Judi Dench Talks to Richard Eyre

Leonardo da Vinci is considered by many to be one of the greatest artists who ever lived. Yet his reputation rests on only a handful of pictures - including the world's most famous painting, the Mona Lisa.

This film tells the story of John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, English writer, Poet, philologist and author of many stories, including most famously The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. It describes the importance of the rural English West Midlands, where Tolkien grew up, in shaping his literary imagination and how the ancient northern languages he studied and taught throughout his life influenced his writing. These factors stimulated him to provide a context in which his own, invented languages might be spoken--an imaginary land called Middle-earth. Accounts of the origins of The Hobbit and of The Lord of the Rings, and the phenomenal success that Tolkien somewhat reluctantly enjoyed when taken up by the counter-culture of the 1960s, are included.

Fiona Bruce traces the story of one of history's great royal love affairs: the love between Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. It was a love based on a powerful physical attraction, and it grew into a marriage that set the tone for the Victorian age. Over the 20 years they spent together, until Albert's tragic death, they gave each other a dazzling collection of paintings, sculptures and jewellery. That collection was on show - much of it for the first time - at a major exhibition in London, and it reveals a new and passionate side of the royal couple.