flaw" particular system, ' ' ' er particular system, there is a that particular system, there is a lot of fine weather. a peppering of showers, crossing northern fringes of scotland. and northern ireland, too. down into the moors of south—west of england, but down the spine of the country girl lying snow is holding this temperature is despite the presence of sunshine. towards the east i'm afraid you will keep the cloud, rain and wind for a good part of the evening. and eventually close overnight, then ice becomes a widespread problem on untreated surfaces. it is a good deal collar be lying snow. on thursday, in its own right it is a decent sort of day. a lot of sunshine around, still those showers running in towards the northern half of scotland, that the central belt, the rest of scotland, much of northern ireland as well, not a warm day but a pleasant and dry day. if you are of the details, just one of two showers. from thursday and friday and into the weekend, when we

look to the atlantic to see these frontal systems running in on quite noticeably strong winds, if that they pressure gets as deep as we think it may do, then friday could bea think it may do, then friday could be a very wet and windy day, but increasingly mild as we run towards the weekend. this is bbc news, the headlines: motorists are being warned that snow and ice are causing disruption to motorways in england and wales. prince harry sets out how he views his role as a senior royal. while guest editing for the bbc‘s today programme, he promises to remain above politics. but shine a light on certain issues and causes. a small number of critically ill syrian children are allowed to leave a rebel—held area of damascus. the company that ran grenfell tower gives up control of thousands of other properties, saying it can't guarantee tenants the service they expect. tesco investigates after customers complained that their christmas turkey was "rotten" or had "gone off". now on bbc news, one

of our highlights from 2017. this autumn, russia marked the centenary of the revolution that came to be known as red october. for this special programme, steve rosenberg travelled across the vast nation to find out how to find out how russians view the revolution a century on. historic moments captured on film from a bygone age. we have been given exclusive access to a priceless archive — from places that were new to western eyes. many of these films, from the frozen mountains of the himalayas to the searing libyan desert, have not seen the light of day for a hundred years.

sons and daughters of the pioneering explorers see their fathers' remarkable footage for the very first time. to see this film makes me feel very proud of him. i'm in awe of what he managed to do. they went into the unknown without any consideration for their safety. these are some of britain's great explorations. the british film institute's national archive is a treasure trove of britain's past. among the thousands of films stored in this vault are some shot by young explorers as they travelled to unexplored parts of the globe. now they're being digitised and put online so that we can all relive their incredible stories. among them is this film, released by gaumont british in 193a. it's the first flight over mount everest. this view from the top of mount everest had

never been seen before. the footage is also helping scientists today learn more about the impact of climate change. will you give me a hand with this strap? certainly! it was shot by major latham valentine stewart blacker, a former fighter pilot and war hero. he was a real—life biggles. the film is a staged re—enactment of the first flight over everest, but it includes the actual aerial footage shot during the expedition and stars the original aviators. well, do you realise you could put everest on the map in three hours? you're still thinking of the alps. why not? a good plane, camera shooting down, and you could record every detail. i wonder... don't be fooled by the ham acting — this film won an oscar. the men risked their lives,

flying higher than anyone had flown before to capture this historic footage. wings over everest is part of the royal geographical society's archive of expeditions it sponsored in the early part of the 20th century. what was the motivation? what was the purpose of the society? the purpose of the society has always been to undertake scientific exploration and improve understanding of the world, its people and places. the society has a collection of over two million items, it's the world's largest collection of geographically related maps, photographs, artefacts, diaries, notebooks and publications. and this film collection, which has been housed for the society at the british film institute for many years, is the last portion of our collections that has not been made more accessible. this is the earliest

known film of tibet. it was shown in cinemas all across the uk. audiences were gripped by this astonishing footage of a strange and mysterious new world. they were taken by a young army officer on the first attempt to reach the summit of mount everest in 1922. before they set off, the climbers seek a blessing at a monastery. they're treated as honoured guests and shown ritual dances. this one is a tale of reincarnation. around their waists are aprons made from a lattice of human bones. and theirface masks are made from stretched human skin. the cameraman was captainjohn noel.

although it was shown in cinemas, his daughter has actually never seen the film — until now. he suggested to the mount everest committee that they took film, and they pooh—poohed this idea, said, "no, it would have vulgarise the expedition." but he nevertheless persuaded them, and he said, you know, "this is a record that we need to make, like scott of the antarctic." this was going to be a world event. it was a bit like the moon landings. yes, it was, it was, yes, we'd just come back through the war, you know, we were impoverished, people had very little to be excited about, and here was this expedition to mount everest. john noel climbed treacherous rock faces with his camera equipment by day, and by night he would develop his footage. he had this purpose—built tent he'd taken with him to base camp,

and at night, using water from the glaciers and yak dung as a source of heat, he processed 10,000 feet of film on the mountain to be sure that he'd got the right composition and good exposures. what was your father's motivation? it was the fact that it had not been climbed, a feeling of doing this for king and country, and that it should be the british who should at least make an attempt on the mountain. you see, they're just strolling around in very casual clothes. but it does look as though it's a sort of ramble in the lake district, doesn't it? yes! it was all hand—knitted at home and tweetjackets. there's a lovely photograph of my father with a pocket handkerchief and a tie down at base camp! mount everest, that's how he prepared ? ever the gentleman, you know, i mean, that's how they presented themselves. i think not only were they born in the victorian era, but i think the war had moulded them.

they had seen so much carnage that they were ready for anything. and it made them very stoic and fearless. they went into the unknown without any consideration for their safety. and the footage is of scientific as well as historical value. it's just absolutely fabulous, these images from 1922. david breashears has literally followed in captain noel‘s footsteps, and he's taken his own images of mount everest from the very same places as the early explorers. and here is the glacier we're looking at right here, the east rongbuk glacier is the glacier here, right through here. he provides the old and new images to scientists. they use them to determine the impact climate change has had on the himalayas over the past hundred years. but until now, he's only had a handful of still images from the early expeditions. so the availability of captain noel‘s footage will give him —

and climate scientists — much more data to work with. the historic imagery in the archives of the royal geographical society is this unlimited gift and a treasure to scientists. these are time—stamped images, essentially. we know when they were taken and where they were taken. we can find the same positions and take a picture of the exact same place and very clearly, and with extremely high resolution, take note of the difference. and all that difference is in loss — loss of a mass in the glacier. it's irrefutable, it's clear, it sends the same signal to all who see it. in the end, captain noel and his fellow climbers' attempt to reach the summit failed. they came so close — they were just half a kilometre short of the summit. at these high altitudes, the air became too thin for them,

and so they were forced to turn back. they were just overwhelmed by everything, the terrain, the difficulty of the climb, this constant wind, which i think they weren't expecting. but the team had climbed higher than anyone had climbed before and laid the groundwork for the eventual ascent to the summitjust 30 years later by tenzing norgay and sir edmund hillary. here at the bfi, conservation specialists are painstakingly restoring 138 films of some of britain's greatest explorations, frame by frame. one of them is of a young army officer crossing the vast expanse of the libyan desert by motorcar. ralph bagnold and his friends are on a journey that will take them into uncharted territory.

bagnold was a pioneer of desert exploration. he was an army officer stationed in egypt. his expeditions involve striving thousands of miles into the blistering heat of the libyan desert. no—one had crossed it. no, no—one had crossed it, no—one had crossed it by car before. his son stephen has heard stories of these incredible expeditions, but it's the first time he's seen them. that's my father driving there, and you can see the bonnet is off, and you can see the pipe running from the radiator into the... that was a modification? that was the modification to prevent loss of water through evaporation, through the radiator. it was a journey that pushed bagnold, his men and the cars to their very limits. they had to take everything they needed to survive with them. it was all rationed, water, i think it was three pints a day — one at breakfast, one at lunch...

all for drinking, you washed in the sand, you washed your plates and stuff in the sand. they travelled thousands of miles across the featureless terrain. bagnold invented a sun compass, which enabled them to navigate with incredible position. they never strayed more than a mile from their intended destination. the experts proclaimed it couldn't be done. and not, i think, because he wanted to show them who was the master, butjust because it tickled his fancy that maybe, with clear planning and with the right equipment and stuff, there could be a way. when one of the cars broke down, it was cannibalised for spare parts and abandoned — and they're still out there somewhere, buried among the dunes. the vehicles would often get stuck in the sand, and each time bagnold and his team would find ever more ingenious ways of extricating them.

it looks as though they are using strips of metal that they bought in cairo that had been intended to go on the roof, but it appeared to do the job well. they're basically laying tracks — or a surface from which the car can get out. once out, you have to keep going, otherwise you just sink again into the same patch of soft sand. bagnold took careful measurements to understand how the sand is moved by the wind. he wrote several books on the subject and was elected to the royal society, a group of the country's most distinguished scientists. to see this film makes me feel very proud of him, of course, and i'm in awe of what he managed to do. his research has helped nasa explore mars. these features on the martian surface are named the bagnold dunes in honour of the great explorer.

all the wheels are coming into alignment. abbie hutty has taken up his legacy. she's developing europe's first mars rover at this test—bed in stevenage outside london. abbie is trying to develop new ways to cross the martian sand — just as bagnold did in libya 80 years earlier. he was the first one to really look at the materials that the sand was made out of, and the wind forces and the distribution, and how friction played a part and all of those things, and that's how we predict what it's going to be like on mars. it's all about that dry, dusty nature of the sand, and trying to drive over that without sinking into it — that's our biggest challenge. i really do think he'd be absolutely delighted, amazed and delighted if he knew that the work he'd done all that time ago had an application, and a very real application,

to the exploration of mars. i think he'd be tickled pink. this is the bfi's grading room, where the final adjustments are made before the films are released to the public. this one is from a news bulletin from 1951 which may well be one of the first examples of fake news. we're off on the track of that abominable snowman, and our first clues are these footprints, photographed by eric shipton, leader of the 1951 everest expedition... so what made the footprints? some zoologists thought that the himalayan there, seen here, might be the snowman. or maybe it's the american mountain there — but if so, how did he wander into tibet? —— bear.

the experts were baffled. here, we can compare the plaster casts of various animal footprints with the photos published in the times. but was it really alljust a publicity stunt for the times newspaper, which was raising money for the next everest expedition? meantime, everest guards says her secret. i think it's more about how the story is used by the times to promote awareness of this attempt in ‘51, so today, i suppose, we would see it as being a kind of a hook for news. in 1951, it's the year in london of the festival of london, so there's a huge resurgence in optimism after the second world war, and the whole idea that britain is going to try to reach the summit of everest first is taking shape. thousands of miles away in yemen, a pilot, aubrey rickards, filmed the hadhramaut, a region that is home to an ancient civilisation. the film shows skyscrapers built in the 16th century — from mud. some are 11 storeys high.

there are even whitewashed mud constructions that look like vast grand palaces. they're still inhabited to this day. this was the first metropolis. it's the very first film footage of yemen. from the air, you see the extraordinary landscape of the hadhramaut, which is an area full of wadis, where water would flow down and enable human habitation from prehistory onwards. and what you're seeing is what i think is one of the most extraordinarily sophisticated developments of urban living, because you have people living in adobe—constructed, mud—constructed multistorey habitations. the first skyscrapers. they're often described as the manhattan of the desert. in the actual manhattan,

during the late ‘60s, eastern mysticism was popularised by the hippy culture of the time. young people in many western countries were inspired to find love, peace and harmony in their lives. but these ideas have their roots in asia, from films shot in the 1930s across the himalayan ranges, of journeys through bhutan and tibet. the men who shot this footage thought they had discovered paradise among the himalayan mountains. george sherriff and frank ludlow filmed scenes of a simpler way of life, where people were happy, content, and lived

to a ripe old age. they stumbled on what they thought was a brighter, more hopeful world — a contrast to the grim desolation of europe after the first world war. this map, dug out from the archives of the royal geographical society by professor michael heffernan, shows seven of sherriff and ludlow‘s expeditions. each colour represents a different journey. well, essentially, it's these remarkable routes they took along a river valley, and their primary concern was essentially to map the area, so this is a sort of sketch map produced at the end of all of their expeditions. when sherriff and ludlow begin their expeditions in this area of tibet in 1933, it's exactly the same year when james hilton publishes lost horizon, which introduces the idea of shangri—la, this kind of perfect place. this was a mountain kingdom, a vestigial world of peace

and harmony, precisely the world that had been so obviously left behind by industrial warfare that they'd gone through, the world where people could live extraordinary long lives of peace and harmony. and a better world. a50 feet of rock soaring out of the north atlantic, known as the old man of hoy, and a very crumbling old man he is. in1967, 15 million people in the uk watched live asjoe brown and five others took on the old man of hoy in orkney, off the coast of scotland. we just had a bit of a slight tangle in the rope there, which stopped me pulling the rope into the carabiner to secure myself.

he was then, and still is, among the world's most well—known climbers. but his greatest achievement was nearly 30 years earlier in the himalayas, scaling the unclimbed mountain of kangchenjunga. it's almost as high as everest but harder to climb. some of his fellow mountaineers were involved in the successful ascent of everest two years earlier. they were climbing royalty — joe was a builder from manchester. this was my kangchenjunga axe that i was supplied with. joe recalls how surprised he was when the expedition leader asked him tojoin. when i received a telegram, saying, "invited on kangchenjunga expedition, letter following, wants to meet you in london etc," i was... i mean, it wasjust incredible, ijust couldn't believe it. the mountain was prone

to avalanches, and its terrain was treacherous. butjoe was fearless. that's me. camp one was actually in a crevasse, and while we were there, i decided to go and take a bathroom break, so i walked without any fear until i got round the corner, where there was this massive hole. it was the deepest crevasse i'd ever seen, and i was standing on the same thin bridge that was on the opposite side of the hole, so i very carefully turned around and tried to make myself weightless and crept back round the corner to where it was solid. but it was very nervy stuff. job and his fellow climber

george band stopped just short of the summit. it was a promise they'd made to the nepalese authorities — to respect local beliefs that the peak was home to the gods. i got to the top, but ijust pulled over, and there was just a snow cone rising up about 15 or 20 feet. i shouted down to him, "we're there, george." and the feeling is not of whoopee — you just think, "i don't have to go any further!" it's just a fantastic feeling of relief. these great explorations are from an age when the first portable film cameras made it possible for a mass audience to see many of the world's most inaccessible wonders for the very first time. adventurers risked their lives to explore a world that still held so many mysteries.

and now we're all able to see what they saw, as theyjourneyed to the ends of the earth, drawn by the thrill of the unknown, and spurred on by challenge that they found irresistible. for many northern and western part of the british isles, ages and sort of the british isles, ages and sort of day, but some dramatic weather around. this is the scene in basingstoke as people walk up in the first part of the day. that is not the whole story about the snow. further north, plenty of wintry

showers, generating a fair amount. widely across the southern half of the british isles that we saw snow falling through the night and the first part of the day. that all came as an area of low pressure, with a frontal system wrapped around it. engaged with the cold air on its northern and western flank, converting the rangers now, which slowly but surely have been gradually petering out as it worked its way towards east anglia and the south east of england. i don't doubt through the afternoon they will be the odd hint of winton is, even in hitler bursts. —— wintry even in heavy breasts. that one in mind if you are on the move. away from that particular system, a lot of fine weather. a peppering of showers. wintry in places, down into northern ireland as well. a run—off showers coming in down into the merits of the south of england.

write down the spine of the country, holding those temperatures down a couple of degrees to the presence of sunshine. i am afraid you're going to keep that close, rain and wind for a good part of the evening. eventually clears overnight and ice becomes a widespread problem on untreated surfaces as we start the new day on thursday. those are the temperatures in the towns and cities. a good deal could really have got the lion snow. on thursday, a really decent sort of day. a lot of sunshine around. still those showers running towards scotland but the central belt, the rest of scotland, much of northern ireland, not warm but and drive. just one or two showers. from thursday until friday, and entered the weekend, we looked at the atlantic to see these frontal systems running in on quite noticeably strong winds. if that low pressure pressure gets as deep as we think it may do. —— do, increasingly

milder as the run towards the weekend. this is bbc news. i'm lukwesa burak. the headlines at 1pm. motorists are being warned of dangerous driving conditions because of snow and ice. this is the scene live at the junction of the m1 and m6 in leicestershire, earlier highways england reported "severe conditions" when there was an accident involving a lorry. there are delays at stansted airport after snow on the runway caused all flights to be suspended for several hours. and 10,000 properties are without electricity, mostly in the midlands and wales. prince harry sets out how he views his role as a senior royal. while guest editing for the bbc‘s today programme, he promises to remain above politics. but shine a light on certain issues and causes. i will continue to play my part in society and do myjob to the best of my ability so i can wake up in the morning and feel energised and go to bed hopefully knowing that i have done the best that i can.