A Very British Renaissance

Italians do it better: when Venice and Florence, Leonardo and Raphael led the Renaissance, shouldn’t our murky backwater of an island at the far edge of Europe just accept its place in the cultural shadows? Not if art historian Dr James Fox has anything to do with it. Youthful and vibrantly humorous but as charged with a mission to edify as was Kenneth Clark in Civilisation, Fox (A Very British Renaissance, Friday, BBC Two at 9pm) is determined to claim a place of honour for Britain in the cultural flowering of the 16th and 17th centuries. He has a knack for the telling anecdote, and in the first of three episodes that means tales of the strange and wonderful immigrants who seeded the Renaissance. And so we learn that it was a punch-up with Michelangelo, which eventually graced England with the Florentine sculptor Pietro Torrigiano as court artist to Henry VII. Meanwhile, up in Scotland, John Damian – or Giovanni Damiano as was – flung himself off the ramparts of Stirling Castle, wings of hens’ feather harnessed to his shoulders, and somehow escaped with only a broken leg after a soggy landing in a heap of dung.

Fox is long on wit and charm, but underneath it all has a sincere passion for the riches of the past, from the lyric poetry of Thomas Wyatt and Hans Holbein’s portraiture, to glorious Longleat House and a 40-part choral work by Thomas Tallis. He reminds us there’s hope for old Blighty yet.

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NOT TO BE MISSED

LAMBING LIVE, BBC Two, Sunday, 8pm
Spring has sprung, and so Kate Humble and crew are out in fi elds across the country all this week to greet the woolly new arrivals.

THE MIL… LION POUND NECKLACE: INSIDE BOODLES, Channel 4, Sunday, 8pm
The Bond Street jewellers opens its doors for a privileged look at the craftsmanship and artistry that creates rarified gems.

REV, BBC Two, Monday, 10pm
Tom Hollander  returns as Rev Adam Smallbone, and there’s a new parishioner: wife Alex is about to give birth.