In this final programme Melvyn Bragg celebrates the power of northern voices in our sporting life, and asks what being and sounding Northern means more generally - in a year which has seen what might be a traumatic and decisive shift in our politics, and in our sense of national identity. In the wake of the EU Referendum, new questions are being raised about the need for devolution in the north of England - the need for the north to have a stronger presence in our public life and politics....

Melvyn Bragg explores the great cultural movements that came from the North of England which rippled out to affect the world - music with the Beatles, social commentary with Coronation Street and the rise of some of Britain's greatest comedians. Melvyn Bragg examines the contribution of the north to British culture throughout the 20th century - and celebrates the way in which it refreshed and transformed the arts of this country. Also included are some of the earliest voices of northerners...

Melvyn explores the radical movements that sprang from the North - Chartism, the campaign for women's votes, anti-slavery protests, the birth of the Labour Party. The programme begins outside Manchester's Midland Hotel where Mr Rolls met Mr Royce. It's also near the site of the Peterloo Massacre - one of the defining moments in British social history. People had gathered here in their thousands from the city and surrounding towns and villages - protesting for parliamentary reform. fifteen...

Melvyn Bragg celebrates the achievements of Manchester, the original northern powerhouse. Its emblem is the bee, a symbol of work, cooperation and industry. It was from here that huge scientific, social and commercial changes would sweep the globe. Melvyn visits Quarry Bank Mill in Styal outside Manchester which is one of the best preserved textile mills in the country. Melvyn visits the house of the novelist Elizabeth Gaskell, who chronicled the rapidly changing lives of the people who...

Episode Six features George Stephenson, one of the many northern inventors who helped launch the Industrial Revolution. Melvyn Bragg believes the Industrial Revolution is the greatest Revolution the world has ever seen - and its heart lies in the North of England. In this programme he pays tribute to the men who nurtured that great revolution. The inventors and engineers - often from very humble beginnings - whose discoveries would shape the world to this day. One of the greatest was the...

Northern landscapes take centre stage in Episode Five as Melvyn Bragg celebrates the fells, lakes and moors that he loves. He meets mountaineer Chris Bonington in North Cumbria and goes on to see how, over the last 200 years the North has provided inspiration for great writers, some of the greatest in the language - Wordsworth, Coleridge, the Brontës - and painters, Ruskin and Turner. The landscape inspired Coleridge, and he came up with the word mountaineering and he's believed to be the...

Episode Four is the story of rebellion and dissent in the north - and the way northern dialect is beginning to be marginalised and even mocked. Melvyn Bragg begins at Clifford's Tower in York, site of a Norman fortress built to keep the north under control. It was also the site centuries later, where Robert Aske - one of the leaders of The Pilgrimage of Grace (a great Catholic Rebellion) was executed. It's in York that St Margaret Clitherow was tortured to death. Melvyn goes to Riveaulx Abbey...

In programme 3 Melvyn Bragg tells the stories of two sets of Vikings who left a permanent mark on the North of England - the Scandinavians who came from the East and the Norsemen who had alchemised into Normans, and came from the South. The Vikings shaped the English language and it is suggested that the key to their linguistic imprint on the North is likely to have been down to Viking women, as well as men, settling in this region, passing the language onto their children. Evidence of Viking...

Episode Two features the glories of the glittering Northumbrian Renaissance. Melvyn begins with the Ruthwell Cross - now in Scotland - it is possible that it is inscribed with the world's oldest surviving text of English poetry - it has been described as one of the greatest art works of the Middle Ages. Melvyn travels to Jarrow to tell the story of Bede, known as the father of English History and author or The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, one of the most important books of...

In this 10-part series Melvyn Bragg brings all his passion and knowledge to a subject that has enthralled and fascinated him throughout his life - the pivotal role of England's North in the shaping of modern Britain. As he traces the ebb and flow of Northern power he examines how this relatively small geographical area has had a profound effect of every part of the globe - its ideas and inventions, sport and music. Melvyn Bragg begins the series atop Hadrian's Wall looking down onto the...