Michael Buerk looks at the building of bridges around the nation during the era, visiting Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol to reveal the secret construction masterpiece that lay hidden in the structure's core for more than a century. He also discovers how the Tay Bridge disaster led to huge leaps in technology and how a new metal emerged as the bridge maker's building block of choice.

Michael Buerk discovers how bold Victorian experiments and cathedrals of medicine built Britain and revolutionised the medical world. He begins in Edinburgh with murderers Burke and Hare, revealing the gruesome roots of modern anatomy and the macabre justice dolled out for those caught flaunting the system. He then travels to the operating theatre of Old St Thomas' Hospital in London for a hands-on lesson in Victorian surgery.