A personal view by Kenneth Clark

This, the second in the series of thirteen programmes, has been filmed in the monasteries, abbeys and cathedrals of France. The sudden reawakening of European civilisation in the 12th century is traced by Kenneth Clark from the first manifestations at the Abbey of Cluny to its high point, the building of the Cathedral of Chartres.

'Our intellectual energy, our contact with the great minds of Greece, our ability to move and change, our belief that God may be approached through beauty, our feeling of compassion, our sense of the unity of Christendom - all this, and much more, appeared in those hundred marvellous years.'

(Book £4.75. paperback £2.25: see p 54)