Consumers and Conscience traces the story of Britain in the 18th century, which saw an explosion of creativity and a country with enough money, from trade and conquest, to pay for it. But the money had a dark side: sculptor Thomas J Price visits Harewood House to see the elaborate Robert Adam-designed interiors, Joshua Reynolds portraits and Thomas Chippendale furniture that the slave trade paid for. 

This was also the great age of mockery and artist Lubaina Himid reflects on William Hogarth's scabrous exposure of upper-class hypocrisies, while comedian Stewart Lee analyses the cutting humour of A Modest Proposal, Jonathan Swift's bitter satire about the treatment of the Irish poor, with passages performed by actor Jason Isaacs. 

An age of exploitation was stirring up a growing social conscience. Emma Bridgewater examines how potter Josiah Wedgwood fought a campaign against slavery with teapots and porcelain abolition medallions while Martin Rowson analyses his hero James Gillray's invention of the biting political cartoon, poking fun of all sides. The Georgian era was also a great age of writing, from Olaudah Equiano's searing account of enslavement to Jane Austen's genius in novels. Sculptor Douglas Gordon explores what Robert Burns, his distinctive dialect and poems of ordinary life still means to Scots today. 
 

Wars and Peace explores art at war during the first half of the 20th century, War with the old imperial order, war with convention and with the very idea of what it means to be human. This is a story of artists grappling with the destruction, fighting back and transforming the culture of the Isles. Actress Michelle Fairley performs WB Yeats' poem, Easter 1916, with its resonant phrase ‘a terrible beauty is born', marking a turning of the tide against the British empire. Contemporary war photographer Oliver Chanarin traces the story of William Orpen's subversive protest image, To the Unknown British Soldier in France, picturing a lone draped coffin amid the magnificence of the Palace of Versailles where peace delegates met in 1919. 

Some artists rejected war with their bohemian lifestyles or their utopian visions of a better future for the people. Artist Lachlan Goudie explores the great interwar ship-building project, the Queen Mary ocean liner, and the coming together in it of Glaswegian engineering and art deco luxury. 

As refugees flee Germany in the 1930s ahead of a new war, comedian Eddie Izzard appreciates the radical modernist vision of the De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill, designed by a German and Russian Jewish émigrés, and photographer Hannah Starkey reflects on the outsider's point of view photographer Bill Brandt brought to his images of 1930s poverty, including the seminal Coal-Searcher Going Home to Jarrow. 

With the Second World War bringing new horrors, artists grappled with Nazi atrocities. Film director Andrew MacDonald explores the controversy sparked by The Life & Death of Colonel Blimp, a highly original take on the British war effort written and produced by his grandfather Emeric Pressburger. Artist Ryan Gander examines how sculptor Barbara Hepworth tried to make sense of war by reaching for beauty in abstract human forms and Denzil Forrester looks ahead to the post-colonial aftermath of war, signalled by Indian artist FN Souza's suffering black Christ in his 1959 painting, Crucifixion.