An NBC Documentary

During these last few days of 1959 the BBC is presenting - as a series on successive evenings - four television films which between them look back at the first sixty years of the twentieth century These programmes, two of them American and two of them British, are introduced by Lord Boothby K.B.E.

In the years before the First World War, Britain was in its Edwardian hey-day; a Liberal Government ruled at Westminster; the Navy ruled the waves, and the thrones of Europe were a family affair.
On the other side of the Atlantic, almost unnoticed, the United States was nearing the status of a world power. But as yet America was of no concern to the outside world and the outside world was of no concern to Americans. Life in the United States centred on family picnics, the new 'ice-cream parlors,' and the Sunday afternoon band concerts.... These were the last untroubled years of their history.

Richard Cawston writes on page 2
(Tomorrow: 'The Jazz Age')