Max Leonard

Ice has confounded, delighted and fascinated us since the first sparks of art and culture in Europe and it now underpins the modern world. Without ice, we would not feed ourselves or heal our sick as we do, and our towns and cities, countryside and oceans would look very different.

A Cold Spell uses this vital link to understanding our past to tell a surprising story of obsession, invention and adventure - how we have lived and dreamed, celebrated and traded, innovated, loved and fought over thousands of years.

It brings together a sacrificial Incan mummy, Winston Churchill's secret plans for unusual aircraft carriers, strange bones that shook Victorian beliefs about the world and a macabre journey into the depths of the human body.

If you complete a bike race of over 3,000 kilometres in the slowest time, should you be branded the loser? Lanterne Rouge flips the Tour de France on its head and examines the stories of the riders who don’t win the trophy, and forces us to re-examine the meaning of success, failure and the very nature of sport.