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Historian Professor Martin Johnes looks into the recent past to shed light on the uneasy relationship between England and Wales, and to find the ways that relationship has shaped the people we are today.

Johnes discovers how English settlers changed the language and the culture of Wales, and discovers an unusual case in which violence erupted. He looks at how some people in Wales felt that the increasing influence of the English incomers was changing the country beyond return.

At Cwm Tryweryn he discovers how the drowning of a Welsh village more than 50 years ago to supply water to an English city had a long-term impact on the relationship between Wales and England. It is Tryweryn, Johnes argues, that provoked many people in Wales to reconsider the power dynamics between the two countries – even causing a small minority of the population to take direct action against what they saw as another example of English oppression.

Johnes goes underground to a coal face, discovering how Wales underpinned empire, and climbs to the top of the Severn Crossing, as he considers the impact of an ever-growing number of links between England and Wales. These links, he says, have created a bond between the two nations that will continue to shape Wales in the future. However, it is up to the people of Wales, Johnes says, to decide what that future looks like – we have the freedom to change it.

Ultimately Johnes argues that 'England is no longer a coloniser. We may still carry a sense of oppression but we haven’t been oppressed for a long time. For centuries Wales has meant a great deal to a great many people, and it is for us to decide our future relationship with England.'