Main content
Sorry, this episode is not currently available

At the Eleventh Hour

Series charting how the First World War affected Britain. Jeremy Paxman describes how the country came to the very brink of defeat in the last year of the war.

Jeremy Paxman describes how the country came to the very brink of defeat in the last year of the war. Grieving parents held seances to contact their dead sons, surgeons battled to rebuild the faces of the wounded, and a maverick MP tried to pin the blame for the crisis on a conspiracy of sexual deviants in government.

And then, dramatically, the tide of battle turned, and exhausted Britons found themselves weeping for joy as the armistice was signed. The nation began to count the cost of four years of war, revealing some surprising winners as well as losers.

59 minutes

Last on

Thu 8 Nov 201814:45

More episodes

Next

You are at the last episode

See all episodes from Britain's Great War

Clip

Making the series

Making the series
"We think we know what the First World War was about: mud and death, young men needlessly slaughtered by blinkered generals, an entire generation sacrificed. That is only part of the picture, and not all of it true."

Follow us on Twitter

Follow us on Twitter
The latest World War One content on BBC TV, Radio and Online.

Credits

RoleContributor
PresenterJeremy Paxman
Executive ProducerBasil Comely
Series ProducerJulian Birkett
DirectorJulian Carey

Broadcasts

  • Mon 17 Feb 201421:00
  • Wed 12 Mar 201400:20
  • Wed 12 Mar 201400:50
  • Fri 4 Aug 201712:00
  • Thu 8 Nov 201814:45

Download your free Open University booklet

Download your free Open University booklet

From casualties to commemoration, explore the realities of war with this OU booklet.

Download your free Open University booklet

Download your free Open University booklet

From casualties to commemoration, explore the realities of war with this OU booklet.

World War One at the BBC

World War One at the BBC

New perspectives on the war that changed everything.