British Royal Heritage: The Royal Kingdom

Westminster Abbey and the Palace of Westminster provide the backdrops to some of the greatest state occasions and royal pageantry in all of Britain. Whitehall Palace is almost forgotten, but the great banqueting hall provided the setting for the execution of the king who designed it. Then there is St James' Palace, Kensington Palace and the most famous of them all, Buckingham Palace.

When kings first started building palaces along the banks of the river, they've used the Thames as a means of transport. In Henry VIII's day, the king had no less than 13 royal residences in the capital and nine of them could be reached by water. That made the Royal Waterman extremely important as they ferried the monarch in style from Greenwich in the East right through to Windsor in the West.

We explore the Cinque Ports and their links to smuggling, the birth of the Royal Navy, Walmer Castle in the East and inland to the glories of Canterbury and the tragic tale of a murdered king's minister.

The ancient kingdom of Wessex is riddled with folklore and legend. Alongside those roots, more modern stories such as the flight of the Prince of Wales from Cromwell's army and the sinking of King Henry's flagship the Mary Rose create the richest of royal tapestries.

We visit Richmond and its lost Palace where Queen Elizabeth I passed her final days. We go north to Hatfield where she spent her youth and heard that she was to be sent to the Tower of London and then, on her reprieve, that she was to be Queen. We then go east to Rochester where the abdication of one king and the homecoming of another, a tale not lost on the town's greatest writer Charles Dickens.

Education and the Church, and their links with the monarchy are examined with a visit to Cambridge University and the ecclesiastical centres of Bury St Edmunds and St Paul's. It was at Cambridge that the monarchy evolved from warrior kings to the modern model, and it was through its links with the clerical that the crown preserved its unique position as head of both state and church.