Tuesday Documentary - Season 5 / Year 1972

A moving film about people who live below the poverty line and their struggle to keep afloat. 

In the London Borough of Southwark the tenants of Chaucer House, a decrepit half-way house for homeless families, reach breaking point. Angry that once more Southwark had failed to deliver on their promise to tear down the flat block and provide adequate alternative accommodation they stage a demonstration and wait for the officials next move. At the heart of their demonstration is a plea for better housing, better treatment, more understanding and above all a better future. 

This highly acclaimed documentary examines the way the officials deal, not only with the tenants of Chaucer, but with those living on or below the poverty line - people subjected daily to interrogation, investigation - those who seem to have been rejected by society. Following the release of the documentary Chaucer House was demolished a year later.

Two days after the death of the Duke of Windsor, Ludovic Kennedy asks what kind of monarch Edward VIII might have made if he had remained on the throne. Kennedy introduces an interview with the duke himself, filmed in 1969, in which the latter talks about his dislike for the formalities of his status, expresses strong opinions on the establishment and recalls many of the prime ministers he met while he was heir apparent and, subsequently, King. In the studio, Kennedy discusses the duke's abdication and its effect upon the monarchy with historian AJP Taylor, Windsor family friend Lady Bridget Monckton, former Member of Parliament Lord Robert Boothby and journalist Colin Coote. The last word, thanks to the 1969 interview, is granted to the duke's wife, Wallis, Duchess of Windsor.