Programme One - Domesday

Bettany Hughes

Paying up

By the eighteenth century revenue was being raised on nearly everything, from wigs to hearths. Get to grips with tax.

The census of the century

Compiled over 1,000 years ago, there are still stories to be discovered in the Domesday Book.

Ask the family

Find out how to bring your ancestors back to life by tracing your family history.

The Domesday Survey in the late eleventh century cast terror into the hearts of the English people. If a King could know this much, surely he would be all powerful?

The first programme in this series, which traces the amazing growth of public information and official records through the last thousand years, sets out to discover just why and how the fateful Domesday Book was written.

Presenter Bettany Hughes reveals why most historians have perhaps misunderstood the Book - and how it led very rapidly to the foundation of the tax system we have today.