WATCH ON BBC SELECT: THE CONSPIRACY DROP

Philanthropist, activist and survivor of the Nazi occupation of Hungary in World War II, George Soros is the man Forbes magazine called the ‘most generous giver’. All of these mantles suggest that the financier, one of the world’s richest people, should be widely feted for his achievements. But the Budapest-born multi-billionaire hedge fund supremo has instead become a bogeyman around the world, castigated by everyone from bloggers to presidents for his extensive funding of political and educational causes. Soros is the focus of innumerable conspiracy theories, cast as the puppet master behind everything from control of the global economy to US gun control activism. But behind these wild claims lurks the possibility of a darker reason for his vilification: that allegations against Soros are the product of a worrying resurgence of anti-Semitism.

Watch George Soros: The Billionaire Global Mastermind? on BBC Select today. Restrictions apply*.

Historian David Reynolds scrutinizes the controversial career of the 37th President of the United States, Richard Milhous Nixon. Nixon was driven by the dual demons of ruthless ambition and an inferiority complex borne out of a loveless, impoverished childhood in Southern California. While he made a genuine impact as a world statesman, hastening the end of the cold war by making historic, peace-making visits to communist Soviet Union and China, Nixon couldn’t replicate this success on home soil, descending into infamy via Watergate as the only US president forced to resign from office. With access to Nixon’s own memos, audio tapes and home movie footage, Reynolds presents an intimate psychological profile of a tortured man and reconstructs Nixon’s ‘den’, a secret office opposite the White House where ‘Tricky Dick’ lived out a presidency defined by secrecy, deception and paranoia.

Watch Nixon in the Den on BBC Select today. Restrictions apply*.