The road to Civilisation: early television journeys to Greece : WestminsterResearch

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Chapter title	The road to Civilisation: early television journeys to Greece
Authors	Wyver, J.
Editors	Hobden, F. and Wrigley, A.
Abstract	At the end of the 1950s both the eminent archaeologist Sir Mortimer Wheeler (1890-1976) and author and secret service veteran Sir Compton Mackenzie (1883-1972) presented film documentary series about ancient Greece for BBC Television. Although aspects of the classical world had been considered in earlier television programmes, Wheeler’s Armchair Voyage: Hellenic Cruise (BBC, 1958) and The Glory That Was Greece (BBC, 1959) with Mackenzie were the small screen’s earliest sustained engagements with the subject. This chapter outlines the precursors of and influences on Wheeler’s and Mackenzie’s series, exploring within a broad cultural frame the legacies of early modern travellers and of the Grand Tour, the development of sight-seeing and popular tourism from the eighteenth century onwards, representations of Greece in literature, painting and photography, technologies for virtual voyages, illustrated lectures and film travelogues as well as the mediation of travel by radio and early television. I argue that elements of each of these antecedents contributed to the formation of the two series, along with the public service understandings of the BBC’s mission, the social and educational aspirations of a post-war middle-class audience and the personal interests of the two presenters.
Keywords	Greece, television, BBC, archaeology
Book title	Ancient Greece on British Television
Year	2018
Publisher	Edinburgh University Press
Published	31 May 2018
Place of publication	Edinburgh
ISBN	9781474412599

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