Edward III rips up the medieval rule book and crushes the flower of French knighthood at the Battle of Crecy with his low-born archers. His son, the Black Prince, conducts a campaign of terror, helping to bring France to her knees.

England, wracked by plague and revolt, loses the upper hand until Henry V, determined to prove his right to be king, turns the tide at the battle of Agincourt.

Henry V has claimed the crown of France for his heirs, but to secure it the English must conquer all of France. Potent French resistance comes in the most unlikely form - an illiterate, young peasant girl, Joan of Arc. Dr Janina Ramirez explores the longest and bloodiest divorce in history.

Leading British writer Howard Jacobson, a Jew himself, examines the origins and consequences of Christian belief. He argues that although Christianity originated in devout Judaism, for Jews it has been, for the most part, a calamity.

Acclaimed war correspondent Rageh Omaar examines the effect the Crusades have on the world today. In the West, the Crusades are a chapter of Christian history that has little impact on our everyday lives, but in the Middle East many believe that the Crusades are happening again.

An international team of experts uses cutting-edge technology to prise age-old secrets from the complex of streets and stone buildings that lie less than five metres below the surface of the ocean. State-of-the-art CGI helps to raise the city from the seabed, revealing for the first time in 3,500 years how Pavlopetri would once have looked and operated.

Civilisations is an epic new series spanning 31 countries on six continents, and covering more than 500 works of art.

The first film by Simon Schama looks at the formative role art and the creative imagination have played in the forging of humanity itself.

In this episode of Civilisations, Professor Mary Beard explores images of the human body in ancient art, from Mexico and Greece to Egypt and China.

Simon Schama explores one of our deepest artistic urges - the depiction of nature. Simon discovers that landscape painting is seldom a straightforward description of observed nature.

Professor Mary Beard broaches the controversial, sometimes dangerous, topic of religion and art. For millennia, art has inspired religion as much as religion has inspired art.

Think Renaissance and you think of Italy. But in the 15th and 16th centuries, the great Islamic empires experienced their own extraordinary cultural flowering.

In the 15th and 16th centuries distant and disparate cultures met, often for the first time. These encounters provoked wonder, awe, bafflement and fear.

Simon Schama starts his meditation on colour and civilisation with the great Gothic cathedrals of Amiens and Chartres.

If David Olusoga's first film in Civilisations is about the art that followed and reflected early encounters between different cultures, his second explores the artistic reaction to imperialism in the 19th century.

Simon Schama begins Civilisations with this premise: that it is in art - the play of the creative imagination - that humanity expresses its most essential self: the power to break the tyranny of the humdrum, the grind of everyday.

From Roman marbles and Egyptian mummies to Renaissance masterpieces and African sculptures, in this special accompanying programme to Civilisations, Mary Beard goes in search of extraordinary works of art from all over the world that can be seen here in Britain.

Niall Ferguson explores how Western civilization - a clear minority of mankind - secured a lion\'s share of the world\'s resources, and examines whether the West is about to be overtaken by the rest.

Series focusing on albums that have influenced the course of music. This edition looks at the 1973 Wailers album Catch a Fire, which brought international fame to Bob Marley.

Dr Jonathan Foyle, architectural historian and novice climber, scales Britain's most iconic structures to reveal the buildings' secrets

The next step in Jonathan\'s journey takes him to Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire.

The next step in Jonathan\'s journey takes him to Burghley House in Lincolnshire. Built to impress Queen Elizabeth I on her many trips around the country, it\'s the finest example of an Elizabethan house in Britain.

Dr Jonathan Foyle, architectural historian and novice climber, scales Britain\'s most iconic structures, to reveal the buildings\' secrets, his journey begins in the North East of England at Durham Cathedral.

Jonathan\'s journey takes him to New College in Oxford. Built in 1379, this college set the blueprint for universities all over the world for the next 600 years.

Nick Crane and the team take a fascinating journey around the coast of the United Kingdom, uncovering stories that have made us the island nation we are today.

The nation's love affair with the coast will be reawakened for this entertaining and ambitious exploration of the entire UK coastline. Across 13 programmes Coast celebrates the unique character of the UK's coastal communities, exploring a wealth of fascinating human stories through a mixture of expert comment, contemporary storytelling and computer-generated images. This is the coast as never seen before.

The South Wales coast, by the Second Severn Bridge, has the second highest tidal range in the world, at around 14.5 metres (the highest is the Bay of Fundy, located off the northern coast of Maine, USA). It's also home to an extraordinary tidal phenomenon - the Severn Bore.

The coast of North West England covers some classic industrial landscapes and playgrounds, and a dangerous world of shifting sands.

Scotland's west coast has the most jagged and dramatic coastline in Great Britain. It's only 300 miles as the seagull flies, but once you add in the dozens of islands anchored off this rugged coastline it is thousands of miles.

This is a coast of two halves, divided by the broad Humber. We start on the craggy grandeur of the Yorkshire coast and finish by wading through the vast salt marshes and mudflats of the Wash.