Fall asleep to history, gently told. Slow, soothing stories from the everyday lives of people long ago.Episode 6: Victorian Daily Routines. Tonight we spend one slow, ordinary day in a comfortable middle class London home in the later eighteen hundreds, waking before dawn as the housemaid lights the fires and carries up the hot water, washing at the jug and basin, and dressing slowly before a breakfast of porridge, eggs, toast and marmalade. We follow the master to his office by omnibus, sit through morning calls and letter writing, marketing and luncheon, needlework and a quiet walk, and gather for the calm ritual of afternoon tea. As lamplight falls we join the children in the nursery, dress for a quiet family dinner, listen to reading aloud and the piano, and climb at last, candle in hand, to nightdresses and deep, untroubled sleep.Sweet dreams.

Fall asleep to history, gently told. Slow, soothing stories from the everyday lives of people long ago.Episode 5: A Viking Village in Winter. Tonight we spend a slow winter day in a small coastal village in Scandinavia — waking in the dark of the longhouse, stirring the central fire, eating warm barley porridge and dried fish, feeding the cattle and sheep in the byre, weaving and spinning by firelight, mending fishing nets in the brief pale daylight beside the frozen fjord, and settling at last under thick wool blankets as the snow falls softly and the old stories are told by the fire.Sweet dreams.

Fall asleep to history, gently told. Slow, soothing stories from the everyday lives of people long ago.Episode 4: A Nile River Pilot's Slow Journey. Tonight we drift north on the Nile with a river pilot who has known the current all his life — waking before dawn on his wooden cargo boat, washing in cool river water, guiding the boat with a sounding pole past green fields, shadufs and a temple town, resting at midday in the shade of sycamore fig trees, passing papyrus marshes at dusk, and sleeping on deck under the stars as the river moves softly beneath him.Sweet dreams.