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"Ever since the famed Greek philosopher Plato first wrote of a fabled continent called Atlantis more than two thousand years ago, scholars have been locked in fierce debate as to whether such a place truly existed. While a few rare individuals have taken Plato's words seriously, most scoff at the idea that an advanced civilization could vanish as completely as if it had never existed."

"In a film-making career spanning almost 40 years, Oliver Stone has turned political controversy in America into an art form. He has upset financiers with his caustic portrayal of Wall Street; conservatives with his depiction of Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez and George Bush; and Democrats with his conspiracy theories about the assassination of John F Kennedy. All of which may come to look like a tea party - of the social as opposed to right-wing protest variety - when his next big venture hits the screens. Stone announced yesterday that a 10-hour crash course in the history of the 20th century he is putting together for American TV is designed as an antidote to the inaccuracies and biases he believes exist in the conventional historical narrative dished out in American schools and mainstream media. The title alone gives an inkling of what lies ahead: Oliver Stone's Secret History of America. The thrice-Oscar winning director gave a further glimpse into his thinking at a gathering of TV critics in Pasadena on Saturday, when he didn't so much open up a can of worms as unleash an entire supermarket shelf-load. He began by startling the panel by bringing up the H word. "Hitler is an easy scapegoat throughout history and it's been used cheaply," he said. Then he mentioned the S word. "Stalin has a complete other story. Not to paint him as a hero, but to tell a more factual representation. He fought the German war machine more than any person." Then he went on to mention two M words - Chairman Mao and Joseph McCarthy, architect of the 1950s anti-communist purges in Washington, and the T word - Harry Truman's dropping of the atom bomb in 1945."

"Wordsworth changed forever the way we view the natural world and the inner world of feeling. He also connected the two indivisibly. We are his heirs, and we see and feel through him. His vision illumined our landscape. His name is inextricably connected with the Lake District, where he was born in Cockermouth in 1770. His mother died when he was only eight, his father five years later. These early losses gave him an acute apprehension of mortality, but did not impair the flow of his affections. His mother had loved him enough, and her love lasted beyond the grave. He had a free and happy country childhood, and joy is one of his themes: through his vocation as a poet he transformed fear of mortality to intimations of immortality. The story of his early life - his schooldays, his education at Cambridge, his wanderings in France, his response to the French revolution, his love of his sister Dorothy and his passionate friendship with Coleridge - are told in his great autobiographical work in blank verse, The Prelude, most of which written when he was in his 30s (only sections of it were published in his lifetime.) It is a work of astonishing originality, both in its subject matter (childhood and the growth of the mind, described with a pre-Freudian insight unprecedented in literature) and in its form. The verse is powerful, supple, subtle, freely flowing. Wordsworth revered both Shakespeare and Milton. His is the third great iambic voice in the English language. His first volume of poems, Lyrical Ballads, written in collaboration with Coleridge and published in 1798, stakes his territory: the plain, the rustic, the thoughtful, the everyday, the organic: a poetry in which "the passions of men are incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of nature". It includes The Idiot Boy, a moving ballad treating its challenging subject (a mother's love for her "idiot" son sent out into the night to fetch the doctor for a sick neighbour) with the deepest respect and

"Although it is clear the pyramids were used for the burial of pharaohs, the construction, date, and possible symbolism of the Giza pyramids are still not entirely understood. This mystery only adds to the attractiveness of these ancient wonders and many modern people still regard Giza as a spiritual place. A number of fascinating theories have been offered to explain the "mystery of the pyramids". Even the most skeptical visitor cannot help but be awed by the great age, grand scale and harmonic mathematics of the pyramids of Giza."

"How did Mahler go from being a byword for excess to the composer every orchestra wants to perform? On the 150th anniversary of his birth, Tom Service explores the passions that powered his music"