Breathing Space

There's a wrong way and a right way to deal with Nazi spies and fifth-columnists - as you'll see in this this hilarious colour film starring the Home Guard and various Nazi rotters.

Wartime news magazine for factory workers, sponsored by the Ministry of Supply. News items often stressed the value of the 'factory front'.

The wartime potato shortage is addressed in this marvellous film from 1942 - exhorting workers and school children to lend a hand on local farms by joining Land Clubs.

Ordinary men from all trades and professions lead double lives to hone their soldiering skills in Britain during the Second World War.

Welcome to an obscure but delightful corner of film history where Masterchef, rationing and surrealism meet public information films.

Forget the war; life goes on in West Yorkshire, with weddings and family days out, the lively Pudsey Carnival and, on the eve of the Battle of Britain, an overflowing Ilkley Lido.

Journalists congregate outside the Japanese embassy in London following the announcement of the death of the Emperor Meiji.

Geeky Pavan takes his 'English Rose' on a date to the most authentic Indian restaurant in the city. To his horror she goes off-menu, in Hindi...

Capital scenes thanks to Victorian filmmakers

The Band of the First Life Guards approaches Westminster Bridge during Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee.

Horse-drawn traffic on one of London's busiest thoroughfares

Londoners turn out in their thousands to greet the returning Boer War hero after his famous defence of Ladysmith

The director of a documentary about British funk pioneers Cymande joins the band at BFI Southbank to talk about the film.

Plotting world domination, Devil Doctor Fu-Manchu steals plans for a new aero-torpedo in this earliest surviving thrill-a-minute serial instalment.

Filmmakers Jane Giles and Ali Catterall discuss their documentary Scala!!!, revisiting the legendary and inspirational cinema venue and some of the most notorious films that screened there.

Long thought lost, this Powell-directed promotional short for a veteran’s charity was only rediscovered in 2003.

A poignant, stirring letter from a recently deceased pilot to his mother is read by John Gielgud.

Former Bristol Poet Laureate, Miles Chambers reads a poem specially commissioned for the 75th anniversary of the NHS.