Original subtitles

This is Edwardian Britain.

The remarkable years at the turn of the 20th century.

It's an incredible period. It's the shaping of our modern era.

We wouldn't be where we are without the Edwardians.

Now, for the first time, in colour.

History tends to be about the rich, the famous, the powerful,

whereas these people, they're ordinary people.

This footage is about them.

This time, Edwardian Britain locked in a power struggle.

Workers unite and fight for fairer work and pay.

Real sense of hope, I think, amongst working people that they can make

a difference to their own lives.

Women demand a voice, the vote, and a place in the world.

It was about changing society's views about what women could dream

to be and do.

And it was about counting themselves in a way that society didn't.

Victories are won, but a whole generation would make

the ultimate sacrifice.

This is very poignant because you know what's coming next.

And you know exactly what these men are going to face.

The Edwardian era from 1981 to 1914 was a period of rapid

change and excitement.

Miraculous new feats of British engineering were changing the world.

The unsinkable Titanic - built here in Belfast,

and set sail in Southampton in 1912,

and the motor car, boasting a top speed of 12mph,

were inventions that revolutionised life for all kinds of people.

The Edwardian period was a start of a new decade of a new century.

People were prosperous, people were happier.

They were kind of coming out of that long mourning period

for Queen Victoria.

There's a whole feeling of optimism.

Cities and towns across the north,

like Wigan, captured here in 1902,

were being transformed by modern forms of transport.

This is the opening of the trams.

The trams were an absolutely

important thing for linking small industrial towns together.

So when a new tram opened, everybody would come

out and celebrate.

Virtually, every major town in Lancashire

had a tramway by.

Certainly, the early 1900s.

Previously, they would have had horse drawn trams and so this was

like state-of-the-art, new technology.

And they were very much part of civic pride.

In 1900, more than a million horses were required to pull Britain's

trams and buses.

But just a decade later,

they had all but vanished.

British-engineered double-decker trams like these were a proud

emblem of progress.

The excitement the joy on people's faces at seeing this new innovation.

At this time, everything was innovative.

Everything was changing, not just for upper classes,

not just for middle classes,

but for working everyday people.

I think there's something really special about that.

I love that we've got the old and the new side by side.

The coachman in the red coat coming alongside the newer tram that's

going to displace him.

Just getting ready to start.

We're leaving behind that world of horse-drawn carriages and

horse-drawn carts and we're moving into a different kind of time.

I absolutely love this shot of the little girl being picked

up by her dad.

So, she's on camera, everyone around her is cheering and excited.

It's just a moment of absolute joy.

It's fantastic.

And even the couple, the very middle class couple

in the background, the guy's waving his riding crop, I think.

Everyone wants to be part of this moment.

They see it as a historic moment.

This film was shot by Mitchell and Kenyon,

to Edwardian entrepreneurs who travelled the country documenting

everyday life.

And on this occasion,

they couldn't resist an attempt at comedy.

Look at this.

The film-makers obviously set up a comedic element.

You can see the guy in the bowler hat is clearly setting

it up and sort of directing it at that.

And he's giving this sort of...

SHE LAUGHS

He's people pushing the man directly

into the hose pipe, which is hilarious.

These had a locality of maybe ten or 12 miles.

They were not really shown anywhere else outside the area.

In actuality, it's entertainment to show people a bit

of their hometown on film and get yourself on the screen.

The colour just really brings this scene to life, it closes

that gap down between

us as viewers and them as subjects in the film.

It makes them seem...

..much more like us.

It's like time travelling.

It's like you're going back and walking amongst these people.

People who are exactly like us, and lead such similar lives

to the ones we lead today.

The Edwardian period is the most fascinating period of the last

100 years because it's a period of rapid transformation,

where people's standards of living increases quite quickly,

their access to leisure time and holidays and new technology is

starting to make a massive difference to their lives.

With more time for leisure, sports became part of daily life.

Cricket and tennis had long been favoured by the wealthy.

But now the working man had football.

Where two or 3,000 would watch in the Victorian era,

now, matches were attracting crowds of more than 30,000.

This FA Cup third round match between Burnley and Spurs at

Turf Moor shows there was nothing bigger than

supporting your local team.

Quite extraordinary.

You can't hear their supporters, however, 23,000 Burnley supporters -

It wouldn't have been quiet that day.

I've been following Burnley since 1972.

I came down, my dad brought me on a Fulham game in 1972.

I've followed the for 20 years without missing a game,

home and away.

Looking at the footage, Burnley shown in green, that is the correct

colours of the day.

It wasn't until the 1910 season that was changed

to claret blue.

The captain that day was a gentleman called Alex Leake.

He led the Burnley players out,

and it was a big, big occasion.

Cup fever. Cup fever in the olden day.

All the guys in the background, they're wearing flak caps.

It looks like they've come straight from the mills.

To the mill workers and the mineworkers in the area,

this is what they live for - football.

This is their outlet from coming out of the mines,

out of the mills, they come straight down here and to watch

Burnley play.

The average ticket cost only £1 in today's money,

and apparently, the beer was just as cheap.

It's rather the worse for wear before the football match.

Football is huge for many communities.

Supporting your local town -

It's become a regular kind of leisure pursuit for many men.

We know that then these films were re shown in the local

exhibition places, that people responded to seeing their players.

And if the home team lost, they didn't show the film.

Luckily, Burnley won the game 3-1.

So the footage survives.

Edwardian's were proud, not only of their football team,

but of their local community.

And they love to show it.

Big social events like this charity swimming gala in Tynemouth in 1901

were an opportunity for the whole town to come out

and enjoy themselves.

The Edwardians loved to put on a show for local people,

they loved civic events and galas,

and the processions, so this is

very appropriate for Tynemouth to put on a gala, have people swimming,

have people diving and lots of people in boats watching,

because it's a town that's fiercely proud

of its maritime history.

This is the fancy dress swimming parade in Tynemouth.

They start with top hats and then they have to wear almost

like this gentlemen's costumes and then they swim.

And it's a local annual charity competition.

It's so funny seeing men dressed up in fancy dress swimming.

It's kind of like the ludicrous pantomime

of Edwardian entertainment.

Most of the people watching would not be able to swim this incredibly

daring, foolhardy activity.

They're not in the safety of the local swimming pool.

They're actually in the Tyne. It looks absolutely freezing.

This reminds me of growing up in the Northeast and going to

Tynemouth Open Air Pool, which was a tidal pool filled with sea water.

So, I remember just how cold it was and they're a lot hardier,

the Edwardians, than we are.

I think we're all a bit soft now.

But Edwardian Britain wasn't all fun and games.

Workers took to the streets to demand a fair deal,

as a wave of strikes threatened to pull the nation apart.

Working class people seemed to push for a better deal,

after centuries of having a pretty rubbish deal.

And this is the first time you really see this and it's played

out on the streets.

The Edwardian policeman is a figure we can recognise today.

Throughout the era,

the profession modernised as officers were issued standard

uniforms and equipment, and even began using methods

like fingerprint analysis.

A policeman had to be a certain

height in the Edwardian period.

So, most policemen that you see command attention from their height

and there's that kind of demeanour of authority.

These men are the new recruits of what is now known

as the Greater Manchester Police.

I love this scene because it looks to me, this is their equipment,

and I think there's a truncheon, certainly a truncheon.

That's what they defend themselves with.

Their notebook, I think we're seeing there.

A whistle.

And pair of handcuffs.

The four essential things that you would find on a police officer...

..today.

Only one in five applicants were successful.

The perfect candidate was over 5'7",

physically fit and had a stable personal life.

Criteria that haven't changed too much over the years.

We certainly did that as well.

They tended to select people who were under 30.

And if they were married, they were told they couldn't

have more than two children when they joined.

And if you wanted to get married, you'd had to ask permission

to get married.

I remember when I got married in 1981,

I had to put in a form in asking permission to get married.

So it still carried on then.

I was sent away with other male colleagues

to an Army training centre.

It was such a shock to the system.

I can remember phoning my dad and saying,

"What on Earth have I got myself into?"

Policing is pretty varied at this time.

See here, they're involved in first aid,

they're involved in ambulance work.

I like this bit, by the way.

"The very latest methods of ambulance work."

They just roll up, stick out a stretcher,

put this poor guy on a stretcher, who probably shouldn't be moved,

stick him in the back,

and that's the very latest methods of policing.

It's amazing.

Keen to publicise their achievements,

the police force themselves commissioned this

30-minute long documentary.

It's perhaps an early example of Edwardian corporate PR.

There's an interesting thing already that the makers of this film

have seen it as necessary

to say "our friends, the police", almost as if they're trying

to convince the audience who may be watching this that the police

are their friends.

It's almost as if they're producing this to try and tell the audience

what the police do because people don't know what they do

or they want to change the perception of what people think

the police do.

Shows that the people, they're being recruited in civilian clothes,

they're ordinary people.

I think they're trying to instil that sense of

"you can trust us because we are you."

One January morning in 1911,

in the shadowy streets of London's East End,

the police were about to face something no training

could have prepared them for.

One of the most infamous gun battles in British history.

All remarkably caught on film.

Well, this is amazing, isn't it?

A siege of Sydney Street.

Something we can relate to today because it's a terrorist incident.

A gang of Latvian anarchists were on the run after murdering three

policemen in a failed jewellery robbery.

Two of them got trapped

in this house in Sydney Street.

Amazing piece of intelligence to track them down.

So, there were the guns that the police had,

totally inadequate,

but the unusual thing is that the Army were called in.

I think the first and only time that the police have called the Army

into a system because they had nothing to match the firepower

of these two Latvians who were cornered in this house

in Sydney Street.

The East End was home to a large working class,

an immigrant population.

It was seen as a hotbed of political activism and those in power

were determined to stamp out any signs of social unrest.

Early 20th century Britain,

the fear of anarchism was very strong and there was a fear

that anarchists would take over the country or cause so much

disarray that there would be social revolution.

So, in many ways, the Sydney Street Siege shows that we do need army,

we do need a police force, that there is a need for law

and order, it provides a justification for it.

The siege lasted for over six hours.

And standing less than 100 yards from the gunfire,

a familiar figure came down to get involved.

Oh, and there's Winston Churchill there in the top hat.

He'd come down to, some say to direct operations,

and people weren't sure about his authority to do that,

although he obviously had a military background himself.

So, Churchill's there as Home Secretary,

looking as if he's in charge.

Well, of course, he shouldn't be in charge.

The whole point of our system was we set up the police

where they would be citizens in uniform and not

directed by politicians.

So, Churchill had no role there.

The very presence of a politician might well have been putting

the police in more danger because they would have to protect him.

He went there just because he couldn't resist the temptation

of being in the lead.

I mean, he was a bit of a showman, was our Winnie.

At this time, Winston Churchill was a very ambitious young politician,

and his attempt to resolve the Sydney Street Siege

was an attempt to place his name and his picture on the front pages

as some sort of saviour.

Now here, a fire started in the house where the two Latvians were

holding out under siege.

Nobody knows how that fire started.

But Churchill said, "No, let the fire burn.

"Either the Latvians will come out or they'll die."

The guy being carried out is a fireman.

One fireman was killed, actually, in this.

It was a big incident.

I remember when I was a kid, it was still a big thing.

You can read lots of articles and books about it, but actually

watching, seeing it, seeing Churchill turn up,

seeing it happening is fascinating.

Tension and conflict were in the air and it now exploded in a wave

of workers strikes, the likes of which Britain

had never seen before.

In 1913 alone, there were 1,500 strikes.

From dockers here in Liverpool, to miners, teachers,

and bus drivers.

All took to the streets to fight against the old order.

In Dublin, 20,000 transport workers, most forced to work 17-hour days,

were locked in industrial disputes without wages for six long months.

Working class people seem to be rising up in all sorts of ways.

They're organising politically, they're forming political parties.

Those of them who have the vote are beginning to use

it and they're beginning to use it to push for a better deal,

after centuries of having a pretty rubbish deal and this is the first

time you really see this and it's played out on the streets.

But it's a much smaller strike,

a group of hotel workers in Dublin, that provides a rare glimpse

into life on the Edwardian picket line.

So, this looks like the price list

in the strike committee's cafe.

Can't strike on an empty stomach.

Wow. You pay high prices,

but we're paid low wages.

This shows how in the Edwardian period, we have people becoming

more aware of what they were getting paid in relative

to what they were selling,

so that somebody was making

a profit out of their low wages.

So they're starting to create these banners.

I mean, that's pretty fascinating.

I love this sign.

"If we are soup servers, we are not dished yet."

Not quite sure he's got that right, but he's very proud of that.

He's done that himself and he's standing there

with that very forbidding knife,

it looks like he's parted his hair

with that knife, by the way, down the middle of his head.

At this time, nine out of ten people owned, in effect, nothing at all.

These workers were demanding only basic improvements,

an extra penny on their hourly wage,

some kind of state pension,

and as we are seeing here,

a reduction on a 14-hour working day.

These women would have been taking a particular risk.

It was entirely legal to sack striking workers,

all of them, on day one of the strike.

But they look as if they are on their way to a victory.

They're certainly very cheerful.

The fact that they're laughing

and smiling about it is amazing.

It sort of shows, in a way,

they're confidence in what they're doing.

You know, they believe they're right.

We're seeing that moment of fight when you're driven

by what you think is right.

They are not looking sad. They're not looking down.

These people are laughing.

They know what they're doing and they're confident

in what they're doing and they're happy that they're doing it.

Protest and confrontation was now contagious.

This footage of mass unionist demonstrations in Belfast shows

how arguments over home rule threatened to spark civil war

in the United Kingdom.

This clip is absolutely fascinating.

It's showing a huge affiliation to the rest of Britain.

It reminds me strongly of some

of the Orange Order marches

that we used to see every summer when I was growing up in Liverpool.

And we can see they've sent a contingent, it would seem,

to support these marches in Belfast.

The fashions haven't changed much either.

They still wear bowler hats for that.

The idea of home rule was something so unknown.

It was a bit like, sort of, political climates today.

We don't know what's going to happen when there'll be huge changes

to our borders and to our country.

And it was this potential that it might have the potential

for violence, the potential to split families,

the potential to cause damage that would be irreversible.

But more than Irish home rule, or workers' strikes,

it was a group of middle class women and their demands for change

that was to shake Edwardian Britain to its very core.

You see the moment of a sacrifice.

You see the moment where somebody puts their cause

beyond their own safety.

Across Edwardian Britain, ordinary people were fighting

for a better deal.

And the suffragettes were leading the charge for women,

as large public marches like this one in London in 1910

became increasingly common.

Oh, wow.

"Fortune favours the brave."

Women of all backgrounds with,

again, their amazing hats,

marching in military style,

but yet this is a feminine march, all the flowing robes.

My great grandmother, Emmeline Pankhurst,

was the leader of the suffragette movement.

Her photo's used as the iconic symbol of power and demand

and uncompromising leadership.

It's a role that she can play and that she will play

and she won't give up.

She will campaign to the end.

Oh, my goodness.

So, this is incredible so watch

this clip because the banner

that is being marched forward now was made to commemorate the founding

of the WSPU, the Women's Social and Political Union, in 1903.

That's incredible.

"Famed for deeds of daring rectitude."

Wow. "Champion of womanhood."

I mean, that just makes me so proud.

It was much broader than just votes for women, it was about really

changing attitudes towards women,

and they were at the forefront of that.

The colourization process is fabulous in that it just brings

it to life.

When you have the black and white, the white is lost because it's

just black or white.

Here, when you've got the different colours,

the white actually emerges as very powerful.

That is one of the symbolically important colours

for the suffragettes.

White for purity.

If we go back in time, the reality of life is one where women's options

are totally constrained.

If you had children, they are the property of your husband

and you're not a citizen, you're not allowed to vote, you're not seem

to have a say beyond the home.

Before the Pankhursts,

the fight for women's suffrage was a relatively tame one.

The National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies persevered

with peaceful and polite protests, like this one.

Pankhurst suffragettes took a radically different approach.

The women's suffrage movement started well before 1903,

and you had 50 years of campaigning before then and, you know,

thousands of petitions that were not getting anywhere.

And with the beginnings of the suffragette movement, you have

more voice, more noise, more engagement.

It becomes the issue that so many people are talking about.

The suffragettes very famously adopted the phrase

"deeds, not words", and they lived by that.

They adopted more and more violent tactics as the years went on.

Window smashing, letterbox bombing, hunger strikes.

The police clashed with the suffragettes on a fairly regular

basis and that image of women fighting for the vote,

against a state represented by the police that was denying them

that vote, is a really powerful, powerful image.

They felt they had to do this

in order to push for that vote,

which just had been denied them by this time for more than 50 years.

We're seeing them respond to this idea that

deeds will get attention.

Even if it's bad press,

it will get you press, it will get you heard,

it will get the messages of votes to women in the newspapers.

There's a lot of suffrage film, and the suffragettes

were very good at recording what they were doing.

They were making a conscious effort to make their mark and also

to create films that they could then show in local settings.

So they were extremely good at marketing their message.

The colours, the purple, white and green.

And we can see in the march, they're carrying their

prison arrows on poles.

The prison arrow represented that you were the property

of the government.

And it's amazing to see that they reclaim that.

So they take on marches to show we are the property of a government,

a government that won't give us a voice, that won't give us a vote,

that imprisons us and arrests us.

Such bravery.

I mean, the ways that these women were force fed.

You know, they went on hunger strikes and they knew the

terrible pain and suffering that went on.

And then they'd leave prison and then do the same thing

all over again and go on hunger strike again.

But you can understand it, can't you? Just seems...

I talk to my daughters now -

How could so relatively recently

anyone argue that women shouldn't have a vote?

One woman above all is remembered today for her

commitment to the cause.

Emily Wilding Davison.

Seen here in her academic robes, she obtained a first class

degree from Oxford,

but was never permitted to graduate because she was a woman.

Emily was almost wildly committed to the cause.

She was one of the first people to be force fed.

We know she broke into Parliament several times and I think

at this stage, the fight for women's suffrage, the fight for the vote,

had almost reached its point.

The 1913 Epsom Derby - the scene of the most shocking five seconds

of film footage of the Edwardian era.

So, this is an incredible moment in British history.

Big sporting occasion, well-known event.

You see people in their best hats and their best outfits.

People turned out in their thousands to go and watch it, but of course,

this one, we know, ends rather differently.

It's known from being more than a horse race.

This is on tape.

This is us seeing that moment 100 plus years later.

You see the people physically going back as they see the horses

come past and that the speed at which all of that is happening.

And somewhere in that crowd, we know there's Emily Davison.

Huge crowds... Here she comes.

Sorry.

And there she is. Oh, my...

It's shocking. It's still shocking to see her suddenly run out.

I genuinely... When I'm watching this moment where she sort

of steps out, I want to cover my eyes.

It's almost amazing that she's still standing then,

so many horses have gone past her.

And it's...so...

..fleeting, almost, you could miss it.

I mean, just the incredible kind of bravery of that

and that moment of contact and impact, just...

Just awful to watch.

It's the act you see...

You see the moment of a sacrifice.

You see the moments where...

..somebody puts their cause beyond their own safety.

Miraculously, Emily Davison survived for four days.

It's thought she was trying to attach a scarf to the

King's horse in protest.

She knows it will make news.

She knows it'll make headlines.

She wants to make headlines for the women's cause.

I don't think she wants or expects to die.

So people call her a martyr and say she is a martyr,

not necessarily an intentional one.

This moment is synonymous with the word "suffragette".

You can't talk about them without talking about the suffragette

who threw herself in front of the King's horse.

What makes me so angry as well is that for a long time,

and in all the newspapers, people were more concerned about the horse

than they were about the woman.

And I just think that is a testament to how

women were treated at the time,

how women's rights were considered at the time.

It's just such a kind of metaphor for, you know, here's one woman

just trying to stand against this tide and, in a sense,

it's representative of that tide of opposition to

suffrage and someone who's standing there just saying, you know, "Enough."

At Emily Davidson's funeral, 5,000 suffragettes marched

behind her coffin, determined to make her a martyr for the cause.

And a further 50,000 supporters lined the streets of London.

There's no doubt about the emotions on people's faces.

"I've fought the good fight."

The women saluting, their black bands.

There's girls watching at the top.

There's a huge crowd attending this funeral of the martyr

for the suffrage cause.

So, the organization WSPU, but ordinary people too

were determined that she would not die in vain.

It really is a moment...

..created by women for women.

The suffragettes were incredibly good at the planning of events

and the visual side of things, so they were given very specific

instructions about what to wear and what flowers to bring

and how to present themselves.

Knowing that the visual image of all of this was part

of the propaganda.

You know, it's like a state funeral, it's sending off one of their own.

And I think it shows the element of how they saw themselves

as an army, how they saw themselves as soldiers because it quite

has that very militant aspect to it.

It must have been really hard for these women who were, you know,

burying a friend, burying a comrade, to have to put on a show and to use

it actually as another moment to push forward the cause.

You see in the first few days, the media is very critical

of Emily Wilding Davison's act.

That changes quite quickly by the end of the week.

There's a lot more sympathy and understanding and...

..appreciation, I think, for her and for the cause.

I think women in those times, involved in this struggle,

were incredibly brave and, you know...

We owe them a great, great debt.

This was not just about the vote.

It was never just about the vote.

It wasn't about a legal or structural or policy change.

It was about changing social norms.

It was about changing society's views about what women could dream

to be and do.

And it was about individual women doing more with their lives,

doing different things with their lives, counting themselves in

a way that society didn't count them.

So from that perspective, well beyond the vote,

it's those things that people admire and appreciate them for.

In their fight for equality,

these Edwardian women knew their enemy, but British men would now

face a new threat.

And it was on a scale that few could have ever imagined.

They were told we have more men, more arms than the Germans.

this is just a matter of finishing them off,

And you'll all be back by Christmas.

And we all know what happened next.

In July 1914, people enjoyed a long hot summer,

largely unaware that war was looming over Edwardian Britain.

This is incredibly poignant footage because it's taken just a few weeks

before the outbreak of the First World War.

And that war is going to change everything.

And it's going to bring the Edwardian era to a close

and social life is not quite the same again after it.

It is sad to see all these boys, actually many of them look

about the right age to had been even conscripted

near the end of the First World War, or volunteered.

When you see them crawling along doing that stuff there, you can...

Almost like they're crawling under barbed wire or

going through hoops.

The kind of stuff they would do in their army training

and then, eventually, out on the battlefield.

And to see them at play -

Sun shining, grass green...

Whole lives in front of them.

Just looking at this crowd of people, I know things were sort of

building up, tensions were rising, but that didn't impact...

Life didn't stop and it's just amazing to think that, yeah,

within two weeks,

a lot of these men would've been gone,

or would've been quite excited to sign up.

On August fourth, 1914,

Britain declared war with Germany.

3,000 men a day signed up to fight.

Whole towns enlisted together,

like these volunteers from Morecambe.

This film is particularly poignant for me because this is my hometown,

and that's the Morecambe Winter Gardens.

It's all within that same area.

You could actually go to that area today.

It's still exactly the same.

All those buildings are still there.

The regiment is going from Lancaster.

One of the greatest fatalities was the Lancashire regiments.

My own great grandfather was in these regiments and went

off to war and came back severely disabled and could

have been one of these.

This is an emotional film for me and I would look at it as historical.

I look at it as my own friends and family were going off to war.

So, these are the professionals,

but, of course, supplemented by "Your country needs you" volunteers.

"This won't take long, chaps."

Regular soldiers maybe,

then they would have been bemused by trench warfare.

Oh.

You'd have to have a heart of stones to watch any footage of men

marching for World War I and not feel the tragedy of it.

They're so young.

These are men who, if they were too young, were kind of sent out

to have a birthday and come back in again.

You can tell it's very early on in the war.

You can tell because this is mass optimism, that they think the war

is only going to be like five months or

"I'm going to be home for Christmas" is one of those tragic postcards

you often read about.

Everything about this is very poignant.

And these young boys like waving their flags, they're showing

their patriotism, they're carrying one of the soldier's kit bags.

They want to join in, they want to kind of be like the older boys,

the older men who are marching and you think, in a way, these younger

boys are probably the lucky ones because they escaped that.

They escaped what would have been an almost certain death.

These soldiers form part of the King's own Royal Regiment.

They would fight in the Battle of the Somme in 1916.

One in six of the regiment would die on the front line.

Corporal George Parsonage was one of the lucky survivors.

That's my grandfather, George Parsonage in the middle,

and his best friend, Harold Hodson.

He looks quite cheery,

he's smiling there, so obviously he's having a good day.

By this time, he's become a corporal and this is his dog,

which he brought home with him after the war, called Shrapnel.

This is the battalion going down to the railway station.

If we look at what they're carrying here,

they've all got their Lee Enfield rifles and the bandoliers

around their neck containing their ammunition, their pouches

with the first essentials - shaving kit, eating kit,

that they wouldn't have at the front line.

I would imagine that they were thinking

about what they were leaving behind,

whether they would see their homes again,

what's ahead of them,

what's it going to be like.

This is a picture of a Staff Sergeant having his photograph

taken with his daughter,

having just moved his son out of the way so that he could

possibly have his last photograph before he departs for war.

It's actually a quite moving picture, isn't it?

Cos that's how dads are like with their daughters.

And there is an amount of bravado where when we need to be brave,

we need to show we're not squeamish or soft.

But then he comes with another side that's quite

thoughtful and caring.

And this is one of those moments.

The pride the men felt going to fight was matched by the people

left behind.

From small acts of kindness, like collecting blankets

for the troops, to the manufacturing of artificial limbs,

all of Britain was united in the war effort.

The Edwardians were brilliant at identifying a need

and acting quickly to meet that need.

Whether it's providing a cup of tea at a train station for a soldier

passing through on a train, or whether it's a blanket

that could be sent out to a guy stationed at a barracks somewhere.

You see what mobilisation means on the ground.

Unprecedented in British history, in European history.

Every industry, every worker, everyone who can do something is

putting themselves into the war effort.

This is what this film encapsulates really, with that sort of community

spirit that bound people together, and it got Britain through that war.

It really did.

In total, six million British men went to war.

Over 700,000 were killed and millions more were injured.

My dad's father was a stretcher bearer,

then went off, probably, in a train at the age of 17.

Makes you think about it quite differently.

But you can see there it's not just because the camera's there.

This is an exciting adventure.

They're going off to do something different, and for many of them

that have been working those 11-hour shifts in factories and not

very good conditions,

suddenly, they're going abroad.

So, you can imagine how excited they were.

Very few would have been trepidatious.

They were told we have more men, more arms, than the Germans.

This is just a matter of finishing them off and you'll be back

by Christmas.

And we all know what happened next.

Huge carnage.

Just to gain 25 yards on the western front.

There was a huge enthusiasm for the war in the early days,

and in fighting for King and country and fighting for a just cause.

So people walk off with pride.

And with a certain sense of being invincible, I think.

These films, like nothing else,

reveal how are Edwardian ancestors lived,

what they stood for, what they fought for,

and what in the end, they were prepared to die for.

History tends to be about the rich, the famous, the powerful,

the influential and most of the people that we've been looking

at for this film are not powerful people.

They're ordinary people and they often get left

out of the narrative of history.

But this footage is about them.

Better conditions for workers,

people's right to vote, people's right to travel,

people's right to earn a living wage,

all of those things that we still fight for today,

the Edwardians fought for and achieved for us.

So we shouldn't look at them as a lost generation, we should look at

ourselves as their proud descendants

because they gave us modern society.

It's a world that's shown in all its sensory vividness.

And you get a better sense of, I think, the beating heart

of that of the Edwardian period by seeing it in colour.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media