Francis Bacon is the essential British painter of the twentieth century. From the end of the Second World War until his death in 1992, he created an extraordinary body of intense and uncompromising figure paintings and portraits. Drawing on diverse influences including Picasso, Velasquez's portrait of Pope Innocent X, the photographs of Eadweard Muybridge and Sergei Eisenstein's film Battleship Potemkin, Bacon undertook a pitiless analysis in paint...

England, 1554. Henry VIII is dead. The country is divided, Catholic against Protestant. Henry's eldest daughter Mary, a fervent Catholic, is Queen. She is childless. The Catholics' greatest fear is the succession of Mary's Protestant half-sister, Elizabeth. After Mary's death, Elizabeth ascends to the throne, thrust into an edgy world of political and religious flux she struggles to protect her power, life, and independence as the court boils with...

The first episode, "First invasion : the War of 1812," depicts how only 30 years after winning the independence, the upstart United States waged another war with Great Britain. Motivated by the high-seas capture of American sailors and the desire to annex Canadian lands, President Madison declared war. Thanks to the aim of a lone sniper, the skill of Andrew Jackson, the fortitude of the people of Baltimore, and the events of September 11, 1814, America...

Mary and Francis are on the throne of a nation burning. France is rocked by the aftereffects of the plague, a disease that crept inside the castle walls, taking thousands upon thousands of lives across the land, and ravaging the stability of a nation. From the ashes, powerful lords will rise, carrying out personal, religious and political vendettas, taking lives, and tearing at Mary and Francis' commitment to their people and to each other.

Queen Elizabeth's reign is threatened by familial betrayal and Spain's invading army. She and her shrewd advisors must act to safeguard the lives of her people. When the dashing seafarer Walter Raleigh captures her heart, Elizabeth is forced to make her most tragic sacrifice for the good of her country. A tale of one woman's crusade to control her love, destroy her enemies, and secure her position as a beloved icon of the western world.

A semi-fictional account of how writer F. Scott Fitzgerald met his wife while in the army and stationed in Alabama in 1919.