Jeremy Bowen presents a look back at the creation of the state of Israel, examining the the events leading up to the Israeli war of Independence in 1949, its impact on Arab/Israeli relations and the implications for the Middle East. It's a one hour crash course in some of the underlying causes of the current problems in the Middle East.

D-Day: As It Happens D-Day: As It Happens tells the story of this pivotal event in 20th-century history in a completely new way. Using newly-analysed archive footage, viewers can track the progress of seven people who were there on the day, each of them a real participant in the 1944 invasion. And they can do so moment by moment in real time, encountering the twists and turns of the fighting at the same time as the D-Day seven did, and learning their fate as the action unfolds in parallel with the present, Narrated by Peter Snow, with Channel 4 presenter and former marine Arthur Williams, and experts including former British Army officer Colonel Tim Collins and front-line journalist Lorna Ward. The first programme tells the back stories of the real people that the event is following in real time and sets out their missions over the following 24 hours. The D-Day seven include a paratrooper, a midget submariner, a nurse and a military cameraman.

The series highlights the major events which have shaped the Earth's history and allowed life to flourish. Follow Dr Stewart's personal journey to some of the most remote places on the planet. The atmosphere is Earth’s protective layer, cloaking us in a warm, oxygen-rich embrace and shielding us from the cold hostility of space. It acts as a natural greenhouse, keeping the Earth 51 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than it would otherwise be. Yet the atmosphere is also full of contradictions. It’s immensely powerful but at the same time highly sensitive. It’s destructive, yet it shelters us. It was created in part by the planet’s first organisms, and it continues to be essential for life.

Hundreds of years ago in faraway Iceland the Vikings began to write down dozens of stories called sagas - sweeping narratives based on real people and real events. But as Oxford University's Janina Ramirez discovers, these sagas are not just great works of art, they are also priceless historical documents which bring to life the Viking world. Dr Ramirez travels across glaciers and through the lava fields of Iceland to the far north west of the country to find out about one of the most compelling of these stories - the Laxdaela Saga.

Dr Jago Cooper reveals the history of some of South America's ancient civilisations. He begins with an epic journey into the remote Peruvian Andes in search of the mysterious Chachapoya people. Once numbering half a million, they were known as the 'People of the Clouds'. Dr Cooper reveals how they developed sophisticated methods of recording stories, traded in exotic goods found hundreds of miles from their territory, and had funeral traditions that challenge assumptions about ancient human behaviour. His search for evidence takes him to astonishing cliff tombs untouched for 500 years and one of the most spectacular fortresses in South America, where the fate of the Chachapoya is revealed.

The series explores the impact of racism on a global scale and chronicles the shifts in the perception of race and the history of racism in Europe, the Americas, Australia and Asia. The first episode begins by assessing the implications of the relationship between Europe, Africa and the Americas in the 15th century. It considers how racist ideas and practices developed in key religious and secular institutions, and how they showed up in writings by European philosophers Aristotle and Immanuel Kant.