Episode One

In a major eight-part series, art critic Andrew Graham-Dixon explores the history of the British Royal Collection, the dazzling collection of art and decorative objects owned by Queen Elizabeth II. Containing over a million items, this is one of the largest art collections in the world - its masterpieces by Van Dyck, Holbein, Leonardo da Vinci, Vermeer and Canaletto line the walls of Windsor Castle, Hampton Court and many other palaces, museums and institutions around Britain. Andrew discovers that on the surface, the Royal Collection projects permanence, but within these objects are stories of calamity, artistic passions and reinvention.
In the first programme Andrew marvels at the works acquired by the great founders of the modern Royal Collection - Henry VIII and Charles I. Henry VIII deployed the most essential rule of royal collecting, that great art projects great power. Andrew decodes The Story of Abraham - a series of tapestries in Hampton Court Palace's Great Hall, explaining how these luxury artworks contain a simple message for his terrified court - obedience. But Henry also presided over the first great age of the portrait in England; his painter, Hans Holbein the Younger, was a magician who stopped time, preserving the faces of Henry's court forever. Andrew visits the Royal Collection's set of over 80 Holbein drawings in Windsor Castle's print room to see how the artist helped the English to understand themselves in a new way.