Plot Synopsis

Using the multicultural village of Kibworth, Leicestershire as his focal point, historian Michael Wood tells 2,000 years of English history by intertwining local and national narratives to present an informative picture of one local community through time. Kibworth, located in the heart of England, lived through the Black Death, the English Civil War, the Industrial Revolution and World War II. With the help of the local people and the use of archaeology, landscape, language and DNA, Wood recovers the lost history of the first thousand years of Kibworth, featuring a Roman villa, Anglo-Saxons and Vikings, and evidence of life after the Norman Conquest. As it reaches the catastrophic 14th century, the village goes through the worst famine in European history, and then two-thirds of the people die in the Black Death. In the 14th century, the people set up the first school for their children, and some villagers joined in a rebellion against King Henry V, while others rise to become middle-class merchants in the textile town of Coventry. Then, after the 17th-century dissenters and an 18th-century feminist writer from Kibworth who was a pioneer of children's books, Wood reveals how the Industrial Revolution changed the city, followed by both World Wars. PBS aired the U.S. premiere of this series on Tuesday, July 3, 2012 at 8pm ET.