anything else for that matter. This was wartime London, a time when the scale of values was turned upside down and the ordinary things of life became suddenly precious. Rationing was the perfect system devised to ensure fair shares for all, but in its wisdom the government forgot to take the one measure necessary to make the whole thing work - to lock everyone up. Charlie, a Cockney street-trader, and locals in an East End pub describe some of the fiddles that went on and the antics of that extinct, lovable rogue, The Spiv.

May 5, 1971, midnight

Ski-ing in Switzerland today is big business, from nursery slopes to Olympic Gold Medals, but it wasn't the Swiss who started it. It all began with an English Methodist Minister and a Public Schools Winter Sports Club, some 70 years ago.

May 12, 1971, midnight

In the 20s and 30s there were many depressed areas in Britain, but Jarrow on Tyneside was one of the worst hit. Some men had been unemployed for 15 years. Jarrow's MP, Ellen Wilkinson, called it "the town that was murdered". In 1936, 200 unemployed Jarrow men marched some 300 miles to London to lay a petition before the House of Commons. They called it a Crusade and organised it with military efficiency. The story of that march is told in tonight's programme by Alderman David Riley, the marshal of the march; Alderman Paddy Scullion, J.B. Symonds and S.J. Rowan, his lieutenants; Mrs. Jean Clark, on the administrative side; and Lord Ritchie-Calder, then a journalist on the Daily Herald.

May 19, 1971, midnight

At the end of 1928 the first "talkies" arrived from Hollywood. They caused a sensation. The public clamoured for more. In British studios - which were still churning out silent films - there was instant chaos. The scramble to make Britain's first talkies is described by some of the producers, directors, technicians and stars of the time: Alfred Hitchcock, Herbert Wilcox, Sir Michael Balcon, Ronald Neame, Alec Murray, Albert Ross, Harry Miller, John Longden, Mabel Poulton, Margot Grahame, Chili Bouchier and John Stuart Including excerpts from Kitty, Atlantic, Rookery Nook, and from the first full-length British talkie, Hitchcock's Blackmail.

May 26, 1971, midnight