Lord Clark –  “of Civilisation”, as he was nicknamed, not necessarily affectionately – presented the 13 episodes of the eponymous series commissioned by David Attenborough for BBC Two in 1969; it was subtitled “A Personal View”, and encompassed only Western Europe (from which even Spain was excluded).

As Wonder Woman hits screens worldwide, the publication of a book that explores the myth and reality of the Amazon seems timely. The latest of John Man’s works of popular history is opportunistic enough to end with a fascinating account of the origins of the female world-saviour originally launched by DC Comics in 1941.

In a gallery darkened to evoke the seabed that was its resting place for over a thousand years, the colossal figure of Hapy, the Egyptian god of the Nile flood, greets visitors just as it met sailors entering the busy trading port of Thonis-Heracleion some 2,000 years ago. One of the largest objects ever loaned to the British Museum, Hapy symbolises the prosperity bestowed upon Egypt by the river Nile, but whose waters ultimately brought about the destruction of the ancient cities of Canopus and Thonis-Heracleion, which subsided into the sea in the 8th century AD.

Here comes the President, and with him a timely reminder about what the Chinese have been digging up over the past 40 years or so to further demonstrate their exceptional imperial history over the past two millennia. Treasures of the Jade Empire rather breathlessly told us of revelatory excavations of the tombs of the Han Emperors, and the regional kings they nominated to act as surrogate rulers over their gigantic empire – its boundaries closely related to China today.

Not a ray of sunshine illuminated the landscapes that were explored in this stormy programme, the first of a three-part history of the Celts. It aimed not only to show the latest investigations into the Bronze and Iron Age tribes who inhabited Europe from Turkey to Britain but to suggest their culture was richer than the simple cliché of barbarians at the gate.

Heaven, or a lot of pagan gods at least, may know what was in the air 2500 years ago. Bettany Hughes has just finished her trilogy of philosophers from that millennium, and now we have Professor Andrew Wallace-Hadrill taking us genially around Athens, founded – you guessed – 2500 years ago and providing the template for cities ever since.

You haven’t had to actually watch the brutal executions staged by Islamic State (IS, or ISIS or ISIL, as it’s also known) to register them: just a single image registered has been more than enough to horrify. Managing to penetrate the world’s consciousness to such an extent has surely been one of the terror group’s most singular achievements.

When in Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up the Bodies Thomas Cromwell exclaims in exasperation,  “to each monk, one bed; to each bed, one monk. Is that so hard for them?” he sums up the state of moral decay into which the monasteries had apparently lapsed by the time of their dissolution. They had, we are told, become dens of iniquity, the monks indulging in every vice and pleasure they were supposed to abstain from, and in command of such monstrous power and wealth that it is hard not to feel that maybe Henry VIII had a point.

Angkor Wat in Cambodia is the biggest religious complex ever built. It is also one of the most beautiful and awe-inspiring structures ever created, even now still a working temple with both Buddhist and Hindu connections. It was at the heart not only of a vast medieval city but an empire that dominated southeast Asia for centuries.

If, like me, you switched this on feeling sheepish about your sketchy knowledge of Chinese art, you would have welcomed as a ready-made excuse the news that some monuments synonymous with Chinese culture are relatively recent discoveries. It seems unthinkable that the terracotta army guarding the burial site of China’s first Emperor Qin Shi Huang was the stuff of legend and rumour until 1974, but it turns out that much of the 22-square-mile area occupied by the memorial is still to be explored and it could be another century before the site is fully excavated.