Secret Knowledge

World-leading cosmologist Professor Sir Roger Penrose is more than just a fan of MC Escher's mind-bending art. During the course of a long creative collaboration, the British mathematician and the Dutch artist exchanged ideas and inspirations. Some of Escher's most iconic images have their origin in Penrose's mathematical sketches - while the artist's work has served as a starting point for the professor's own explorations of new scientific ideas. To coincide with the first ever Escher retrospective in the UK, Penrose takes us on a personal journey through Escher's greatest masterpieces - marvelling at his intuitive brilliance and the penetrating light it still sheds on complex mathematical concepts.

Derek Jacobi goes in search of David Garrick, 18th-century superstar and the man who reinvented acting for the modern era.

Throughout their artistic career, Jake and Dinos Chapman have returned again and again to a single artwork by the great Spanish artist Francisco de Goya. The Disasters of War are a set of 83 etchings that offer a harrowing account of the atrocities of the Peninsular War (1807-14), but for Jake Chapman they are much more than a matter of historical record. They have provided the inspiration for countless Chapman Brothers artworks across more than two decades, from model recreations and 'rectified' prints to shop mannequins and full-scale sculptures in bronze, some of which were nominated for the Turner Prize.

In this film, Jake explores why Goya's famous etching series is so central to his art. He re-examines his relationship to the Spanish artist by visiting Goya's hometown Zaragoza for the first time, and by spending time at the Prado in Madrid where some of Goya's greatest works hang on the walls.

As Jake works on a new 'Disasters of War' model in his London studio, he explains why for him there is a fundamental conflict at the heart of Goya's art - in their gruesome detail his images seem to celebrate violence rather than protest against it. Jake explores this contradiction that art history has chosen to ignore, and explains how it tells us something profound about the way we see ourselves and our past.

Neil Pearson looks at the life of Jack Kahane, who combined a career selling low-grade smut with publishing some of the most significant works of avant-garde literature.