David Wilson Researcher, Writer, TV Producer and Director 

This six-part series on the history of the British Empire, presented by Niall Ferguson, then at Oxford but now at Harvard, created a great stir. Shot on locations right round the world, it brought the British Empire back into the mainstream of debate. Many people castigated Ferguson as a latterday imperialist, but this was unfair to him and the series: we were as insistent on the evils of Empire as on the successes.

 

I was responsible for two of the films: "Why Britain?" about the rise of the British world predominance; and 'Heaven's Breed' about the contradictions at the heart of the Empire during its Victorian heyday.