David Dimbleby tells two thousand years of British history through the objects the country made, bought, and sometimes stole, one artifact per age across seven episodes. He starts with Roman and Anglo-Saxon treasures unearthed from British soil and moves forward through medieval reliquaries, Tudor portraiture, and the industrial age's engineering feats, using each object as evidence of what its era valued or feared. The series travels well beyond Britain to find its subjects, following pieces to Italy, Germany, Turkey, India, and the United States, tracing how empire and trade scattered British-made or British-owned objects across the world and brought foreign influence back home. Dimbleby handles the pieces on camera, in museum stores and private collections alike, and lets craftsmanship do the explaining rather than narration alone. The title nods to Shakespeare's seven ages of man, mapped here onto a nation instead of a life. Each hour stands as a self-contained portrait of one period, built entirely from what its people left behind.