So join me, Philomena Cunck, as I take you right up the history of the United Britain of Great Kingdom.

This is Cunck on Britain!

If you had sex with someone who had the Black Death, would you have to use a condom for protection?

It depends what your major concerns were.

But you wouldn't be projecting yourself against infection.

How long would you get off work if you got the Black Death?

In about 70% of cases, you'd be off work forever.

Oh, right.

Result?

Because you'd be dead.

Oh.

This is Drake's ship, the Golden Hind, which is Tudor for Arse of Gold.

It was in this ship Drake became the first person to circumcise the globe, which is probably why this sort of ship is called a clipper.

Imagine being on deck in that perilous age.

You're in the middle of the ocean, a mighty thunderstorm's brewing.

There's a sailor over there, another one over there, the king sailor turning the steering wheel thing, potatoes and spur wooden legs rolling around the deck, a seagull up that pole thing, someone reading a treasure map through a telescope, a bloke with a white beard carrying a tray of fish fingers, pirates all laughing in that horrible throaty way that they do, and at any moment the prospect that you might just sail off the edge of the world.

It's a sobering thought Which they'd have needed Because they were all pissed to the bollocks on rum The First World War was started by the killing of one man Franz Ferdinand You've probably never heard of him Or the band named after him But he was dead important By which I mean he was only important when he was dead His assassination triggered a series of other killings Soon it caught on And everyone wanted to be killed It was a bigger craze than fidget spinners.

In the 1997 election, why do you think more people voted for Tony Blair than Oasis?

You're making a mistake which is quite common at the time, because the Prime Minister or Labour Party leader at the time was called Tony Blair.

Blair.

Blair.

Blair.

Blair.

Blair.

Blair.

Blair.

Blair.

Tony Blair was Prime Minister and leader of the Labour Party and there was one of the biggest rock or pop bands at the time was Blur.

Blur.

Blur.

Yeah.

With its year-round sunshine and abundant food, Australia was deemed the perfect place to send Britain's murderers.

It was hoped they'd suffer terrible homesickness as they lay soaking up the sun.

But there was a dark side to Britain's ever-increasing globalisation.

Slavery.

These days people pay thousands of pounds to visit the sun-kissed islands of the Caribbean but in the 1700s you could go there for free.

You were black and didn't want to go there.

It was immediately obvious to anyone that slavery was wrong which is why it was only allowed to continue for hundreds of years.

The Battle of Trafalgar was one of the most famous water fights in British history and it took place of course here in Trafalgar Square.

It's amazing to think that back then all this would have been underwater, only the top of the column would have been visible.

On this side Nelson's English ships, on this side by the Pret-a-Monger, the French fleet and overseeing it all was Nelson, stranded on top of his stone stick where he remains to this day.

If Nelson was such a hero, why did we banish him up that big pole?

It's not a banishment, this was a national celebration.

So this is very much a, if you like, a symbol of British victory and pride and honouring of the man who had been so intimately associated with delivering victory at Trafalgar.

He's so high up, isn't he?

He's sort of out of eye shot.

And he's getting shat on by birds.

Yeah, I mean, it's...

Couldn't we have had him a little bit lower so that we can have a look at him?

have a look at him.

Well, it's a fair point.

I mean...

It's just like a joke.

Yeah.

People wonder why the dinosaurs became extinct.

Although it's hardly surprising they died out when you see the barbaric conditions they're kept in, in zoos such as this one.

Underfed, starving, some of them little more than skeletons.

Why did Stone Age people bury all their stuff underground were they worried someone might steal it no that's how we find it it wasn't always underground it was on the top the reason we find it as archaeologists is that we go out and we dig it up the beatles created some incredible music whilst they were on drugs did they not have dope testing back then how come they weren't disqualified from the charts well um as a matter of fact there were songs they did that the BBC, who in those days were most of the radio stations, thought were references to drug taking, so they did ban them from the charts.

It's weird that the Beatles' LSD songs are so happy, isn't it?

Because LSD isn't always a happy experience.

Like, my mate Paul met this Italian couple whilst he was backpacking, and they invited him back to their room for a threesome and they gave him some LSD and when they got there, the bloke one pulled a screwdriver on him and made him shit in his own shoe and eat it whilst the woman one filmed it.

And that's a side of drug use that Paul McCartney doesn't sing about, isn't it?

No, I think luckily that kind of experience never came his way.

Peasants lived in thatched wooden huts full of chicken shit.

The water was filthy, so everyone drank beer, and the only thing to eat was bread.

It was a particularly challenging time for the gluten intolerant, but luckily nobody was yet middle class, so they just put up with it.

King Arthur Camelot, didn't he?

I think you mean that he's associated with the court of Camelot.

No, it definitely says...

King Arthur came a lot.

Camelot.

Camelot?

Yeah, it's his court, where he held court.

It's her place.

All right.

But do we know if he came a lot?

Or, like, just the same as an average man?

Like, about a tablespoon?

The only evidence I have in that regard is that he is said to have had one child.

Right.

So probably not.

Probably not.

The greatest playwriter of the age was Will.I.Am Shakespeare.

It's often said if Shakespeare were alive today, he'd be sending his scripts to television and film companies.

It wouldn't make them because they were so long and boring.

The death of Queen Victoria reduced the number of women with a voice in British politics by 100%.

because in 1901 women did not have the vote, even though at the time half the men in Britain were women.

Women were thought of as simple creatures who could give birth and raise families, but couldn't be trusted with something as complicated as drawing an X with a pencil.

Today it's unthinkable that a woman wouldn't be able to vote unless she was really hungover or in her slippers and it was raining.

But back then it was the law.

Oh, one woman decided that had to change.

Emmydale Pankhurst thought women could be more than just wives and mothers, so she deliberately only had five children, leaving her loads of time for politics.

She founded the suffragette movement.

These women were tough and prepared to fight, like Wonder Woman but with sleeves.

People sang songs during World War II to keep their spirits up, didn't they?

How loud did they have to sing to be heard over the bombs?

Well, especially as they would have sometimes been in underground stations, sheltering from the bombs, it would have been loud in the underground station, the singing, if everybody was singing together, but it's true, you wouldn't have been heard much.

I wonder if when they sang, they used to time their singing with the explosions.

That would be a fun thing to do.

It would be difficult, very difficult to time it.

It's quite random, the falling of bombs.

In the war, there were lots of songs taking the piss out of Hitler, weren't there?

How come they don't sing those sorts of songs anymore?

Well, he's not around any more, so it's not so amusing.

Where is he?

Well, he's dead.

He's dead?

Yes.

Oh, right, so it'd be disrespectful to...

Well, not so much disrespectful as pointless, really.

Pointless?

A bit pointless.

If the Tudors were the Kardashians of their time, this was their Kim.

Henry of VIII, the kingiest king who ever kinged over Britain.

If you had to draw a king, you'd definitely draw him, although maybe not as well as this, unless you're a 16th century portrait artist.

But what was so great about Henry of Eight?

Why is he the king we all still remember, unlike say, Richard V?

Well for one thing, he was fat, so he takes up more room in the memory.

But Henry's also memorable for his chronic wife addiction.

He had six wives, all called Catherine.

He was a Catherine-aholic, or Catholic for short.

King James I of England was also King James VI of Scotland, wasn't he?

He was.

Was he also the other five King Jameses in between?

No, but he was rather conscious of those other five Jameses.

Do you think he ever forgot which James he was?

No, I'm pretty sure that he knew there'd been all five before him and they'd had rotten lives.

The first had been murdered by his subjects, the second killed by an exploding cannon, the third was murdered by his subjects after losing a battle, the fourth was killed in battle, and the fifth died of nervous exhaustion after losing a battle.

So is it just bad luck being called James then, do you think?

No, the Stuarts are an astonishingly accident-prone family.

King James brought England, Scotland and Wales together, didn't he?

King James brought England, Scotland, Wales, Quam on an island together.

So he brought all those together?

That's right.

Like Simon Cowell when he brought together One Direction?

Yes, except it lasted a bit longer.

Which is your favourite?

Of the kingdoms.

No, of One Direction.

I don't have one.

Yeah, very wise.

Why is Brunel considered one of the greatest Britons of all time?

Brunel built so many different things.

Towns, canals, bridges.

I mean, he was responsible for many of the things that happened during the Industrial Revolution.

He really took our country forward in terms of technological progress.

Where does he rank compared to, say, Nick Knowles?

He's definitely further up the list, on my list...

Nick Knowles or Brunel?

Brunel.

I suppose we haven't given Nick Knowles a proper chance yet, have we?

We don't know what he might come up with yet.

It's amazing to think that only a thousand years ago this field was interesting, because it was here that Harold and William's armies met.

There have been many battles in Britain's history, but we don't know what happened in most of them.

of them, the Battle of Hastings is different.

We've got an accurate visual record of the whole thing, thanks to a quick-thinking bystander who took a tapestry of it.

Despite looking like a Game of Thrones season finale drawn by an eight-year-old boy, the Baywatch tapestry captures the full force of the battle.

It's just like being there but in wool.

Here's the Norman archers steaming in on their blue horses.

Here's a sort of stick fight bit, some chopped up people down here, his head's off, they'll be furious about that.

Some goose monsters in the sky looking down, some sort of lion thing up here, eating its own tail.

Is that its bum hole?

I think that's its bum hole.

As you can see, Harold won when he triumphantly caught an arrow in his eye.

Sadly it wasn't enough and he died soon after.

No one knows why.

London wasn't the only thing that was being burned.

Witches were too.

People genuinely believed witches were amongst them, their fear fuelled by leaked photos like this.

There wasn't a clear-cut way of telling whether someone was a witch if they weren't wearing their pointy hat.

So Britain appointed its first and only Witchfinder General.

Who was the Witchfinder General?

The Witchfinder General was a young man called Matthew Hopkins.

Matthew Hopkins?

He went to my school.

This is a different Matthew Hopkins, I hope.

How do you know?

He's an IT consultant now.

Well, the Matthew Hopkins I'm talking about died 350 years ago.

He went on a witch hunt which covered the whole of East Anglia and resulted in the death of about 100 women.

Yeah, it's not the same Matthew Hopkins.

No.

My Matthew Hopkins is going through a divorce.

Well, I think that's pretty harrowing, but compared with stringing up aged women upon scaffolds and torturing them into confession, it's probably fairly minor.

Yeah.

Puts everything in perspective, doesn't it?

That's the great thing about history.

Where is the welfare state?

Where is it?

Yeah.

Well, it's sort of all around us.

Yeah, but where specifically in Britain?

The welfare state is a phrase that refers to, broadly, the help that government gives to all of us.

The welfare state helps people from the cradle to the grave.

So is it just for people lying down?

It certainly helps people lying down.

They help to, you know, they give out bits and bobs, don't they?

Yes, for poorer people, they provide a lot of help.

Schools and housing and...

And benefit payments.

Benefit payments.

Top-ups to your wages if you're working.

How did they decide what not to give out for free?

Was there ever a plan to give out free crisps?

I don't think they've ever given out or thought about giving out free crisps although I quite like crisps I love crisps I don't think many people would argue that you can't have a decent life without free crisps I think I'd kill myself if I couldn't have crisps Early man dropped rocks like a stone and got into metal, bronze and then iron Iron Man was born But this Iron Man didn't have superpowers like the Iron Man in films.

He couldn't fly or tolerate Gwyneth Paltrow.

So instead, he had to go to lengthy measures to defend himself.

Luckily, cave buffins had also invented the Iron Spike.

And shortly after inventing the Spike, they invented stabbing each other.

The Victorians had horse-drawn buses.

But you never see horses drawing anything these days, do you?

When did they lose the ability to draw?

Is it when their hands sort of turned into hooves?

When we talk about horse-drawn buses, we're not really talking about horses drawing buses, but pulling them along.

So that's the meaning of the word draw in this instance.

Join me next time when I go back in time again.

Not in an exciting way like in a film.

I'm probably just looking at some old pots or something.