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The BBC's flagship history series, from Gladiators to Genghis Khan, Bog bodies to Bloody Omaha, find out more in Timewatch.

The Timewatch Team diary about the making of the Wreckers programme.

Friday 16 February

Day one of the project and Chris Wilson [producer] and I have a daunting task ahead of us. We are working with the author of a 115,000 word book that investigates the truth behind the myths of wreckers and wrecking – but for a piece of television with just 8,000 words of commentary and 50 minutes of air time. In the book, Bella Bathurst [author of The Wreckers] visits seven different regions in Britain to uncover stories about wrecking. One of the first things we need to decide is how many of the places can we feasibly visit in our programme. The other worry is the lack of a simple narrative, there is no real chronology or story we can follow. We go away to read the book over the weekend to have a think.

About the author

Timewatch is the world’s longest-running history series, having started in 1981, and is the BBC’s flagship history series. Here, members of the production team share the highs, and lows, during the production process as they make some of the next series of programmes.