Season 1 (1969)

The Skin of Our Teeth
9.0

February 23, 1969 • 50m

In this the first episode Clark travels from Byzantine Ravenna to the Celtic Hebrides, from the Norway of the Vikings to Charlemag...Read more

The Great Thaw
9.0

March 2, 1969 • 50m

In the second episode Clark tells of the sudden reawakening of European civilisation in the twelfth century . He traces it from it...Read more

Romance and Reality
9.0

March 9, 1969 • 50m

Beginning at a castle in the Loire, then travelling through the hills of Tuscany and Umbria to the cathedral baptistry at Pisa as ...Read more

Man: The Measure of all Things
9.0

March 16, 1969 • 50m

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

The Hero as Artist
8.0

March 23, 1969 • 50m

Here Clark takes us back to 16th century Papal Rome noting the convergence of Christianity and antiquity. He discusses Michelangel...Read more

Protest and Communication
0.0

March 30, 1969 • 50m

Here Clark takes us back to the Reformation. That is to the Germany of Albrecht Duerer and Martin Luther, the world of the humanit...Read more

Grandeur and Obedience
8.0

April 6, 1969 • 50m

Again in Rome of Michelangelo and Bernini, Clark tells of the Catholic Church's fight against the Protestant north, the Counter-Re...Read more

The Light of Experience
0.0

April 13, 1969 • 50m

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 ...Read more

The Pursuit of Happiness
10.0

April 20, 1969 • 50m

Here Clark talks of the harmonious flow and complex symmetries of the works of Bach, Handel, Haydn and Mozart — and the reflection...Read more

The Smile of Reason
0.0

April 27, 1969 • 50m

Here Clark discusses the Age of Enlightenment tracing it from the polite conversations in the elegant Parisian salons of eighteent...Read more

The Worship of Nature
7.0

May 4, 1969 • 50m

Belief in the divinity of nature, Clark argues, usurped Christianity's position as the chief creative force in Western civilisatio...Read more

The Fallacies of Hope
8.0

May 11, 1969 • 50m

Here Clark argues that the French Revolution led to the dictatorship of Napoleon and the dreary bureaucracies of the nineteenth ce...Read more

Heroic Materialism
9.0

May 18, 1969 • 50m

Clark concludes the series with his discussion of materialism and humanitarianism of the past century. This takes us from the indu...Read more