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.

David Hockney, widely considered to be Britain's best-loved living artist, has taken over the Royal Academy in London with his exhibition A Bigger Picture made up of recent works depicting the landscape of his native Yorkshire.

What really went on at the ancient Greek oracle at Delphi, how did it get its awesome reputation and why is it still influential today?

Documentary which records and celebrates the life and works of 'punk poet' John Cooper Clarke, looking at his life as a poet, a comedian, a recording artist and revealing how he has remained a significant influence on contemporary culture over four decades.

Documentary celebrating the triumph, tragedy and human comedy that was Manchester record company, Factory. Started by the late Tony Wilson, Alan Erasmus, Peter Saville and Martin Hannett in the late 1970s, it became known as the home of Joy Divsion, New Order and Happy Mondays and for creating the Hacienda club.

This documentary tells the story of the emergence and evolution of the British music festival through the mavericks, dreamers and dropouts who have produced, enjoyed and sometimes fought for them over the last 50 years.

Once upon a time, football was just a game... From those who lived it, and those who made the beautiful game a billion pound business. The goals, the glamour, the glory.

The story of how football's Premier League was formed, told by its stars. What began in 1992 as a controversial breakaway has become the most watched sporting competition in the world.

One of the Premier League’s most iconic moments is created as Eric Cantona lunges into the crowd, throwing the 1994/95 title race between Man United and Blackburn wide open.

By the mid 1990s, the Premier League is growing in stature and a new generation of players are learning to navigate their newfound celebrity status.

Arsene Wenger arrives in London with ideas that revolutionise the game. As his side pose a serious challenge to Man United’s dominance, the league’s most infamous feud is born.

Documentary series about American folk music from the 1920s to the 1960s.

Three-part documentary series on American folk music, tracing its history from the recording boom of the 1920s to the folk revival of the 1960s.

In the 1960s a new generation, spearheaded by Joan Baez and Bob Dylan, took folk to the top of the charts and made it the voice of youthful protest.

In the depression of the 1930s, John Lomax found convicted murderer Leadbelly in a southern jail. Leadbelly\'s music was never quite as pure and untouched by pop as Lomax believed, but it set a new agenda for folk music, redefining it as the voice of protest, the voice of the outsider and the oppressed.

Michael Palin explores China, staying in the Governor's Castle in Qingdao where Mao slept, meeting the owner of a Chinese vineyard which produces Chardonay and having a street massage. He travels to Shanghai and then by train and boat to the Yangtse Gorge, where a huge engineering project to create a dam is in progress, which will flood the towns and areas in which he is now travelling. Third in the series

Michael Palin travels to Japan, starting at the island of Sado where he meets the famous Kodd Drummers. From there he moves down to Tokyo and is shown around by Mayumi, an early Japanese Monty Python fan.

In 1903, on the island of Hiva Oa in the Marquesas, a syphilitic and alcoholic Frenchman called Paul Gauguin died of a heart attack. At that point nobody realised the incredible impact Gauguin\'s work was to have on modern art.

Gil Scott-Heron was one of the most influential musicians and poets of the last 50 years. In Don Letts\'s documentary, Gil tells his own story for the first time - from being one of the first black children to integrate an all-white Southern state school to becoming the Godfather of Rap.

Virginia Woolf said Homer\'s epic poem the Odyssey was \'alive to every tremor and gleam of existence\'. Following the magical and strange adventures of warrior king Odysseus, inventor of the idea of the Trojan Horse, the poem can claim to be the greatest story ever told.

In the 1950s, English poetry becomes more democratic as poets like Philip Larkin turn away from the obscurity of modernism in favour of language and subject matter that reflect the feel of 50s Britain. American poets develop a raw confessional style, while in Britain poets reach out to new audiences - on television, in pubs, on the streets.

The first episode explores the stylistic shifts in poetry as the 20th century dawned, when poets began to jettison tradition for modern forms of expression. They would reject the sentiment and moralising of Victorian poetry and call for a new directness and economy of language fitting for a postwar generation

Idris Elba reveals the defining moments in street music and culture over the last 35 years, featuring rare archive material, seminal music videos and insight from hip hop stars.

Documentary telling the story of the British world music revolution from the early 1980s to the present. Through a variety of careers, starting with Zimbabwe's Bhundu Boys and culminating with Portugal's Mariza in the new millennium, the film explores what it takes to bring music from 'out there' over here.

A documentary chronicling the story of Stiff Records, a tiny independent that took music out of the boardroom and gave it back to the fans.Stiff\'s successes included Nick Lowe, the Damned, Elvis Costello, Ian Dury, Madness, Tracey Ullman and the Pogues.