War Walks - Season 1

In 1415, Henry V won a remarkable victory against a French force that outnumbered him by five to one. Professor Holmes retraces Henry's route to Agincourt and finds a story of heroism and brutality.

Wellington's victory against Napoleon in 1815 ended the most powerful European empire since the Romans. Professor Holmes visits the farms and fields where history hung in the balance.

The British troops who marched against the Germans in August 1914 believed the war would be over by Christmas. But at Mons they learned that the old world of swords and bugles would be swept away by the machine gun and the shell. Richard Holmes follows in their footsteps as they retreated south from Mons.

1 July 1916 was the blackest day in the British army's history. Richard Holmes walks the fields where 57,000 soldiers were killed or wounded in just a few hours, and continues the story until the end of the Somme campaign in 1916.

In May 1940 the Germans staged a lightning invasion of Belgium and France in a new kind of armoured warfare called blitzkrieg. Richard Holmes traces their route to the French city of Arras, where a small British force launched a counterattack that gave the allies vital breathing space.

Military historian Richard Holmes follows in the tracks of the tanks of the British armoured break-out from the Normandy bridgehead in 1944.