Raider . of the· lost archives Michael Wood time-travels from here to 'Domesday', Sunday BBC1, as Thursday's 'Tomorrow's World' scans the census for the future - the BBC Domesday discs, out this week. See pages 3 and 98 3

Editor Brian Gearing Deputy & Art Editor Brian Thomas Programme Editor Hugo Martin Features Editor Veronica Hitchcock Planning Editor Francesca Serpell

4 Dynasty The cast thank their lucky stars 9 Ian Botham The all-round family man 13 Day to Day Robert Kilroy-Silk is here! 15 BBC English Regions All together now - radio and TV Facts/or the future at 22 The Natural your fingertips - that's the World discusses disgust in BBC Domesday Project, a bad food guide featured in this week's 23 Phil Cool 'Tomorrow's World'. Peter Armstrong, 'to combine text, pictures and, Who does he Madeleine Kingsley reports uniquely, statistical data on videodisc; we had to didgeridoo? create both new hardware to complement the BBC Microcomputer and a software package 25 Hear This! Tomorrow's World that would incorporate in the videodisc the storage capacity and the massive convenience 26 Films Thul'$day 8.D BBC1 that was previously the preserve of a large computer. And we had to plan editorial content!' 26 Edward G. 'CONSIDER IT AS electronic croquet,' advised The discs make their public debut on Robinson my guide to the twin BBC Domesday discs, Tomorrow's World. Says editor Richard Reisz: in a vintage deftly sliding one sleek silver side into the 'What's impressive is the amount of information performance streamlined player. they've put on the discs. It's a fascinating With multi-media hoops and an infinitely portrait of contemporary Britain. But the Phil Cool, p23 30 PROGRAMMES wider range of strokes than the grass game, he discs are an exciting pointer to the future, might have added. For a first random, but too.' The potential of videodiscs is enormous, 88 Yours Locally addictive, dip into the Advanced Interactive and plans are already afoot to publish encyclo­ 91 Info Video System took me through a typical ter­ pedias and other reference books on disc, with raced house and a Scottish wilderness. At the sound and moving pictures. 'Imagine,' says Frequencies touch of a button I invoked a colourful barchart Reisz, 'a guidebook that allows you to explore a 92 Recipe Times showing the distribution of British trees and a foreign city without leaving your armchair. picture set of butterflies. I sc1w film of the They call it surrogate travel.' Lakeland lamb decade's major news events and called up an As for the Domesday Project itself, before long 96 Letters essay on pollution. And then l summoned Armstrong hopes every major public library will photographs of local landmarks at my home have the discs available for public information, 97 Roger Woddis village and an essay on their way of life by local education and entertainment. For the present Crossword prep-school children. Armstrong's modest professional pleasure is 'What do you want to know about?' the that his team has brought this project through 98 Michael Wood Domesday user is asked. The answer 'Every­ from revolutionary idea to reality in what many in search of 1086 thing' would take some seven years. For the new technology experts thought an impossible and all that contents comprise some 50,000 pictures, 150,000 two years. text pages, 24,000 maps and 9,000 statistical data Armstrong acknowledges it has been an 102 John Craven's sets. It's a unique self-portrait of Britain in ongoing cliffhanger: 'It was only during October Back Pages which one million Britons. from academics to that we finally put the croquet set on the lawn Visiting an old primary-school children, have taken 22,000 and could play the game. Yes, it's fascinating haunt person-years to create. It's an extraordinary now, but it's like laying down wine in the 1980s: sequel to the Conqueror's original survey. with each passing decade the information Cover by 'We had three very different, but highly becomes more interesting.' Roll on 2086! • Michael Wood, p98 Chris Ryan exacting tasks,' says Domesday Project director Madeleine Kingsley was text editor on the Project 22-28 NOVEMBER 1986 98

Liverpool Donna Wright, daughter Mikki and mother Joan: , fighting to beat the bulldozers. 'Everyone's staying to~1at11ar. that's the good,!hi_nf

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LL THIS YEAR, IN SCHOOLS, museums, town halls, deal with our present, post-imperial problems and our uncertain J:t palaces, in print and in broadcasting, the English have future? These are some of the questions presenter Michael Wood been celebrating the 900th anniversary of the Domesday asks in the five programmes of the new 'Domesday' series, which Book, writes JONATHAN MANTLE. Schoolchildren have been dressed starts this Sunday on BBCI. up, exhibitions mounted, civic deeds and charters displayed, HE OF 1086 marked, literally, the day treasures polished and put on show. of reckoning for the English, who had already suffered 20 Twenty-seven generations have lived since the time of Domes­ years of famine, pestilence, devastation and slaughter day, each sharing a thirst for the continuity of their family line. since the Normans destroyed King Harold and the best part of his But how do the English perceive their Englishness? How was it aristocracy at the Battle of Hastings. William the Conqueror that a third-rate, underdeveloped and impoverished nation of two­ himself is said to have confessed on his death-bed that he had and-a-half million people in 1550 came to dominate the world? 'persecuted the natives of beyond all reason'. The Was it more than just historical chance, and if so can that help us natives of England, in their turn, were to learn a bitter lesson and 22-28 NOVEMBER 1986 99

hand it down to their descendants. For by ensuring that 'not one government and a touching faith in the diminishing powers of pig was left out', as an Anglo-Saxon chronicler who knew King local government. We retain a strong sense of identity as William personally put it, the agents of the Conqueror instilled an individuals when our identity as a nation is in doubt to a degree enduring dread of the taxman. greater than at any other time in living memory. 'fQ INE HUNDRED YEARS AND numerous other surveys Yet it is possible that this living memory is in fact as old, or ~ later, we still swear in 'Anglo-Saxon' and admire our even older, than the Domesday Book. So who are we as a people, Norman cathedrals. We are also probably the best­ then? Where do the 'late-marrying, independent-minded, small­ documented nation on earth. We have seen the scope of this holding, land-dealing, free-born English', as Michael Wood puts documentation grow in diverse, overt and covert electronic forms it, come from? beyond the wildest dreams of the horse-borne snoopers of the Over the page we survey of some of the people (as pictured Domesday Book. above) taking part in the television series. On England's manors, We have a grudging respect for the growing power of central smallholdings, sokes and shires, who do we find today? 22-28 NOVEMBER 1986 she greatly enjoys, the countess also finds it sight of the island since 1959 ('England is home'). 101 soothing to wander about the house alone at To Linda it was 'like going back in time, a man's Made night, rearranging the furniture. 'But we do find island'. To Mano it was a terrific holiday. Next it wonderful to have 100 people to dinner. It year they're taking him to Disneyland. would be so depressing, wouldn't it, just to have 1n- two old people like us, sitting in one corner, watching Dynasty?' John Wickenden John Wickenden's father was a butcher. One caiigland day, when he was 10 years old, John took him a Tony and Linda Punter cup of coffee and, in his own words, was 'a bit Tony and Linda Punter live in Leicester. Tony too nosey'. He stuck his left hand in the mince­ -the people can trace his ancestry back to Ashanti slaves meat machine and lost four fingers. But this did who were owned by the Codringtons, a family not deter him from following his father into with extensive sugar estates in the Leeward the business and he is now a successful right­ Donna and Joan Wright Island Barbuda. handed travelling butcher with clients from as Tony's family took their name from the far away as Jersey and the Isle of Wight. Donna and Joan Wright live with Donna's Punters of , servants of the John's is a highly organised business involv­ daughter Mikki in Gerrard Gardens, Liverpool. Codringtons who were shipped to the West ing full- and part-time staff as well as sophisti­ Mikki is the third generation of the family to live Indies in the 18th century. They stayed on until cated refrigerated transport, but there is also a in Gerrard Gardens and she will be the last. 1959 when they came here. Tony, aged 16, traditional side to it that he particularly enjoys. Gerrard Gardens was built as model housing couldn't get over the fact that every house had a 'Salisbury's a good market,' he says. 'The people when Liverpool was a prosperous international chimney stack. 'I thought, you know, everyone grow up to it, as it were. It's part of their life. port in the 1930s. Steps were scrubbed and had their own bakery! I found that was a big 'I'm in the tradition of the old type of trader, I everyone knew everyone else. These days every­ surprise - that and the traffic.' definitely feel that. In the old days they used to one still knows everyone else, but some of the Tony w~s in the RAF when he met Linda. drive the oxen to market and swap it for wheat. flats are burnt out and less than half the original They married in spite of a certain amount of Well, it's changed over to coin now, but other­ community remains. There is rubbish strewn family protest. 'People would shout at you in the wise it's the same, isn't it?' around. As we speak, our conversation is street,' says Linda. 'They thought there must be If John's customers come from far and wide, it interrupted by the noise of Gerrard Gardens something wrong with you.' seems he in turn cannot be sure of escape from being demolished. Now they have a son, Mano (named after a them, even on his rare holidays. 'I was lying on 'We formed a co-operative and took the case to character in the TV Western series The High the beach in Las Palmas and somebody said: court,' says Donna, 'so that we could keep the Chaparral). Recently the three of them went on "Hallo, John." I said, "How the hell do I know community together.' They kept up the fight holiday to Barbuda. To Tony it was his first you?" and they said, "Salisbury market."' with the council for five years. 'The judge found in our favour,' she says modestly. 'The council didn't think much ofus after that.' Joan Wright's first house was knocked down to Oriel College, Oxford, and to make way for the flat she has lived in for 50 then to the BBC. He has written years. Ironically, she will be moving back to a and presented a number of brand new detached house - and to a fourfold books and programmes includ­ increase in rent which means she will be better ing 'In Search of the Dark off on the dole than in her job as a cleaner. Ages'. As well as presenting the 'Everyone's staying together,' says Donna, 'Domesday' series he has writ­ 'that's the good thing. Yes, I think it will be all ten a book 'Domesday: A Search right, in the long run.' for the Roots of England'. What is more, he still dis­ agrees with the late viscount. John and Raine Spencer 'The English were a definable entity before the Norman Con­ The 8th Earl and Countess Spencer divide their quest,' says Wood. 'The lang­ time between London, where they are both uage was standardised; there active on various committees, and , the was a workforce, an economy, family home in . and some very sophisticated succeeded to the title in 1975 and married the government monopolies.' present countess the following year. He was an But even as a 'definable en­ equerry to King George VI and for two years tity' we still face profound, post­ ADC to the Queen. His youngest daughter, Lady industrial problems. 'What are Diana, married her seventh cousin once re­ we going to do now?' Wood moved and thus became Princess of Wales. wonders. 'Are we going to go The Spencers became extremely rich in the back to the land? We can't do 16th century from sheep. The countess admires Michael Wood that. Are we going to be a nation where their capacity for survival. 'My husband always most people don't work, ruled by a com­ says he thinks they're slightly boring because Michael Wood (above, in 1958) was born in puter-literate elite? Where the government they're too good. But there have been baddies, . His father bad a pharmacist's has to pay for the vast majority of the like Lord Sunderland. He terrorised the court, shop and bis grandfather was an engineer population to do nothing? apparently; but they were too frightened to get for Metro-Vickers. In 1966, when be was at 'I live in London, but if I have any roots, rid of him.' school, be got into a controversy in the they're in Manchester. Manchester United, Grandeur, according to the countess, 'is all a newspapers with Viscount Montgomery of 'Manchester Guardian', that's where I come question of degree. When I first came to Althorp Alamein over the interpretation of the from. If I had kids, I'd be very nervous, I had great difficulty finding my way around.' Norman Conquests. 'I was saying the because of my northern roots, about send­ Since then, she and her husband have exten­ Anglo-Saxons were OK and be was saying ing them to public school. Manchester sively renovated the house and opened it to the they were a load of lumbering, pot-bellied Grammar? Yes, it's still going, but it's not public on a proper commercial basis - they offer yokels who had to have discipline drum­ direct grant any more .. .' tourists a chance to join them at the dinner-table med into them by the Normans.' Michael 'Domesday: A Search for the Roots of England' is for a candle-lit meal. went from Manchester Grammar School published by the BBC, price £12.95 Apart from serving in the Althorp shop, which