Tony Robinson

Michael Wadding

Appealing to history buffs and dedicated ramblers alike, in this new three-part series Tony Robinson embarks on spectacular walks through some of Britain’s most historic landscapes in search of the richest stories from Britain’s past.

Walking Through History

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This week, Tony’s walk takes him back to 1940 when the sleepy county of Dorset became the frontline in the war against Hitler. His five-day 60-mile walk along the Jurassic coast reveals the county’s hidden World War II story.

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Frontline Dorset

Tony heads off on a 40-mile walk through the glorious Peak District and along the Derwent Valley. The landscape here is incredible; wild, dramatic, and romantic.

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The Birth of Industry

From the impressively preserved Penshurst Place, where author Philippa Gregory helps Tony relish the fate of the Grand Duke of Buckingham at the hands of the young Henry the Eighth, he travels up what used to be secret paths to Hever Castle.

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The Tudor Way

Tony’s journey of discovery starts in Sheil Bridge, at the mouth of Glen Shiel, where he heads to the site of the earliest known dwellings here, the ‘skyscrapers’ of the Iron Age.

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Battle in the Glens

Walking from the stone circles of Avebury to Stonehenge, Tony explores the origins, the latest theories, and the connections between Europe’s finest collection of Neolithic monuments.

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The Path to Stonehenge

The Lake District is one of the country’s most popular tourist destinations. But few see just how much the conquering Roman army made their mark on the stunning landscape.

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Romans in the Lakes

Tony walks a stretch of the fabulous Cornish coast, discovering why and how smuggling was the biggest industry in the area for decades, back in the eighteenth century.

Smuggler’s Cornwall

The Liverpool-Leeds canal is the longest single man-made waterway in the country; Tony travels the first 50 miles from Liverpool to the iconic Pier at Wigan, uncovering the extraordinary stories from its Georgian and Victorian origins.

Wigan Pier

From just north of the Scottish border, Tony Robinson sets off across the ancient kingdom of Northumbria which in the 7th century stretched from Edinburgh to York, on the trail of the truth about St. Cuthbert, the greatest saint of his time.

The Dark Age of Northumbria

Tony takes in the wonderful seascapes of the North Norfolk coast, determined to discover how the area remained so blissfully unchanged when the Victorian age of industry and railways transformed lives and landscapes across the country.

North Norfolk

Bronte Country. Tony’s walk tells the life story of the remarkable Bronte family and explores how the moors inspired their most famous novels.

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Brontë Country

Tony walks across the Cairngorms to Balmoral, in the footsteps of Victoria and Albert, who discovered and promoted the Scottish Highlands, enthusiastically adopting the kilt, the Highland Games, hunting, and fishing.

Victoria & Albert’s Highland Fling

Tony traces the Norman conquest of this corner of Wales which still feels more English than the rest of the country, nearly 1000 years later.

The Norman Conquest of Pembrokeshire

For five years, the Channel Islands were occupied by the Germans, the only part of the British Isles to be so.

Nazi Occupation: The Channel Islands

Nowhere is fact and fiction so entwined than in the stories of King John, Robin Hood, and the Sheriff of Nottingham. Yet out of this legendary time came the Magna Carta, a foundation stone of modern democracy.

King John’s Ruin: The Peak District

In 1685, a rebel army landed at the pretty Dorset port of Lyme Regis and swept up through Somerset, pausing at Taunton to declare its leader, Duke of Monmouth, the rightful king.