Civilisation (1969)

In this the first episode Clark travels from Byzantine Ravenna to the Celtic Hebrides, from the Norway of the Vikings to Charlemagne's chap…

In the second episode Clark tells of the sudden reawakening of European civilisation in the twelfth century . He traces it from its first m…

Beginning at a castle in the Loire, then travelling through the hills of Tuscany and Umbria to the cathedral baptistry at Pisa as he examin…

Visiting Florence, where, Clark argues, European thought gained a new impetus from its rediscovery of its classical past. He also visits th…

Here Clark takes us back to 16th century Papal Rome noting the convergence of Christianity and antiquity. He discusses Michelangelo, Raphae…

Here Clark takes us back to the Reformation. That is to the Germany of Albrecht Duerer and Martin Luther, the world of the humanitarians Er…

Again in Rome of Michelangelo and Bernini, Clark tells of the Catholic Church's fight against the Protestant north, the Counter-Reformation…

Here Clark tells of new worlds in space and in a drop of water that the telescope and microscope revealed, and the new realism in the Dutch…

Here Clark talks of the harmonious flow and complex symmetries of the works of Bach, Handel, Haydn and Mozart — and the reflection of these…

Here Clark discusses the Age of Enlightenment tracing it from the polite conversations in the elegant Parisian salons of eighteenth-century…

Belief in the divinity of nature, Clark argues, usurped Christianity's position as the chief creative force in Western civilisation and ush…

Here Clark argues that the French Revolution led to the dictatorship of Napoleon and the dreary bureaucracies of the nineteenth century and…

Clark concludes the series with his discussion of materialism and humanitarianism of the past century. This takes us from the industrial la…