IS IT better to belong, with all the compromise and time-consuming negotiation that comes with that territory, or is it better to be separate, to make your moral choices unfettered, to allow your God-given particularity to develop in isolation?

This is, of course, an ethical dilemma that confronts us on a range of levels. I look forward to the in-depth TV series exploring, on the one hand, the agonising difficulty faced by so many of our Anglican Provinces as they decide whether they can belong to a Communion that plays fast and loose with the Bible’s clear teaching on sexual ethics, and, on the other, the misery faced by the rest of us as we consider the extent to which we are prepared to be identified with a Church so reluctant to follow our Lord’s way of radical generosity.

But, while I wait for that, I can commend Europe: Them or us (BBC2, Tuesday of last week). Nick Robinson led us through a recapitulation of what has led us to our present situation, starting from the post-war reconstruction of Europe and the shocked incomprehension of why, if Britain was so clearly the outright victor of that conflict, we were, economically, trounced, and our accepted role as the global imperial power dissolved like the morning dew?

The first of two programmes, it was appealing to someone of my generation, because it reawakened memories of events long overlaid with more recent impressions. How fascinating to be reminded that Churchill himself sought union with France in 1940, and stated that the post-war goal would be “a federal Europe”. How valuable to be reminded of the era when Edward Heath was hailed as the indefatigable hero of the hour, his patient negotiation finally overturning de Gaulle’s veto on our application to join the EEC. How telling to hear, in the speeches of those who, like Enoch Powell, fought tooth and nail to keep us out of Europe, arguments and attitudes familiar from our present referendum debate.

A similar historical sweep was covered in BBC: The secret files 2 (BBC4, Thursday of last week). I have previously inveighed against the fashionable over-use of the word “secret” in programme titles: the supposed revelations are invariably matters well known to anyone with a vague interest in the issue, and the implication is that the mass audience is so ill-informed that it will be astonished by the material.

This dubious superior attitude was reinforced by the presenter Penelope Keith’s trademark arch tone as she introduced letter after letter from the archives. It is all too easy to find attitudes and opinions funny or reactionary simply because history developed in one particular direction rather than another. I was wearied by the unexamined assumption that all reluctance wholeheartedly to embrace the 1950s’ and ’60s loosening of standards must have been mistaken.

But there were good things: it is important to be reminded how little the BBC wanted to offer Winston Churchill air time, and how much it deplored his extravagant and sweeping manner. And it is right that the Corporation should own up to the reason for its decision not to appoint Harold Abrahams as its chief commentator at the 1936 Berlin Olympics: the Nazis would not welcome a Jew.