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The Garden Indoors

With 19th-century town pollution rife, historian Amanda Vickery discovers the increasingly ingenious ways the Victorians domesticated nature.

Historian Amanda Vickery presents a series which reveals the hidden history of home over 400 years. She draws on first-hand accounts from letters and diaries, many of which have never been heard before. Including songs which have been specially recorded for the series.

Homes were exposed to huge forces of change in the 19th and 20th century, responding to industrialisation, pollution and the imperial mission. Prof Vickery explores how they remained idealised havens in a heartless, dirty world.

By the mid-19th century, the majority of the British population lived in filthy polluted towns. Yet the Victorians contrived increasingly ingenious ways to domesticate nature, capturing ferns and sea anemones under glass in their parlours.

Readers: Deborah Findlay, John Sessions, Madeleine Brolly and Simon Tcherniak.

Singers: Gwyneth Herbert and Thomas Guthrie, with David Owen Norris at the keyboard.

A Loftus production for 大象传媒 Radio 4.

15 minutes

Last on

Wed 1 Mar 2017 02:15

Broadcasts

  • Tue 3 Nov 2009 15:45
  • Thu 14 Feb 2013 14:15
  • Tue 20 Jan 2015 14:15
  • Wed 21 Jan 2015 00:15
  • Tue 28 Feb 2017 14:15
  • Wed 1 Mar 2017 02:15