BBC Two celebrates the diversity of history this autumn

My biggest challenge as commissioning editor for History on the BBC is to ensure that we cover as much variety as we can. It's an incredibly dynamic, fascinating and wide-ranging genre and it's my job to bring as many different audiences as possible to the pleasures and intrigues of human history.

You may have caught Michael Wood on BBC Four recently, excavating and illuminating over 2000 years of English history buried in the Leicestershire village of Kibworth-Harcourt, assisted by scores of local inhabitants. From shards of Anglo-Saxon pottery to First World War diaries, all of life was here. I hope this has whetted your appetites, because over the next couple of months, it is BBC Two's turn to offer up a cornucopia of history programming.

I'm most excited about the 12 weeks of Edwardian Farm. Ruth, Peter and Alex have spent yet another year immersed in the life and work of our great-grandparents' generation, this time working a farm in the Tamar Valley, with the clock firmly set to the first decade of the twentieth century. For the Edwardians farming involved not just growing crops and tending animals, but turning your hand to tin-mining, off-shore fishing, and catering for the new nationwide taste for freshly cut flowers, soft fruit, and tourism, courtesy of the fast burgeoning railway. Riveting and moving in equal measure.

Civilisation is a big thorny word - judgmental and pompous - but according to archaeologist and historian Richard Miles, it's utterly indispensable. Ancient Worlds is his six-part exploration of the evolution of civilisation, from Mesopotamia to Augustan Rome, which grapples with the great imponderables of human society. The landscapes are mind-blowing, the thought-line provocative. Alongside the series we have a wonderful one-off from the incomparable classicist Mary Beard. She turns her attention to Pompeii, that amazing fly-in-amber - or rather, volcanic ash - survivor of ancient catastrophe. We know how these people died, but Mary investigates how they lived. Her film brings their life back to life.

And what of our more intimate and recent histories? In her three-part series, Amanda Vickery spends time At Home With The Georgians, poking through their houses, their furniture, and their most personal musings, to offer up a compelling and emotional portrait of an age whose outlines we still inhabit to this day. The heartache and happiness associated with finding the right partner and setting up home (or not) resonate as brightly - and occasionally, as desolately - today as when first committed to private diaries 250 years ago.

A hundred years later, Britons had become obsessed with the intractable questions of social justice, political corruption and fairness. Sound familiar? Ian Hislop goes in search of that much maligned figure, the Victorian Do-Gooder, without whose valiant efforts life would have been so much harder for children, the poor and the vulnerable.

I think the history programmes on BBC Two this autumn achieve my aim of really showcasing and investigating some of the truly fascinating stories that human history offers us, providing an eclectic mix of accessible yet rigorous programmes, combining the unashamed expertise of the likes of Mary Beard, Richard Miles and Amanda Vickery with the enduring popularity of an engaging presenter like Ian Hislop and the 'living history' approach so brilliantly executed in Edwardian Farm. I hope you like them and I look forward to hearing what you think.

Martin Davidson is the BBC's Commissioning Editor of History

Edwardian Farm and Ancient Worlds begins tonight at 20:00 on BBC Two.

• Read Michael Wood 's post on the Story Of England, a previous blog post from Martin Davidson and Ruth Goodman's post on Edwardian Farm: The hard graft of country life all on the TV Blog.