Women’s history (or, less politically, the history of women) has been hugely important in academic life for nearly half a century; less so in television, where history programmes stick to great men and great events. Women, with the exception of a few outstanding individuals, have played a supporting role.The Ascent of Woman (2 September) is Dr Amanda Foreman’s sweeping survey of the history of all women, ever. It is a shame that such a project has been squeezed into four hour-long episodes: it is worth at least 12. This first episode, about the pre-classical and classical worlds, was packed with places, writings, interviews, artefacts and – unusually – ideas.Foreman, whose normal terrain is the eight-eenth and nineteenth centuries in England, presented an appealing