0:00:07 > 0:00:12My journey through the British Isles is taking me to places that have inspired
0:00:12 > 0:00:15some of our greatest artists.
0:00:18 > 0:00:22I'm heading for Wales and the West Country.
0:00:25 > 0:00:28To the ancient monuments of Salisbury Plain.
0:00:30 > 0:00:32The heathlands of Dorset.
0:00:35 > 0:00:39The majestic mountains of Snowdonia.
0:00:49 > 0:00:54And the seas around our far western shores.
0:01:00 > 0:01:04This is a place steeped in Celtic history and mythology,
0:01:04 > 0:01:08a place of prehistoric kingdoms, of ancient ruins,
0:01:08 > 0:01:11the legendary home of King Arthur's Camelot.
0:01:11 > 0:01:15A place with a hint of the pagan just beneath the surface.
0:01:15 > 0:01:19This is the landscape of Britain's mystical West.
0:02:17 > 0:02:19It's a wonderful moment,
0:02:19 > 0:02:22breaking out onto Salisbury Plain, this great expanse.
0:02:22 > 0:02:25All the stress of the city gone,
0:02:25 > 0:02:28the air feels fresher, the skies are bigger,
0:02:28 > 0:02:32and then, in the far distance, you spot the gateway to the West,
0:02:32 > 0:02:34the magical circle of Stonehenge.
0:02:41 > 0:02:45Stonehenge is one of Britain's great mysteries.
0:02:45 > 0:02:48We don't know for certain who built it,
0:02:48 > 0:02:53how they moved these massive stones, or why.
0:02:54 > 0:02:59We do know it's been here for about 4,000 years,
0:02:59 > 0:03:01the relic of a lost civilisation.
0:03:04 > 0:03:07200 years ago, long before the invention of photography,
0:03:07 > 0:03:11artists provided the popular images of the great beauty sights.
0:03:11 > 0:03:15And professional painters vied with each other for success.
0:03:15 > 0:03:20Interestingly, Stonehenge had not yet had a great picture done of it.
0:03:20 > 0:03:23In a sense, it was up for grabs.
0:03:29 > 0:03:35The painters who took on this challenge were William Turner and John Constable.
0:03:37 > 0:03:41Both came on expeditions here in the early 19th century.
0:03:41 > 0:03:45Turner was the first to produce a finished work.
0:03:48 > 0:03:52Turner painted a watercolour here which became nothing short of a sensation.
0:03:52 > 0:03:58It was reproduced as an engraving which became a best-seller throughout Britain.
0:03:58 > 0:04:03What Turner had done was create a powerful image of Stonehenge
0:04:03 > 0:04:05which entranced the British public.
0:04:13 > 0:04:17Turner paints an epic moment in the middle of a storm.
0:04:20 > 0:04:22A flock of sheep is scattered.
0:04:22 > 0:04:25Several appear to have been felled by lightning.
0:04:26 > 0:04:29The shepherd has been struck down too,
0:04:29 > 0:04:31and his dog howls at the elements.
0:04:35 > 0:04:40Turner's painting offered a daunting challenge to John Constable.
0:04:40 > 0:04:44Much of his career had been spent in the shadow of the great Turner.
0:04:44 > 0:04:48Here was an opportunity to assert himself.
0:04:50 > 0:04:54He turned to a pencil sketch he'd made in 1820
0:04:54 > 0:04:58and he used this as a starting point for a major work.
0:05:13 > 0:05:17Constable paints Stonehenge after the storm has passed,
0:05:17 > 0:05:21the ancient stones illuminated by a double rainbow.
0:05:25 > 0:05:29Constable had successfully vied with Turner
0:05:29 > 0:05:34and shown the confidence of a painter at the height of his powers.
0:05:34 > 0:05:40After years of struggle, Constable was by now accepted as one of the great artists of the age.
0:05:40 > 0:05:43And the painting he did, based on that sketch of 1820,
0:05:43 > 0:05:48has become the defining image of Stonehenge.
0:05:57 > 0:06:01South-west of Stonehenge, towards the coast,
0:06:01 > 0:06:04is the birthplace of the writer Thomas Hardy.
0:06:04 > 0:06:09In novels like Tess Of The D'Urbevilles and Far From The Madding Crowd,
0:06:09 > 0:06:14Hardy captures the power of landscape over our lives.
0:06:18 > 0:06:24This is the cottage where Thomas Hardy was born. In the middle window was the bedroom.
0:06:24 > 0:06:28He was one of four children, the son of a stonemason.
0:06:28 > 0:06:34He used to walk three miles to school in Dorchester, so quite a humble background.
0:06:34 > 0:06:39But this cottage is set in the most glorious Dorset countryside,
0:06:39 > 0:06:42which he made so famous in his books.
0:06:43 > 0:06:46Hardy turned his native Dorset
0:06:46 > 0:06:50into a fictional land called Wessex,
0:06:50 > 0:06:54the setting for passionate love stories and tragedies.
0:06:54 > 0:06:58There are two sides to Hardy country.
0:06:58 > 0:07:01The ordered world of man -
0:07:01 > 0:07:03towns, villages,
0:07:03 > 0:07:06the cultivated fields.
0:07:06 > 0:07:10And then there's the untamed wilderness of Egdon Heath.
0:07:20 > 0:07:23This is where so many of his characters met their destiny,
0:07:23 > 0:07:26where they pursued their illicit love affairs,
0:07:26 > 0:07:29where they battled with the elements,
0:07:29 > 0:07:32where some of them came to die as outcasts.
0:07:32 > 0:07:36For Hardy, Egdon Heath is almost at the centre of the world.
0:07:36 > 0:07:40Everything around it changed - the people, the villages, the fields.
0:07:40 > 0:07:44He wrote that civilisation was its enemy.
0:07:49 > 0:07:51"The storm was its lover
0:07:51 > 0:07:55"and the wind its friend.
0:07:55 > 0:08:00"It was at present a place perfectly accordant with Man's nature.
0:08:00 > 0:08:04"Neither ghastly, hateful, nor ugly,
0:08:04 > 0:08:08"neither commonplace, unmeaning, nor tame.
0:08:08 > 0:08:12"But, like man, slighted and enduring.
0:08:13 > 0:08:19"It had a lonely face, suggesting tragical possibilities."
0:08:27 > 0:08:30You can see why Hardy loved this place so much.
0:08:30 > 0:08:34It's interesting that his bad characters always hate the heath.
0:08:34 > 0:08:37The characters that he admires always love it.
0:08:45 > 0:08:48How much of Hardy's heath is left?
0:08:50 > 0:08:56Approximately only 20% of what would have been here, or in England...
0:08:56 > 0:09:01- in, um...in Hardy's time. - A hundred years or so?- Yeah.
0:09:03 > 0:09:09In Hardy, people die of adder bites, for instance, on this heath.
0:09:09 > 0:09:13- Has it still got snakes here?- Yeah, there are three types of snake here.
0:09:13 > 0:09:17- Three?- Yeah. There's adders, grass snake and smooth snake.
0:09:17 > 0:09:19And you keep tabs on them by...?
0:09:21 > 0:09:25We've put tins down. That's the best way of monitoring them.
0:09:25 > 0:09:29Um...then...as the tins heat up,
0:09:29 > 0:09:31as they're cold-blooded,
0:09:31 > 0:09:34they will heat up underneath, so it's a good way of spotting them.
0:09:34 > 0:09:37- Just a bit of corrugated iron? - Yeah, just like this.
0:09:45 > 0:09:48- And there we have a smooth snake. - Oh, yes.
0:09:52 > 0:09:55It's very, very smooth.
0:09:57 > 0:09:59Is it very rare?
0:09:59 > 0:10:02Very, very rare. The rarest snake in Britain,
0:10:02 > 0:10:05only found on the heaths.
0:10:11 > 0:10:16Hardy knew his heath was losing its battle against the forces of civilisation.
0:10:19 > 0:10:21Today, little of it remains.
0:10:21 > 0:10:26Hardy's novels are a lament for a landscape and a way of life
0:10:26 > 0:10:28that was disappearing.
0:10:55 > 0:11:01The light up here on these Dorset hills by the sea is quite astonishing!
0:11:01 > 0:11:04Look at this field of corn - almost silver.
0:11:04 > 0:11:09It's partly that the wind and the air is so clean,
0:11:09 > 0:11:12because the wind's blowing across from the south-west.
0:11:12 > 0:11:16It's partly, I think, the huge mirror of the sea, of the English Channel out there,
0:11:16 > 0:11:21which throws the light back up. It makes it completely magical.
0:11:31 > 0:11:36The artist David Inshaw has captured the magical light of this part of the country.
0:11:44 > 0:11:48This painting was an instant hit when it first appeared.
0:11:49 > 0:11:52When the artist revealed that he was in love
0:11:52 > 0:11:55with BOTH the women playing badminton,
0:11:55 > 0:11:57it took on an air of mystery.
0:11:58 > 0:12:01Inshaw said his passion led him to paint them
0:12:01 > 0:12:05"blessed by the sun in the clear early morning air".
0:12:05 > 0:12:11But there's something slightly eerie, ghostlike, about the scene.
0:12:25 > 0:12:30The village of Little Bredy is the setting of another of Inshaw's paintings.
0:12:30 > 0:12:34It captures the familiar scene of a game of village cricket.
0:12:37 > 0:12:40SOUNDS OF CRICKET BEING PLAYED
0:13:19 > 0:13:21- Very good innings! - Thank you very much.
0:13:21 > 0:13:25What led you to paint this scene?
0:13:25 > 0:13:27Well, it was a lot of circumstances, really.
0:13:27 > 0:13:31I originally came here late one evening,
0:13:31 > 0:13:33about 35 years ago,
0:13:33 > 0:13:36and the sun was setting and there was nobody about
0:13:36 > 0:13:38and I just sat in the pavilion and watched the sun set,
0:13:38 > 0:13:41and just enjoyed it - it was a magical place.
0:13:41 > 0:13:42I didn't see anybody...
0:13:42 > 0:13:45Is there something about...
0:13:45 > 0:13:49playing cricket in this scenery
0:13:49 > 0:13:53- that makes it different for you? - Yeah, it is really,
0:13:53 > 0:13:58because when the bowler's bowling you ARE focused on that moment when the ball comes towards you.
0:13:58 > 0:14:01It does enforce this particular kind of landscape
0:14:01 > 0:14:04which is totally magical, especially on an evening like this,
0:14:04 > 0:14:06with the long shadows and so on.
0:14:07 > 0:14:11You see the landscape and the countryside because you're hitting this ball!
0:14:11 > 0:14:13- Does that make sense?- No!
0:14:13 > 0:14:17- Not to me! If it makes sense to you, that's fine.- I don't know!
0:14:25 > 0:14:28SPEECH DROWNED BY MUSIC
0:14:39 > 0:14:43THEY CHATTER
0:15:02 > 0:15:04Glastonbury in Somerset.
0:15:04 > 0:15:09For almost 1,000 years this town has been a place of pilgrimage
0:15:09 > 0:15:14for those seeking the legend of King Arthur, Camelot and the Holy Grail.
0:15:16 > 0:15:18We don't actually know who King Arthur is.
0:15:18 > 0:15:23The likeliest candidate is that he was a 6th-century Celtic warrior,
0:15:23 > 0:15:27who fought a number of successful battles against the Anglo-Saxons.
0:15:27 > 0:15:31But legend has transformed him into this great king who sleeps in the isle of Avalon,
0:15:31 > 0:15:36waiting for the moment when he'll rise up and come to our aid at our hour of need.
0:15:36 > 0:15:38Until that hour of need comes,
0:15:38 > 0:15:42the best chance of finding him is here, at Glastonbury Abbey.
0:15:46 > 0:15:50And this is the supposed site of Arthur's tomb.
0:15:50 > 0:15:54His bones and that of his wife were found outside the walls,
0:15:54 > 0:15:56brought in here by the monks,
0:15:56 > 0:15:59authenticated by them in the 12th century.
0:15:59 > 0:16:02And ever since, this has been a site of pilgrimage.
0:16:02 > 0:16:08In fact, Arthur's death has become almost a national fixation.
0:16:17 > 0:16:19The story of Arthur's death,
0:16:19 > 0:16:23and with it the end of an age of honour and chivalry,
0:16:23 > 0:16:26has fascinated artists for centuries.
0:16:30 > 0:16:32Edward Burne-Jones,
0:16:32 > 0:16:35one of the most popular painters of the Victorian era,
0:16:35 > 0:16:38returned again and again to Arthurian legend.
0:16:58 > 0:17:05In 1881, Burne-Jones began a 20-foot wide painting of King Arthur.
0:17:05 > 0:17:09He was still working on it when he died 17 years later.
0:17:09 > 0:17:13The king is shown sleeping in Avalon,
0:17:13 > 0:17:15attended by beautiful young women,
0:17:15 > 0:17:20patiently waiting for him to awake and save these islands.
0:17:25 > 0:17:28Burne-Jones's obsession with King Arthur
0:17:28 > 0:17:32may have arisen from the fact that he felt a sort of identification with him,
0:17:32 > 0:17:36as though some of Arthur's nobility was present in his own life.
0:17:36 > 0:17:40Burne-Jones was one of the great figures of Victorian painting,
0:17:40 > 0:17:45a man of immense fame, and now, in his declining years,
0:17:45 > 0:17:49his painting, the popularity of it, slightly fading.
0:17:49 > 0:17:53And so he starts painting this enormous picture of King Arthur,
0:17:53 > 0:17:55and works obsessively at it.
0:17:55 > 0:17:57On the night of his death,
0:17:57 > 0:18:01he played dominoes with his wife, she read to him because his eyesight was going,
0:18:01 > 0:18:04and then he went to bed, and he composed himself on his bed,
0:18:04 > 0:18:08in exactly the same position as he was painting King Arthur -
0:18:08 > 0:18:11on a slightly raised pillow, with his head a bit to one side.
0:18:13 > 0:18:15And a few hours later, he died.
0:18:53 > 0:18:57I never thought I'd find myself, in the middle of the night,
0:18:57 > 0:19:00trampling down a field of barley.
0:19:00 > 0:19:04But then, strange things happen in the mystical West.
0:19:32 > 0:19:37- So, tomorrow, people will find this...- They'll fly over it, probably tomorrow.
0:19:37 > 0:19:40And they'll think it was made by little green men from Mars.
0:19:40 > 0:19:45They'll think what they want to think, that's what we want them to do.
0:19:45 > 0:19:48We want them to, we want them to wonder.
0:19:48 > 0:19:51For you, what's the point of it, what's the excitement?
0:19:51 > 0:19:55Sometimes we see photographs of the crop circles we've created,
0:19:55 > 0:19:59and you do think, did we do that, was that possible,
0:19:59 > 0:20:02in four hours, under cover of darkness?
0:20:02 > 0:20:07Do you see yourselves as artists using the landscape?
0:20:07 > 0:20:12Do you chose the site carefully so that it will look a particular way from the air?
0:20:12 > 0:20:14We work primarily in Wiltshire,
0:20:14 > 0:20:19and it's an area that has probably more Neolithic sites per square mile than anywhere else in Europe.
0:20:19 > 0:20:23So we drop a crop circle next to Silbury Hill or Avebury Ring,
0:20:23 > 0:20:25you kind of have a captive audience,
0:20:25 > 0:20:28and you've placed it in a mystical landscape.
0:20:28 > 0:20:31So, how would people react, what would they come and do here?
0:20:31 > 0:20:34They might get healed - that's quite a common thing -
0:20:34 > 0:20:38or they might have a negative effect of feeling nauseous
0:20:38 > 0:20:40or have a headache or something.
0:20:40 > 0:20:45Or they might come and meditate or sleep or make love, all sorts.
0:20:45 > 0:20:50- How do you know they come here and make love?- They write about it.
0:20:50 > 0:20:53- Actually, I have a photograph of someone...- Have you?
0:20:53 > 0:20:55..taken from a helicopter.
0:21:04 > 0:21:08Crop-circle-makers traditionally work secretly
0:21:08 > 0:21:10under cover of darkness.
0:21:10 > 0:21:13But being a bit chicken, we'd asked permission.
0:21:38 > 0:21:40How do you say "welcome to Wales" in Welsh?
0:21:40 > 0:21:43- Oh, I've no idea cos I'm Scottish! - You're Scottish!
0:21:43 > 0:21:46I come all this way to meet a Welshman and you're Scottish.
0:21:46 > 0:21:49What do you expect of someone taking money?
0:21:49 > 0:21:51Thank you very much.
0:21:58 > 0:22:02This is the frontier between England and Wales.
0:22:02 > 0:22:07The two countries were united by conquest over 700 years ago,
0:22:07 > 0:22:11but the differences in national character are strong as ever.
0:22:11 > 0:22:15It's nice that you pay £4.80 to go into Wales,
0:22:15 > 0:22:16but getting out is free.
0:22:18 > 0:22:20I'm, in a way, coming home.
0:22:20 > 0:22:24My grandfather was Welsh, and his three daughters were called
0:22:24 > 0:22:27Dilys, Myfwanwy and Olwen,
0:22:27 > 0:22:30so at least a quarter of me is coming home now
0:22:30 > 0:22:33even though I always claim to be a Viking.
0:22:47 > 0:22:51It's only in the past 250 years
0:22:51 > 0:22:56that painters have turned to this spectacular scenery for inspiration.
0:22:56 > 0:22:59Artists would happily go to the Continent
0:22:59 > 0:23:03but gave Wales a miss, thinking it barren,
0:23:03 > 0:23:05too untamed.
0:23:08 > 0:23:12But a painter called Richard Wilson took a different view.
0:23:14 > 0:23:19Travelling on the Continent, Wilson learnt the art of landscape painting in the Italian style.
0:23:19 > 0:23:24But in the 1760s he did something nobody ever thought of doing before.
0:23:24 > 0:23:27He began a series of paintings of Welsh landscape,
0:23:27 > 0:23:29saying to his friends, as a proud Welshman,
0:23:29 > 0:23:33"What's Italy and France got that Wales can't offer?"
0:23:57 > 0:23:59These are the slopes of Cader Idris,
0:23:59 > 0:24:03which translates in Welsh as "the throne of Idris".
0:24:03 > 0:24:07And Idris was a mythological giant or bard.
0:24:07 > 0:24:10It's said that if you spend the night on this mountain
0:24:10 > 0:24:17you wake up in the morning either blind, or mad, or a poet.
0:24:21 > 0:24:27This is the place that inspired Richard Wilson's finest painting.
0:24:36 > 0:24:40Wilson's painting heralds a new era.
0:24:40 > 0:24:45He takes this rugged landscape and creates a visionary picture,
0:24:45 > 0:24:49one of the earliest masterpieces of British landscape art.
0:25:05 > 0:25:09This is one of the places I've longed all my life to see...
0:25:10 > 0:25:15..because that picture of Wilson's always been fixed in my imagination.
0:25:15 > 0:25:19And here... it's exactly like the picture.
0:25:19 > 0:25:24This great expanse of calm, flat water. Dark, tinged with green.
0:25:24 > 0:25:30And then this clear line of the hills, the rocks, all around.
0:25:30 > 0:25:35Absolute beautiful silhouette against a grey sky.
0:25:35 > 0:25:39And it's so extraordinary to think that this is the place
0:25:39 > 0:25:43that Wilson came after travelling in Italy, travelling in France,
0:25:43 > 0:25:46seeing the way they painted landscape there
0:25:46 > 0:25:51and saying to himself, "It ought to be possible to look at Welsh landscape like that.
0:25:51 > 0:25:54"We've got landscape just as good, just as dramatic,"
0:25:54 > 0:25:57and applying everything he'd learnt to this place,
0:25:57 > 0:26:00to Cader Idris.
0:26:11 > 0:26:14It's magic to be here. The only thing I can't understand
0:26:14 > 0:26:20is why there aren't rows of painters all the way, from left to right, painting this scene.
0:26:20 > 0:26:22Because it is just terrific.
0:26:48 > 0:26:53Wilson had a huge influence on the generation of painters that followed him.
0:26:53 > 0:26:56The young William Turner came here on a pilgrimage,
0:26:56 > 0:26:59he was so impressed, just to see Wilson's birthplace.
0:26:59 > 0:27:04And John Constable said of Wilson, "He was one of those appointed
0:27:04 > 0:27:07"to show the world what exists in nature."
0:27:32 > 0:27:36North of Cader Idris is Snowdon,
0:27:36 > 0:27:39the highest mountain in Wales.
0:27:54 > 0:27:59Ever since 1896 this magnificent railway has been carrying people
0:27:59 > 0:28:03who either can't walk or don't want to walk to the top of Snowdon
0:28:03 > 0:28:05to see the views up there.
0:28:05 > 0:28:10The engine that's pushing us today is the original engine from 1896,
0:28:10 > 0:28:15now driven not by Welsh coal, but by Polish coal.
0:28:15 > 0:28:18But the steam engine puffing away at the back there, taking us up.
0:28:20 > 0:28:24It's actually a lovely way of seeing this countryside.
0:28:24 > 0:28:27Not that I can't walk, but I'm feeling quite idle today.
0:28:27 > 0:28:29And all round, as you go up,
0:28:29 > 0:28:32there are these great views of the open hillsides,
0:28:32 > 0:28:36rushing waterfalls, the sheep and lambs in the fields.
0:28:36 > 0:28:40And all the time this steam engine just going, ch-ch-ch, ch-ch-ch,
0:28:40 > 0:28:43doing the hard work for you. Nice!
0:28:45 > 0:28:49Snowdon has long been a favourite of painters and writers.
0:28:49 > 0:28:52When the poet William Wordsworth came here,
0:28:52 > 0:28:54he described it as
0:28:54 > 0:28:57"a silent sea of hoary mist"
0:28:57 > 0:29:03"a hundred hills, their dusky backs upheaved
0:29:03 > 0:29:06"all over this still ocean and beyond."
0:29:16 > 0:29:19Snowdon has always been a symbol of Welsh independence.
0:29:19 > 0:29:24It's the subject of many epic poems and songs
0:29:24 > 0:29:26written and performed by the bards
0:29:26 > 0:29:29who've kept the spirit of Wales alive.
0:29:30 > 0:29:34The bards were more than just poets and musicians.
0:29:34 > 0:29:37They were more like a kind of priesthood
0:29:37 > 0:29:41with real influence in Wales and a proper training for the job.
0:29:41 > 0:29:43But when Edward I invaded the country,
0:29:43 > 0:29:46conquered Wales, in the 13th century,
0:29:46 > 0:29:48their influence began to wane.
0:29:48 > 0:29:52A myth grew up that Edward himself had ordered them all killed
0:29:52 > 0:29:55in order to stamp out Welsh culture.
0:29:55 > 0:29:58And the myth went on that the last bard left
0:29:58 > 0:30:01chose to throw himself off the top of Snowdon
0:30:01 > 0:30:04rather than die at the hands of the English.
0:30:07 > 0:30:12The painter Thomas Jones shows the last bard on the side of Snowdon.
0:30:12 > 0:30:15He's about to leap to his death
0:30:15 > 0:30:18as the English army approaches in the distance.
0:30:18 > 0:30:21He's surrounded by the bodies of his fellow bards.
0:30:23 > 0:30:27Curiously, Stonehenge has been moved to Snowdon
0:30:27 > 0:30:31as though to suggest that all the land from the planes of Wiltshire
0:30:31 > 0:30:35to the peaks of North Wales rightfully belongs to the Celts.
0:30:55 > 0:31:00# Mae hen wlad fy nhadau yn annwyl i mi
0:31:00 > 0:31:08# Gwlad beirdd a chantorion, enwogion o fri
0:31:08 > 0:31:17# Ei gwrol ryfelwyr, gwladgarwyr tra mad
0:31:17 > 0:31:26# Tros ryddid gollasant eu gwaed
0:31:26 > 0:31:31# Gwlad, gwlad
0:31:31 > 0:31:37# Pleidiol wyf i'm gwlad
0:31:37 > 0:31:46# Tra mor yn fur i'r bur hoff bau
0:31:46 > 0:31:55# O bydded i'r hen iaith barhau
0:31:55 > 0:32:00# Gwlad, gwlad
0:32:00 > 0:32:06# Pleidiol wyf i'm gwlad
0:32:06 > 0:32:16# Tra mor yn fur i'r bur hoff bau
0:32:16 > 0:32:28# O bydded i'r hen iaith barhau! #
0:32:28 > 0:32:30That was terrific!
0:32:30 > 0:32:35How often have you sung Land Of My Fathers on an open hillside?
0:32:35 > 0:32:38It clears the lungs, you see!
0:32:39 > 0:32:43What's the origin of the song? Where does it actually come from?
0:32:43 > 0:32:45Does anyone know about that?
0:32:45 > 0:32:47Don't know. Just been singing it for years.
0:32:47 > 0:32:50It's a song about slaughtering the English or something(!)
0:32:50 > 0:32:54THEY ALL LAUGH
0:32:54 > 0:32:56I always...
0:33:00 > 0:33:02It's a song about...
0:33:06 > 0:33:09I always suspected that!
0:33:09 > 0:33:13- It's a song about slaughtering the English.- Something like that.
0:33:13 > 0:33:16Do you all speak Welsh...? You're very politely speaking English now,
0:33:16 > 0:33:20but do you speak Welsh among yourselves and during rehearsals?
0:33:20 > 0:33:22- ALL: Yes.- Always in Welsh?
0:33:22 > 0:33:24- Excuse me?- Yes. - What dialect have you got?
0:33:24 > 0:33:29Me? I only have about three words of Welsh. I had a Welsh grandfather.
0:33:29 > 0:33:34- No, I'm asking...- My English?- Yes. - I don't have a dialect.
0:33:34 > 0:33:36I come hotfoot from the BBC!
0:33:42 > 0:33:45- You've got to be bilingual as well! - Yes!
0:33:45 > 0:33:49- BBC English and normal English! - BBC English is a very strange...
0:33:49 > 0:33:51Actually, it's dying out now.
0:33:51 > 0:33:56I learnt it at my father's knee, but it's vanishing, I'm afraid.
0:34:23 > 0:34:27An artist needs constantly to refresh his inspiration.
0:34:27 > 0:34:31The English painter Samuel Palmer had spent many years
0:34:31 > 0:34:34painting mystical pictures of the Weald of Kent.
0:34:34 > 0:34:36Very beautiful, they are too. But, he'd run out of ideas.
0:34:36 > 0:34:40And then he came here, in 1835.
0:34:40 > 0:34:44And he discovered at the waterfall of Pistil Mawddach
0:34:44 > 0:34:48a scene that led him to paint one of his greatest pictures.
0:34:58 > 0:35:02Peaty water spills down like a river of gold.
0:35:04 > 0:35:07The cliffs glow in the sunlight.
0:35:10 > 0:35:15Palmer's son said, "This painting contained his whole heart."
0:35:27 > 0:35:31Palmer wrote movingly to a friend about his experience of being here.
0:35:31 > 0:35:35He said, "All is solitude and utter stillness,
0:35:35 > 0:35:37"except for the fall of a mountain stream.
0:35:37 > 0:35:42"To such an accompaniment, the heart may utter its full music."
0:35:50 > 0:35:55That wonderful golden glow that Samuel Palmer paints...
0:35:55 > 0:36:00looks as though it could just be a figment of the artist's imagination.
0:36:00 > 0:36:04A kind of artistic licence. Not so. The water here really does glow.
0:36:09 > 0:36:1330 years after Palmer was here, there was a kind of gold rush.
0:36:13 > 0:36:15Mines opened up all over the area.
0:36:16 > 0:36:18Although most of them have now closed,
0:36:18 > 0:36:22there are still places where you can find gold in the water.
0:36:37 > 0:36:40You can see the lighter material is travelling off the top.
0:36:40 > 0:36:41It's going back to the river.
0:36:43 > 0:36:45Give it another shake now.
0:36:45 > 0:36:48You want to keep that gold down on the bottom of the pan.
0:36:48 > 0:36:53- That's it.- So it's all done under water except the final stage?- Yes.
0:36:55 > 0:36:58How did gold mining start here?
0:36:58 > 0:37:01Well, there are a lot of mineral veins in the area
0:37:01 > 0:37:05and in the 18th and 19th century,
0:37:05 > 0:37:10hundreds of people flocked to the area, mines sprang up.
0:37:10 > 0:37:13- There's a little grain.- Where?!
0:37:13 > 0:37:16- Can just about see it...- Oh, there! - Anyone got a microscope?!
0:37:16 > 0:37:19- Tiny! Just there?- Yes.
0:37:19 > 0:37:23But you can see, it's stayed behind everything else, has washed away.
0:37:23 > 0:37:27- Yeah, three grains, there, look. Or two grains.- Possibly two.
0:37:27 > 0:37:31- Possibly two there. - There's gold in them there rivers!
0:37:31 > 0:37:33How brilliant!
0:37:33 > 0:37:36Well, well, well...
0:37:36 > 0:37:39I can't say it's enough to offer to a jeweller
0:37:39 > 0:37:41- and have made up into a ring. - Oh, no.
0:37:41 > 0:37:45- It's great.- You'd be here for a very long time to get that much.
0:37:45 > 0:37:46Excellent.
0:38:31 > 0:38:35Laugharne is a small seaside town in South Wales
0:38:35 > 0:38:38immortalised in the work of the most famous Welsh poet -
0:38:38 > 0:38:39Dylan Thomas.
0:38:42 > 0:38:46Thomas first came to Laugharne in 1934 when he was just 21.
0:38:46 > 0:38:50He said at the time it was the strangest town in all Wales.
0:38:50 > 0:38:53But four years later, he was back.
0:38:53 > 0:38:57Exhausted by the pressures of life in London and also, I suspect,
0:38:57 > 0:39:02by maintaining that image of the hard-drinking romantic poet,
0:39:02 > 0:39:05he made this place his home, his retreat from the world.
0:39:05 > 0:39:07A place that, at least for a time,
0:39:07 > 0:39:11saved him from the path to self destruction.
0:39:19 > 0:39:23In the evenings, Thomas would come down to the town and visit the pubs
0:39:23 > 0:39:26and have a drink or two, or three or four,
0:39:26 > 0:39:28and listen to the locals talking.
0:39:28 > 0:39:31He used the conversations and stories he heard
0:39:31 > 0:39:34as the basis for the famous play Under Milk Wood,
0:39:34 > 0:39:36which put Laugharne on the map.
0:39:36 > 0:39:39He didn't actually call it Laugharne in the play.
0:39:39 > 0:39:44He called it Llareggub, which is "bugger all" spelt backwards.
0:39:52 > 0:39:55Aah, delicious! Where's it made?
0:39:55 > 0:39:57That one is made in Ammanford.
0:39:57 > 0:40:00It translates as nice beer.
0:40:03 > 0:40:06"Up the street in the Sailors Arms,
0:40:06 > 0:40:10"Sinbad Sailors, grandson of Mary Ann Sailors,
0:40:10 > 0:40:14"draws a pint in the sunlit bar.
0:40:14 > 0:40:18"The ship's clock in the bar says half past eleven.
0:40:18 > 0:40:21"Half past eleven is opening time.
0:40:21 > 0:40:26"The hands of the clock have stayed still at half past eleven
0:40:26 > 0:40:31"for 50 years. It's always opening time in the Sailors Arms."
0:40:37 > 0:40:39Dylan Thomas and his family moved into a boathouse
0:40:39 > 0:40:41down on the foreshore there.
0:40:41 > 0:40:44He actually did his work here in this shed.
0:40:44 > 0:40:49It was, if you like, his ivory tower in what he called Ivory Laugharne.
0:40:49 > 0:40:53It was a place he could get away from the family, the children,
0:40:53 > 0:40:56and all the rows and the tensions and sit here quietly on his own
0:40:56 > 0:40:58and write his poems.
0:41:07 > 0:41:09It looks out...
0:41:10 > 0:41:12..over this bay that he loved so much
0:41:12 > 0:41:15and Laugharne in the distance there.
0:41:15 > 0:41:17It's what he once called,
0:41:17 > 0:41:22"the mussel-pooled and the heron-priested shore."
0:41:25 > 0:41:28It was here that he wrote one of his best poems,
0:41:28 > 0:41:33when his father was dying in the town nearby.
0:41:33 > 0:41:38And he sat at this desk and wrote these words.
0:41:40 > 0:41:44"Do not go gentle into that good night
0:41:44 > 0:41:48"Old age should rave and burn at close of day
0:41:48 > 0:41:51"Rage, rage against the dying of the light
0:41:53 > 0:41:59"Good men, the last wave by crying how bright
0:41:59 > 0:42:03"Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay
0:42:03 > 0:42:07"Rage, rage against the dying of the light
0:42:07 > 0:42:11"And you, my father, there on the sad height
0:42:11 > 0:42:16"Curse, bless me now with your tears, I pray
0:42:16 > 0:42:19"Do not go gentle into that good night
0:42:19 > 0:42:24"Rage, rage against the dying of the light."
0:42:33 > 0:42:37Just two years later, Dylan Thomas died,
0:42:37 > 0:42:39aged 39.
0:43:04 > 0:43:08I've come to Pembrokeshire to see the landscape
0:43:08 > 0:43:12that entranced one of my favourite painters, Graham Sutherland.
0:43:12 > 0:43:18He first came here in 1934 and returned again and again.
0:43:23 > 0:43:27From the moment Sutherland came to Wales,
0:43:27 > 0:43:29he said he was obsessed.
0:43:29 > 0:43:32This was the kind of countryside that he loved.
0:43:32 > 0:43:34What he responded to...
0:43:34 > 0:43:36The fields,
0:43:36 > 0:43:39the overhanging hedges, what he called the twisted gorse,
0:43:39 > 0:43:42and, above all, the strange quality of the light
0:43:42 > 0:43:46which was magical and transforming.
0:43:46 > 0:43:49It just changed the look of things all the time.
0:43:49 > 0:43:53I mean, look at it today. We've got a strong wind from the south-west,
0:43:53 > 0:43:55white horses at sea
0:43:55 > 0:43:59and the whole of this landscape clean and rich with colour.
0:43:59 > 0:44:03It was this that Sutherland responded to.
0:44:03 > 0:44:06This is where he found his inspiration.
0:44:48 > 0:44:52I like his sulphurous colours best. I like that sulphurous yellow
0:44:52 > 0:44:59and that sort of rather cruel lime green and strange pinks.
0:44:59 > 0:45:01And I like the shapes.
0:45:07 > 0:45:11But it's just that piercing eye that he has
0:45:11 > 0:45:16that makes you not walk past but stop and look
0:45:16 > 0:45:19and see the shape and see the colour
0:45:19 > 0:45:23in a way that, without him, you might not have done.
0:45:38 > 0:45:43I'm leaving Wales to return to a place I've known since childhood.
0:45:57 > 0:46:00The last leg of our trip brings us to Devon.
0:46:00 > 0:46:04We're sailing into Dartmouth on my sailing boat, Rocket,
0:46:04 > 0:46:06whose home port it is.
0:46:06 > 0:46:09I've sailed these waters for years and years and years.
0:46:09 > 0:46:12I love them. The countryside around is beautiful.
0:46:12 > 0:46:15The added pleasure is the long, distinguished history
0:46:15 > 0:46:17of Dartmouth as a naval port.
0:46:22 > 0:46:27The maritime artist Thomas Looney captures the bustle of the harbour
0:46:27 > 0:46:28in the early 19th-century.
0:46:50 > 0:46:53Thomas Looney was absolutely obsessed with the sea.
0:46:53 > 0:46:56He painted in his lifetime something like 3,000 pictures,
0:46:56 > 0:46:59most of them of the sea and boats and ships.
0:47:03 > 0:47:05It's an extraordinary achievement.
0:47:05 > 0:47:08From his early 40s, Looney was crippled
0:47:08 > 0:47:12by what's thought to have been a severe form of arthritis.
0:47:13 > 0:47:17A visitor to his studio said that the painter's wrists
0:47:17 > 0:47:20ended not in hands but in two stumps
0:47:20 > 0:47:23and he held the brush between them.
0:47:25 > 0:47:29Under these conditions, he produced some of his most delicate work.
0:47:40 > 0:47:44Bearing away! Come on, Sally, what are you doing?!
0:47:46 > 0:47:49You're doing it the wrong way, Sal, I suspect.
0:47:52 > 0:47:55'Sailing's always said to bring out the worst in a man,
0:47:55 > 0:47:59'a view sadly shared by my sister.'
0:47:59 > 0:48:04The captain of Rocket can sometimes be a bit of a Captain Blythe.
0:48:04 > 0:48:07We certainly don't get pleases or thank-yous.
0:48:07 > 0:48:10Ready about! SALLY!
0:48:15 > 0:48:18HE LAUGHS
0:48:18 > 0:48:20You've forgotten it!
0:48:20 > 0:48:23- You're all fingers and thumbs! - Oooh, where's the...?
0:48:23 > 0:48:25- MOCKING:- Oooh, where's the...?
0:48:48 > 0:48:52Splashy, rainy, misty, snowy, foggy, haily, floody.
0:48:52 > 0:48:55Those are not my words. They're the words of Romantic poet, John Keats.
0:48:55 > 0:48:58When he came to Devon, he couldn't stand it.
0:48:58 > 0:49:01That was the weather he had and that's the weather you can get.
0:49:01 > 0:49:02Up here on Dartmoor,
0:49:02 > 0:49:06this weather really makes it all the more mysterious.
0:49:06 > 0:49:11Because this is a place of legend. There's a story, for instance,
0:49:11 > 0:49:13that on this road, if I'm not careful,
0:49:13 > 0:49:17hairy hands will come up and seize the steering wheel of the car
0:49:17 > 0:49:21and force me off the road to my death.
0:49:22 > 0:49:24So I must go very, very carefully.
0:49:31 > 0:49:35Like so many travellers, I've been lured across Dartmoor
0:49:35 > 0:49:38to the seductive charms of Cornwall.
0:49:49 > 0:49:52The novelist Daphne Du Maurier
0:49:52 > 0:49:57first came to Fowey on holiday in 1926 at the age of 19.
0:49:57 > 0:50:01She fell in love with the place and eventually settled here.
0:50:15 > 0:50:20This is just outside Fowey, one of the lanes Daphne du Maurier used to walk,
0:50:20 > 0:50:23with its great high hedge, hundreds of years old.
0:50:23 > 0:50:28And she found here what many artists who came to the mystical West found,
0:50:28 > 0:50:34what she called a sense of continuity of the past and the present merging.
0:50:34 > 0:50:39But always this sense of this being a very old country.
0:50:39 > 0:50:45In this timeless landscape, du Maurier could lose herself for hours,
0:50:45 > 0:50:50imagining it inhabited by smugglers, pirates,
0:50:50 > 0:50:52cavaliers in the Civil War.
0:50:52 > 0:50:56And she wrote stories about them all.
0:50:56 > 0:51:00One day she was here, watching a farmer ploughing his field,
0:51:00 > 0:51:05she said, "With a cloud of screaming gulls circling above his head."
0:51:05 > 0:51:09Then an idea came to her which become one of her best stories,
0:51:09 > 0:51:13and certainly one of Alfred Hitchcock's best films.
0:51:13 > 0:51:16The idea was just four words,
0:51:16 > 0:51:20"Supposing the gulls attacked."
0:51:20 > 0:51:23SEAGULLS CRY
0:51:23 > 0:51:27"A gull dived down at him from the sky, missed, swerved in flight,
0:51:27 > 0:51:31"and rose to dive again. Covering his head with his arms,
0:51:31 > 0:51:36"he ran towards the cottage. They kept coming at him from the air,
0:51:36 > 0:51:40"silent save for the beating wings. He felt the blood on his hands,
0:51:40 > 0:51:45"his wrists, his neck. Each stab of a swooping beak tore his flesh.
0:51:45 > 0:51:50"With each dive, with each attack, they became bolder."
0:52:05 > 0:52:11Polridmouth Beach is at the heart of Daphne du Maurier's great mystery story, Rebecca.
0:52:11 > 0:52:16This isolated cove is where Rebecca was murdered.
0:52:16 > 0:52:21Her spirit casts a shadow over her husband and his new wife.
0:52:28 > 0:52:32In Rebecca, she describes coming down the steep path,
0:52:32 > 0:52:37through the woods, to the grey cove, and the deserted cottage,
0:52:37 > 0:52:41and said, "These things disturb me."
0:52:41 > 0:52:43And there is a kind of...eeriness
0:52:43 > 0:52:47about this place that she captured in that book.
0:53:05 > 0:53:10It's extraordinary to think that that short ten-minute walk
0:53:10 > 0:53:17inspired two of the most popular, worldwide books and films of the 20th century.
0:53:17 > 0:53:23And it's because du Maurier had the power to capture this landscape to use it as her inspiration.
0:53:23 > 0:53:29She once said, "I know that no person will ever enter my blood, as Cornwall has.
0:53:29 > 0:53:34"People and things pass away, but not places."
0:53:48 > 0:53:52My last stop is one of the most beautiful coastal towns in Britain,
0:53:52 > 0:53:55St Ives.
0:54:05 > 0:54:08St Ives is famous today as an artists' colony.
0:54:08 > 0:54:11But even 100 years ago, it was teeming with painters,
0:54:11 > 0:54:15many of them professionals from London, jaded with life there,
0:54:15 > 0:54:18and wanting to come down here to this beautiful seaside scenery
0:54:18 > 0:54:20and this magical light.
0:54:20 > 0:54:25Perhaps the most famous wasn't a professional painter at all.
0:54:25 > 0:54:28He lived in St Ives, he was a fisherman.
0:54:28 > 0:54:30His name, Alfred Wallis.
0:54:41 > 0:54:46Wallis went to sea as a cabin boy when he was only nine years old.
0:54:46 > 0:54:49And for many years, the sea was his life.
0:54:58 > 0:55:02When Wallis was 70, his wife suddenly died,
0:55:02 > 0:55:06and he was completely distraught, didn't know what to do.
0:55:06 > 0:55:10He saw all the artists working here and thought he'd take up painting,
0:55:10 > 0:55:12as he put it, "for company".
0:55:15 > 0:55:19Wallis painted simply, like a child.
0:55:19 > 0:55:24He used ship's paint on pieces of driftwood or cardboard,
0:55:24 > 0:55:27to bring alive memories of his life at sea.
0:55:36 > 0:55:39Wallis captured the spirit of Cornwall
0:55:39 > 0:55:43as vividly as the professional painters who'd come to live in the town.
0:55:46 > 0:55:51To the locals in St Ives, Wallis was seen as a rather eccentric dabbler in painting.
0:55:51 > 0:55:53They didn't take it very seriously.
0:55:53 > 0:55:57But in the '20s, when the modern painters came here, saw him painting outside his cottage,
0:55:57 > 0:56:00they recognised naive genius.
0:56:10 > 0:56:13To a whole generation of artists who settled here,
0:56:13 > 0:56:18Wallis's painting showed the instinctive response to landscape
0:56:18 > 0:56:21that they were struggling to achieve.
0:56:24 > 0:56:28The paintings of a retired fisherman influenced
0:56:28 > 0:56:32some of Britain's most successful 20th-century artists.
0:56:57 > 0:57:01Here Wallis is, hanging on the wall of the Tate Gallery in St Ives.
0:57:01 > 0:57:06He would've been... pleased as punch by this,
0:57:06 > 0:57:09because in his lifetime, though a few painters
0:57:09 > 0:57:12saw something special in his work,
0:57:12 > 0:57:15he wasn't internationally recognised as he is today.
0:57:15 > 0:57:18In fact, he died in poverty,
0:57:18 > 0:57:22his last days spent in the workhouse.
0:57:44 > 0:57:50This is the island. The headland that juts out from St Ives into the Atlantic.
0:57:50 > 0:57:56DH Lawrence said of being in Cornwall that it was like being at a window looking out from England.
0:57:56 > 0:57:59But if you turn the other way, you can see it
0:57:59 > 0:58:03as a window looking back into Britain.
0:58:03 > 0:58:06Looking at all those landscapes we've seen,
0:58:06 > 0:58:12each one a different country, each with its own accent and attitude.
0:58:12 > 0:58:17All of them brought to life by the skill and imagination of those artists,
0:58:17 > 0:58:21who've offered us their vision of Britain to share.
0:58:51 > 0:58:54Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd