“The sick man of Europe”: that five-word formula was all that generations of British schoolchildren learned about the Ottoman Empire. There was a lot more to it than that: the vast and opulent empire enjoyed 600 years of dominance before it fell ill. In The Ottomans: Europe’s Muslim Emperors (6 October), a three-part series, Rageh Omaar set about remedying that ­ignorance. A brief montage of news clips established his credentials, not as a historian but as a reporter who knows well the legacy of conflict left by the collapse of the empire. This angle, though, was quickly forgotten: for the most part this was a conventional historical overview. Only with some Orthodox Serbs, listening to a gory song, did we hear the authentic note of ingrained bitterness. The Turks