The Romantic Revolution

The Romantics’ century-long incendiary revolution in thought and creativity changed the way we think of art and artists, of the idea of our individuality, but also how the elevation of passion over logic could change the political landscape.

They produced mind-blowing masterpieces – Gericault, Caspar David Friedrich and Delacroix in painting; Chopin and Schumann in music; Wordsworth, Coleridge and Shelley in poetry. The series will look at how their work gave birth to world changing forces which still shape our contemporary world today. From Mary Wollstonecraft’s feminism, the Brothers Grimm’s dark fairy tales, William Blake’s belief in a marriage of text and image that could transform the world, Shelley’s radical politics and atheist fury, the journey into the caverns of the sub-conscious explored by Coleridge and de Quincey, to the blossoming of national folk feeling in the ballads and poetry of Robert Burns.

• Simon Schama’s The Romantic Revolution is an Oxford Films production for BBC Two. The Executive Producer is Nicolas Kent. The Series Producers are Charlotte Sacher and Melanie Fall. The Producer and Director is Hugo Macgregor. It was commissioned by Mark Bell for BBC Arts and BBC Two.