This Four Part History Documentary Series focuses on the Middle Ages. Isn't it true that this epoch conjures up ominous images of superstition and witch-hunting? Burning pyres and plague doctors hurrying strangely muffled along dark alley-ways in their fight against the Black Death, such are the generally accepted associations we have with this "dark" era. The Middle Ages were in the true sense of the word dark.

Episode One begins with Picturesque castles, noble knights, minnesingers and troubadours - these romantic images fire our imagination in the generally accepted conception of the Middle Ages. On the darker side of this world, there are gloomy castle dungeons, torture chambers and bloody raids and power struggles. The courtly culture of the armoured knights formed a caste with its own code of honour in which the art of war and chivalry played an important role and that was ruled by the king. The castles represented a cosmos of their own: fortress, residence, army camp, customs post and hideout.