Melvyn Bragg presents the first in a series of programmes examining the idea of culture and its evolution over the last 150 years. In 1869 the poet and critic Matthew Arnold published Culture and Anarchy, a series of essays in which he argued passionately that culture - 'the best which has been thought and said' - was a powerful force for good. In this first programme Melvyn Bragg visits the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford, where Arnold first unveiled his ideas on the subject, and discovers how Arnold's ideas were refined and rejected by later thinkers.

Producer: Thomas Morris.