SIMON SCHAMA’S HISTORY OF NOW

BBC Two, 9.15pm; Wales, 9.40pm

Historian Simon Schama has lived through some history himself, having been born in 1945 on the night of the Allied bombing of Dresden and growing up part of the postwar generation hoping to build a better world through cultural ties. Now, in this fascinating three-part series, he expounds his thesis that artists and writers are at the forefront of the fight for truth and democracy. “In times of crisis,” he says, “it’s not always politicians but artists, musicians and writers who rouse us from indifference and become the true agents of change.”

In the first episode, he looks at Picasso’s political masterpiece Guernica, as well as how George Orwell’s experiences fighting in the Spanish Civil War led to him writing 1984; a campaign of misinformation waged by Joseph Stalin on the Spanish Left led to the deaths of many of Orwell’s comrades, and his sense of betrayal never left him. It was an early example of “fake news” and presaged, says Schama, the Chinese Communist Party’s methods, Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine and Donald Trump. Schama also talks about the political message of Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago and meets noted Russian dissident Nadya Tolokonnikova of punk rock group Pussy Riot. Veronica Lee