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Private Notes
Four thousand years ago, in Western Europe, men with crude stone tools carved intricate patterns over the great stone tombs of their dead. Tonight in Chronicle two artists, Patrick Carey and Peter Rawstorne, see if it is possible with the eye of imagination to get behind the abstract forms of this art to the mind of the Stone Age men who created it. Patrick Carey's film, Mists of Time, explores the world of magic of the ancient artists. Peter Rawstorne's exhibition of tracings reflects the strange designs and patterns they used to create this world.
Hernan Cortes was the first and greatest of the Conquistadors of New Spain. His confrontation with Montezuma and the empire of the Aztecs in Mexico in 1519 was the moment when for the very first time, in all their power and might, the Old World and the New stood face to face. Cortes's achievement was extraordinary - no less than the defeat of an entire civilisation with only 400 soldiers at his command. But his victory would have been impossible but for one incredible fact - Montezuma believed that Cortes was his God, the Feathered Serpent Quetzalcoatl. John Julius Norwich recounts the extraordinary interplay of mythology and mounted warfare, of human sacrifice and brilliant strategy which led ultimately to the creation of Mexico.
The conflict between Henry II and Thomas Becket has for centuries fascinated historians and dramatists alike. The dramatists, and indeed the majority of people, have seen Becket as a saint who stood out bravely for the freedom of the Church against the oppression of the King; but a different view is put tonight. There are nine contemporary lives of Becket, and from these and his letters Nesta Pain has constructed a dramatised documentary in which more than ninety per cent of the dialogue is known to have been spoken at the time. It traces the career of Thomas Becket from his appointment as Archbishop, through his exile in France, to his eventual murder in Canterbury Cathedral.
'Every traveller coming added to the general defacement of the statuary within his reach. It was no part of my original plan to bring away anything but my models.' It was with these words in 1816 that Lord Elgin argued his case for having removed many of the finest sculptures from the Parthenon. The controversy surrounding the 'Elgin Marbles' and whether they should be returned to Greece has raged ever since. The story of how Lord Elgin secured them, of Byron's vicious attack upon him, and of the Earl's subsequent ruin is told by Magnus Magnusson.
Outside broadcast cameras return to Silbury to see the results of the final three weeks' excavation. At the end of July's Chronicle Professor Richard Atkinson was about to investigate the pit lying in the last four feet of untouched material, between the end of the tunnel and the geometrical centre of Silbury's inner mound. Tonight's programme shows whether these closing days of skill and patience have revealed the ultimate truth about Silbury Hill and provided answers to all the questions Professor Atkinson posed before the dig began two years ago.
