That’s entertainment

Comparisons may be odious but sometimes they are irresistible — and, frankly, more fool the BBC for screening Treasures of Ancient Rome on the same night as The Shock of the New (Monday, BBC4). Here is Alastair Sooke on the spread of the Roman Empire: ‘Rome’s generals romped around the Med, sacking cities willy-nilly…’ Here is Robert Hughes (in 1980) on the impact of the first world war (and for anyone watching Parade’s End the implications of this speech — and indeed Hughes’s whole programme, The Powers That Be — will strike with particular resonance): ‘The life of words and images in art was changed radically and for ever because our culture had now entered the age of mass-produced, industrialised death, and at first there were no words to describe it…A chasm opened between official language and what the young knew to be reality: the speech of the elders could not contain their experiences…’ Hughes, wearing a suit and tie, delivers his introduction from beside a memorial at the Somme; Sooke, wearing a red plastic helmet, delivers his from a canoe.