The Russian Revolution in Colour

In this surprising documentary, archaeologist and historian Neil Oliver examines racism in the Deep South and the Scots who first occupied it who influenced where we are today. Oliver travels to the south and speaks with many people and researchers to discuss the Klan's history in Southern United States.

The Russian Revolution is the collective term for a series of revolutions in Russia in 1917, which destroyed the Tsarist autocracy and led to the creation of the Soviet Union. The Tsar was deposed and replaced by a provisional government in the first revolution of February 1917 (March in the Gregorian calendar; the older Julian calendar was in use in Russia at the time). In the second revolution, during October, the Provisional Government was removed and replaced with a Bolshevik (Communist) government.

Neil Oliver describes the worst ever railway accident in the UK, which happened a hundred years ago on 22 May 1915, in which three trains collided at Quintinshill near Gretna Green. One of the trains was a troop train taking soldiers to fight in World War I at the Battle of Gallipoli: many of the dead were in this train which caught fire due to escaped gas from the archaic gas lighting in the carriages. The cause of the crash was attributed to a catastrophic signalman's error, but Neil examines whether there were other contributory factors and whether there was a cover-up to prevent investigation of them, making convenient scapegoats of the signalmen.

Thousands of Clydesdales horses once roamed the Clyde Valley near Glasgow. Today, they're all but gone. Passionate about saving the Scottish herd, Glaswegian Janice Kirkpatrick travels to the heart of the Canadian Prairies where one family has preserved the ancient Clydesdale bloodlines for five generations. Join Janice as she embarks on an unprecedented two-year quest that will alter her life and change the destiny of an entire breed.

Robert Burns was well aware of the revolution taking place across the Atlantic as he grew up. The poet was inspired. And America was to be inspired by him. From Abraham Lincoln to Frederick Douglass, and Walt Whitman to Bob Dylan, some of the most significant figures in American politics and culture have cited Burns as an influence.

The role of Scots in shaping the concept of the American Dream is a story often celebrated but could Scottish settlers have also had a hand in America’s racist nightmare? Neil Oliver travels over two thousand miles to examine links between racism today and the Scottish settlers that first occupied America's Deep South.

Using first-hand testimony, this documentary pieces together those seismic consequences of 9/11 that have been keenly felt in Scotland over the last 20 years.

The months-long battle of Monte Cassino, one of the bloodiest of the second World War, is related by the Germans and Allied troops who fought it. Men of the 1st/4th Essex Battalion and the German paratroop regiment are to the fore here, as they were 60 years ago.