Dr Isabella Rosner
Appearances
You're Dead to Me
Catherine de’ Medici (Radio Edit)
Well, at that time, no, she's not yet very much running the show. And that's probably because of Mary Struth's family, the Guises. So she has very powerful, very powerful uncles, the Guises.
You're Dead to Me
Catherine de’ Medici (Radio Edit)
Yes, the geezers. But Catherine is going to try, she's going to fight to remain an advisor to her son. And he's going to accept this. But their relationship between her firstborn and her son, they're good. They're not very strong. He also really loved, I think he's the only husband that, you know, I can say that about Mary Stuart. He really loved Mary. Yeah.
You're Dead to Me
Catherine de’ Medici (Radio Edit)
And so his allegiance is going to go towards his wife and her families. So Catherine here is not really gaining much power, but she's growing in terms of like she asked to be called Queen Mother of France. And that is a title that has never been given before. And it's a very important title because in the title you have Queen.
You're Dead to Me
Catherine de’ Medici (Radio Edit)
I want to tell you that before Francis I had his mother, she was Mother of the King.
You're Dead to Me
Catherine de’ Medici (Radio Edit)
And you see the difference between Mother of the King and Queen Mother. And that's an importance, a title she gives herself. And that's going to have more and more importance in the years to come.
You're Dead to Me
Catherine de’ Medici (Radio Edit)
Navarre is a small territory between Spain and France and has had such a huge diplomatic importance for centuries before.
You're Dead to Me
Catherine de’ Medici (Radio Edit)
And they're royal blood. Both of them have like princes of blood in them. It's very important because when you're a prince of blood, it means you have a right to the throne.
You're Dead to Me
Catherine de’ Medici (Radio Edit)
It's Charles. It's going to be Charles IX of France. He's totally, utterly under the control of his mother. And Catherine, she's become the matriarch of a family.
You're Dead to Me
Catherine de’ Medici (Radio Edit)
And then they start again. They always start again. There's always a mean way. That's one thing about Catherine, like her dark legend, and even you see it in The Serpent Queen, is like she's the one instigating those wars. And she's not. It's not good for them to live in a realm where there's constant turmoil.
You're Dead to Me
Catherine de’ Medici (Radio Edit)
It's the Guises who are going to kill the Huguenots for worshipping. Vassisa is in their territory in Lorraine. And on their way back to Joinville, they're going to see that the Huguenots are worshipping not outside of the town, but inside the town. And it's against the law. And they decide to kill all of them.
You're Dead to Me
Catherine de’ Medici (Radio Edit)
Absolutely. So in this massacre, she wants to bring peace to France and she's going to give her daughter, her third daughter, Margaret... to Henry of Navarre, who's a Protestant. And the wedding is going to happen in Paris, and they're going to invite all the Protestants. So all Protestants and Catholics are in Paris to celebrate the wedding. And so far, so good.
You're Dead to Me
Catherine de’ Medici (Radio Edit)
Thank you, Greg. The Guises have an opportunity to avenge their father's death. In 1563.
You're Dead to Me
Catherine de’ Medici (Radio Edit)
He was assassinated in 1563 by Admiral de Coligny. He's going to ask for refuge to Catherine de Medici, who's going to grant it. But then what happened next is that the Guises have lots and lots of support. They even have their own private armies. And they start killing. It's the massacre of Protestants, thousands and thousands. And it doesn't stop in Paris. It goes to Rouen.
You're Dead to Me
Catherine de’ Medici (Radio Edit)
It goes to different cities. And Catherine is blamed for it. People said Catherine started it. Catherine is the one who organized it, who plotted it, when Catherine is the one who actually opened the doors of her house with Charles, her son, to save as many Protestants as possible, including Sir Francis Worsingham, the English ambassador of Elizabeth I.
You're Dead to Me
Catherine de’ Medici (Radio Edit)
Henri III of France. He was elected king of Poland. And when Charles died, he had to smuggle out of Poland to go back to the French crown, which was awful because... Can you imagine being ditched by your king? No, but it was a massive diplomatic problem here because he was like, oh my... Catherine was like... Come back here! And he's like, they're not going to be happy.
You're Dead to Me
Catherine de’ Medici (Radio Edit)
Well, she's the grandmother of the infanters of Spain.
You're Dead to Me
Catherine de’ Medici (Radio Edit)
Because she married her first daughter to Philip II.
You're Dead to Me
Catherine de’ Medici (Radio Edit)
And then she has people in Lorraine and Tuscany. She is the grandmother of Europe.
You're Dead to Me
Catherine de’ Medici (Radio Edit)
Well, for her, it's very hard because in 1585, there's the eighth religious civil war that is triggered, obviously, by the death of her son, her last son. Also, you have to realize that now, you know, she's counting her kids. Oh, my God. And there's still Henry.
You're Dead to Me
Catherine de’ Medici (Radio Edit)
But Henry and herself, so her favorite son, are going to drift apart because Henry III is going to make a secret alliance with Elizabeth I because he understands now that the Protestants don't want his crown, but the Guises and Mary Stuart want much power in Europe. Right.
You're Dead to Me
Catherine de’ Medici (Radio Edit)
So he's going to make a secret alliance, and Catherine is going to get closer to the Guises, wanting to preserve the Catholic faith, ultimately, in France. And Henry III is going to commit a very horrible thing. He's going to order the murder of the Guises, and Catherine de' Medici is going to know that's the end. I think she really gets very ill. Mm-hmm.
You're Dead to Me
Catherine de’ Medici (Radio Edit)
At that time, so it's December 1588, she gets very ill and she has nowhere to recover because the country is in, honestly, it's hell. France is hell at that point. And she dies on the 5th January 1589. And I'm so glad she didn't see her favorite son, the beautiful Henry, murdered. He's murdered a few months later, in August 1589.
You're Dead to Me
Catherine de’ Medici (Radio Edit)
It ends because obviously Henry dies in 1589 as well. It's the end of the Valois. And then you have Henri de Navarre with his wife, Margaret of Valois, who become king and queen of France. That's the end of the Valois dynasty.
You're Dead to Me
Catherine de’ Medici (Radio Edit)
Well, I would like people to remember that Catherine is not the dark queen. All of this is absolutely untrue. The first thing is the fact how much she loved her children, but also her grandchildren. She wrote loving letters to her granddaughters, the Spanish granddaughters, She sent them gifts, monkeys and part of these gifts. I know, quite unusual.
You're Dead to Me
Catherine de’ Medici (Radio Edit)
Not unusual for the time, if I'm really honest with you. She was not perfect. And Greg, you were totally right to point it out. To be in power, you have to be ruthless. But she was not this horrible woman who poisoned anyone to get power. She was not this woman who created, you know, all the wars of religion. When you look at French books, it's always like Catherine de Medici's fault.
You're Dead to Me
Catherine de’ Medici (Radio Edit)
And I think it comes because of, honestly, xenophobia against Italians, unfortunately, that, you know, prevailed in the 17th and the 18th century. gravely. So it is quite important to remember Catherine as someone who truly loved her children, her grandchildren, who tried to do her best for France and her family.
You're Dead to Me
Catherine de’ Medici (Radio Edit)
Thank you so much for having me. I had so much fun, honestly.
You're Dead to Me
Catherine de’ Medici (Radio Edit)
Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to talk about Catherine.
You're Dead to Me
Catherine de’ Medici (Radio Edit)
I don't think I can do Shappi. I love your work, but I don't think I can be as funny as you.
You're Dead to Me
Catherine de’ Medici (Radio Edit)
So the Medici family were bankers and they rose to power and prominence.
You're Dead to Me
Catherine de’ Medici (Radio Edit)
Morally sound. They became very wealthy, as you said, and they were given titles. So then it created lots of problems and, you know, rivalries. And Captain Dominic is going to born into that very important family, but also very scheming family.
You're Dead to Me
Catherine de’ Medici (Radio Edit)
Florence is their home. And they're going to become Dukes of Florence and Grand Dukes of Tuscany.
You're Dead to Me
Catherine de’ Medici (Radio Edit)
Yeah, she was born Caterina, Caterina de' Medici. Her father is Lorenzo II de' Medici. And he was given the title of Duke of Urbino by his uncle, the Pope. But he didn't have the land. He had to fight. Yeah. The actual Duke. So sorry. So his uncle, the Pope.
You're Dead to Me
Catherine de’ Medici (Radio Edit)
But you have to put it into context of Italian wars. So when I say, like, let's be fair to him and the Pope, it was contested.
You're Dead to Me
Catherine de’ Medici (Radio Edit)
Yes, she's royal. Madeleine de la Tour d'Auvergne. So she's from... Can you say that again slowly? Madeleine de la Tour d'Auvergne. I love her name. Such a beautiful language.
You're Dead to Me
Catherine de’ Medici (Radio Edit)
It's like I've said je t'aime to you, right? But Madeleine is from French blood, so she's a very important royal woman.
You're Dead to Me
Catherine de’ Medici (Radio Edit)
Not the case at all. Unfortunately for Katerina, she lost both her parents. Her mother died. Honestly, we say fever. It's after giving birth. So she died of childbirth. She died ten days later. And her father, who had to fight this Duke of Urbino... died of his wounds from the battle. So at three weeks old, she was an orphan, but also the heir of a very massive fortune and wealth.
You're Dead to Me
Catherine de’ Medici (Radio Edit)
But what's tragic, I think, for Katerina is the fact that then she's going to be taken by her grandmother, but her grandmother is going to die the year after.
You're Dead to Me
Catherine de’ Medici (Radio Edit)
Then she's going to be with her aunt. And again, she's going to die as well. And the Pope.
You're Dead to Me
Catherine de’ Medici (Radio Edit)
The great uncle is going to make sure that she is protected and well-educated. What was his name?
You're Dead to Me
Catherine de’ Medici (Radio Edit)
Uncle Pope. Uncle Clem. It's a life of turmoil and of great heartbreaks. She lost everyone she loved or could have loved. And she was massively a political pawn.
You're Dead to Me
Catherine de’ Medici (Radio Edit)
Because I don't think it's... She fell in love. Okay. She's going to have a wedding in Marseille, in Notre Dame de la Garde. This little girl who lost everyone.
You're Dead to Me
Catherine de’ Medici (Radio Edit)
Diane de Poitiers, yes. So this woman is very important. She's a noble woman and she's a widow. She's going to become the tutor of Henry, the young man. She's going to teach him. She's supposed to teach him. Is he a bit Macron?
You're Dead to Me
Catherine de’ Medici (Radio Edit)
Yeah, 19 years old, totally Macron. And she's going to teach him more than languages and classical studies. And she's going to become his lover. OK. She's queen in all but name.
You're Dead to Me
Catherine de’ Medici (Radio Edit)
Indeed, she's not conceiving. But what's going to be very interesting, so obviously they're going to try all the treatments possible for this, including like drinking donkey's urine. But what happened was Catherine heard all the rumours against her because she couldn't conceive.
You're Dead to Me
Catherine de’ Medici (Radio Edit)
So she goes to see the king, Francis I, François I. And she gives this speech where it shows you how intelligent she was. Am I saying that she's not genuine? No, I'm saying she's genuine, but you can be genuine and smart, all right? I understand it's not good for you to have me as your daughter-in-law. And because I love you, you know, I'm paraphrasing.
You're Dead to Me
Catherine de’ Medici (Radio Edit)
And because I love you so much and respect you so much and you're like a father to me, I will accept whatever you want to do with me. I put my fate in your hands. And François, who had thought about the king of getting rid of her, because now she's dauphine and she's not good enough really for Henry. He's thinking, wait a minute. This woman is very devoted to me, to my family.
You're Dead to Me
Catherine de’ Medici (Radio Edit)
And he really liked her. They enjoyed hunting together. They were riding together. She's someone who's very close to the king. And he told her, no, I'm not going to do that to you. But the problem is going to tell her, but we have a problem, Catherine. I need you to give me, well, not him, but he needs an heir for his dynasty.
You're Dead to Me
Catherine de’ Medici (Radio Edit)
Because it's a very important thing, right, in the 16th century, as we know, to have, you know, a full dynasty. And that's where, for Diane, Diane is starting to be scared because right now she only has a little girl, young teenager, right? And she can fully control her. But what if we get a new wife? It's a new princess. She's more beautiful. Henry becomes in love with her.
You're Dead to Me
Catherine de’ Medici (Radio Edit)
So then Diane is going to help. And that's why I want to tell you guys, she helps Catherine conceive. As soon as Diane helped the couple, it worked.
You're Dead to Me
Catherine de’ Medici (Radio Edit)
If I'm honest with you, I think she's really much on the back seat, right? She's never shining during his reign. Towards the end, yes, she's going to play a very important role.
You're Dead to Me
Catherine de’ Medici (Radio Edit)
Yeah, and then he wants a revenge. So he does it again. And this time it goes through his eye.
You're Dead to Me
Catherine de’ Medici (Radio Edit)
Diana is out and she sends a letter to Catherine to apologise for all the years of humiliations.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement (Radio Edit)
Wow. Seems like a name you got in like a name generator.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement (Radio Edit)
And they're doing, like, largely great stuff as well. So they're also – like, with that, the Home Arts and Industries Association, they are setting up handicraft classes in cities and villages. They're supporting local schools. They're alleviating seasonal unemployment – nice word that I just made up – unemployment. And they're basically trying to keep people out of the pub.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement (Radio Edit)
So largely admirable, slightly in-your-face moralistic vibes going on. In the Victorian times, was there anyone not having a moral in-your-face vibe? Yeah, well, so that's very well said because all of these organizations are basically founded for two reasons. One of them is this Victorian philanthropy. So they're trying to help the poor. They're trying to help the underserved in a moralistic way.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement (Radio Edit)
And then they're also trying to preserve these handicraft skills that they're scared industrialization will destroy.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement (Radio Edit)
Yeah, it's kind of morphed into its own thing.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement (Radio Edit)
I think they walked the walk as well as they could. And it did end up being middle class people making stuff for middle class people simply because of what was feasible and what the logistics were. But I think they wanted something bigger. It did have a radical philosophy that wanted to change the landscape of industrial production and make art available to the masses.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement (Radio Edit)
But when it comes down to it, craftsmanship, this really high quality handicraft that they were advocating for, it takes time and therefore it takes money. Yeah. So not everybody could afford that finely crafted stuff. And yes, you're right, the practitioners, the people involved were usually from the middle class.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement (Radio Edit)
But yeah, the movement did not, by and large, change the lives of people who really needed their lives changed in Victorian England. I think the movement had really good ideas, but the world of capitalism in which they found themselves meant that they couldn't really free themselves from that system.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement (Radio Edit)
Yeah, I would say sometimes this was an opportunity for women to be more present than in other art movements, for sure. So if I talked about all of the women, I would be here all day, but I'll give you some quick names. There was the stained glass designer Mary Lowndes. There was the metal worker Charlotte Newman, painter and enameler Edith B. Dawson, Aunt May Morris.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement (Radio Edit)
She was not only an embroiderer, but she was a textile historian and a designer. And she actually took over the management of Morris & Company's embroidery department when she was 23. Wow. Wow. iconic, but sexism was definitely still present. So the membership to the Art Workers Guild was only open to men. There had not been a female member of the Royal Academy between 1819 and 1922.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement (Radio Edit)
So that's all of the years of the arts and crafts movement. And Mae Morris and people like her were pretty sick of all of that. So in 1907, she founded the Women's Guild of Arts. I should say that generally this art movement and the fact that it puts craft on the same level as art means that there is more room for women because it's oftentimes women who are doing those crafts.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement (Radio Edit)
Women were exhibiting and designing alongside men. And there are some interesting connections between this movement and the British fight for women's suffrage, which is pretty cool. And then there are also some like fun little moments of gender equality. Gender equality is a little treat.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement (Radio Edit)
So like Thomas James Cobden Sanderson, our boy who comes up with the name, he and his wife actually end up sharing their surname. They like do the equal thing of making a joint surname Cobden Sanderson. And it's like these, I don't know, a little rare act glimpse into how some people in this movement viewed the gender divide and how things should actually be.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement (Radio Edit)
Come on. I've invented acrylic plastics.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement (Radio Edit)
I mean, nothing changes things like war, I would say. So World War I comes in and the aesthetic changes massively. People don't have the need or desire for any of this fine craftsmanship anymore anymore. The war comes and all of a sudden it's modernism.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement (Radio Edit)
And deco and like what comes after it. So while the arts and crafts movement technically ends at World War I here in Britain, it does have ripples in other places. And even though, yeah, the movement is definitely over, we are still in a world where we are kind of... constantly seeing arts and crafts images. So is it really over?
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement (Radio Edit)
Maybe I just wasn't paying attention. Maybe it's the friends we made along the way.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement (Radio Edit)
Really? Your stopwatch? I'm scared. Okay. If you ever see a William Morris design, whether it be on wallpaper, an advent calendar, or a fridge magnet, chances are it's probably Morris' work called Strawberry Thief. Not only is it Morris' most beloved pattern, it's also one of the most popular textile designs ever. It's inspired everything from a novel to a video game.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement (Radio Edit)
You can find Strawberry Thief-covered products on the shelves of John Lewis, Waitrose, M&S, Waterstones, and even Pets at Home, truly fulfilling Morris' desire to make his art accessible. With Strawberry Thief, Morris captures the thrushes that he caught stealing fruit in his garden at Kelmscott Manor. Amidst multicolored flowers, scrolling vines, and frilly leaves are pairs of birds.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement (Radio Edit)
Those with yellow and pink wings have their mouths agape. Are they shocked that they've been caught mid-tweet or mid-munch? The birds with blue wings are the thieves in question, looking very satisfied with plump strawberries hanging from their beaks. Morris felt that everyone should have access to beautiful surroundings, rest, and work that inspires satisfaction and pride.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement (Radio Edit)
And he was deliberate about what sorts of products should be made from each of his designs. In its original form back in 1883, Strawberry Thief was a printed cotton furnishing textile intended to be used for curtains, walls, or loose covers on furniture.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement (Radio Edit)
Morris printed it using the indigo discharge method, a many centuries-old technique primarily used in Asia that took an especially long time to produce. Because of this, Strawberry Thief was one of the most expensive printed furnishings available from Morris & Company.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement (Radio Edit)
But the price didn't stop those little strawberry-stealing birds from becoming one of Morris' most commercially successful patterns. Clearly, the commercial success of Strawberry Thief lives on. 140-ish years after the textile was produced, some things are different, though. That pattern isn't limited to furnishing fabrics, and it isn't expensive.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement (Radio Edit)
This is the case for other arts and crafts movement designs, too. William Morris did intend his work to be widely available, but he was also strategic and specific about how and on what objects his designs should be used. Beautiful. Look at that. Look at that. Two minutes and two seconds. I'm sweaty.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement (Radio Edit)
Thank you so much for having me. I've had the best time.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement (Radio Edit)
I think we should start with an overview. So the arts and crafts movement is an art movement, as you could guess. That begins sometime in the late 19th century. Nobody can agree on the exact start date. Some people put it at 1861, which is when William Moore starts getting on the scene. Other people say it doesn't really start until the 1870s or 1880.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement (Radio Edit)
And it lasts until about the beginning of World War I. The movement is a style of art. It's primarily domestic furnishings, and it promotes craftsmanship and aesthetic unity between all sorts of objects in the home. And those would range from textiles to furniture to ceramics to metalwork and everything in between. The name itself comes from the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement (Radio Edit)
That's a very long name for a society, I think, but okay. Okay.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement (Radio Edit)
They loved wordiness, didn't they? So that Exhibition Society was founded in 1887 to exhibit decorative arts alongside fine arts. And there was one guy in it in particular, Thomas James Cobden Sanderson, speaking of long Victorian names, who first coined the term in 1887. William Morris is considered the head honcho. He's the daddy. He's the grand poomba in the situation today.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement (Radio Edit)
It's his ideas and view of the world that inspires so much of the movement.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement (Radio Edit)
Do you want to read the quote for us? Yeah, he says, and he's giving this lecture in December of 1877 to the Trades Guild of Learning. And I think he summarizes. One of my shout outs to the Trades Guild of Learning. My favorite Trades Guild.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement (Radio Edit)
He summarizes his feelings about kind of everything really well when he says, I do not want art for a few any more than education for a few or freedom for a few. He and the other arts and crafts people are really invested in handicraft and utilizing really learned skills to create beautiful, pleasant, pleasing, comfortable art. useful objects.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement (Radio Edit)
Oh boy, you should have been in the arts and crafts movement. I would have loved it. I love the vibe. It's all vibes. It's all vibes for me. But yeah, exactly. Like Victorian London, Victorian Britain saw a huge amount of change when it came to industrialization in good and bad ways.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement (Radio Edit)
So in terms of the population, by 1851, the census tells us that more people live in cities than in the countryside. Wow. That's a big change. You have huge numbers of people flocking to industrial city centers. But the conditions are bad oftentimes.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement (Radio Edit)
People are living in slum conditions and slum housing with overcrowding and a lack of sanitation and generally just bad living situations, lots of disease. And industrialization is good for some people, for a lot of people, in that it means that there are more affordable items available to more people. But the actual manufacture is gnarly.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement (Radio Edit)
It has hoes, good old pointy shoes as well. So they are idealizing and dreaming about this system where objects were produced in small scale workshops rather than these large, anonymous, brutal factories. And they're looking for artisan sourdough bread.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement (Radio Edit)
Thank you so much. I'm really excited to be here.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement (Radio Edit)
Definitely. Intellectual kind of figurehead. Yes. And he thought that society would be morally better, which is a bold move already, if art, design, and industry were reimagined along pre-industrial lines. He was like, let's just get rid of mechanization. We'd actually all be emotionally and morally better people. And he saw that the best, the most good period was the medieval period.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement (Radio Edit)
And he said... For art and design to be successful and morally uplifting, an artist needed to be involved in every single step of the artistic process. He's like a nightmare director.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement (Radio Edit)
Okay, so he was basically, as we've already discussed, the guy when it comes to the arts and crafts movement. And he's born in 1834 in Walthamstow to a wealthy middle-class family. His dad is a broker in the city of London. His mom comes from a bourgeois family in Worcester. He's comfortably fancy. He was an architect, a designer, a practitioner of several self-taught crafts.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement (Radio Edit)
He taught himself how to paint, how to make furniture, how to make tapestries. He was also a really acclaimed and talented writer, a poet, a translator. He was actually offered a largely honorary but still very impressive professorship of poetry at Oxford, but he turned it down. Wow.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement (Radio Edit)
It's footlights. It's footlights, guys. It's... Pretty wholesome, because he just kind of lucked into being friends with all these people, kind of. So in 1852, he goes to Oxford. He's at Exeter College. And he really soon meets Edward Burne-Jones, who is another... You've heard of this guy, right? Big arts and crafts figure as well. He's a trainee architect after university.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement (Radio Edit)
And between his time in Oxford and his time as a trainee architect, he is... It's kind of surrounded by all these people who share his ideals and his ethos. And so Edward Burne-Jones is there. And then he marries Georgiana MacDonald. Edward does. And then when they get married, Georgiana Burne-Jones joins the social circle. There's also the architect Philip Webb.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement (Radio Edit)
There's also the pre-Raphaelite painter and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The embroidery artist and model Jane Burden. Jane Burden is the daughter of a stableman. And she is, quote unquote, discovered at the theater in Oxford by Rossetti and Burne-Jones. And she starts modeling for Rossetti. And then she starts modeling for Morris. And they actually end up getting married. They marry in 1859.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement (Radio Edit)
In 1861, one of the friends, this painter named Ford Maddox Brown, suggests that, yeah, you've heard of him, right? All these big names. He suggests that he, William Morris, Burden Jones, Webb, Rossetti, and some other folks, that they establish a design firm. And they do. And it's called Morris Marshall Faulkner and Company. Doesn't roll off the tongue. Does not.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement (Radio Edit)
But then by 1875, it's Morris and Company. And that's what we still have today. But what I love is that they simply called it The Firm. Oh, the firm. The boys are in the firm. They were doing everything from furniture to embroideries, jewellery, carpets, woven textiles, tapestries, metal and glassware and wall hangings. Like if you wanted it, you could get it from them.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement (Radio Edit)
And the meatballs were delicious. Yeah, maybe they also made great meatballs. I don't know. you know, they were really mindful about their employees. So they actually started hiring and training as apprentices, boys from the industrial home for destitute boys on Houston Road in central London. But it wasn't just boys. I mean, women were involved in Morrison Company from the very beginning.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement (Radio Edit)
Decorative tiles were being painted by Lucy and Kate Faulkner, who were sisters of Charles Faulkner, who was one of the other members of the firm. And then Georgiana Byrne-Jones, she was involved in the tiles as well. And like every woman in Morris's family was involved in the embroidery. So his wife, Jane, embroidering. His sister-in-law, Elizabeth or Bessie Burden, embroidering.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement (Radio Edit)
His two daughters, May and Jenny, embroidering. It was a whole family affair. Yeah. They were involved.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement (Radio Edit)
Okay, sorry. Luckily for him, one of them loved it. One of them, yeah. I don't know as much about Jenny because she had epilepsy. So she was just, you know, she was ill a lot of the time. But Mae Morris, she was a keen embroidery bean.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement (Radio Edit)
Yeah, Merton Abbey. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's in 1881.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement (Radio Edit)
It creates wealth that you can have a house that you want a tapestry for. Right. Yeah, they're reacting against it and they're also benefiting from it. Yeah. Because by the 1860s and 70s, there is a lot more wealth than there was before. So by one estimate, the average income per head of household doubles between 1850 and 1900. And the middle class triples in size.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement (Radio Edit)
So yeah, more people with more money. meant that there was more interest in buying more objects. They have really, I think, very admirable ideas and goals, but their process, this movement is not helping or affecting the people who are most hurt by the terrible working conditions of Victorian England.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement (Radio Edit)
Yeah, she's most well known for her garden design. But she also was doing all sorts of interiors, including designing embroidery and doing the embroidery herself. Wow. And she had a great name, Gertrude Jekyll. It's a great name.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement (Radio Edit)
But she really encapsulates this arts and crafts interest in blending together outdoor space and indoor space.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement (Radio Edit)
It's every Ceramics' nightmare. But not even just the kiln, like his whole workshop. Oh, my God.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement (Radio Edit)
He lives, though. He survives. And then he just moves. He's like, see ya. He moves to Chaney Walk. Very fancy. Love that for him. And he then actually has success with his various experimentations. And he becomes renowned for... his stained glass windows and his tiles with Islamic decoration and his furniture.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement (Radio Edit)
William Morris had created a world where other craftsmen were all working together to furnish big houses and churches and stuff.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement (Radio Edit)
Yeah, yeah. The movement goes across the Atlantic and hits the US as well. via things like journals and lectures from people who are in the movement. It was going to the US after World War I. It was going to Japan. It had It kind of had ripples everywhere, and it brought up all of this desire to preserve handicrafts generally.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement (Radio Edit)
So there were all of these movements within Britain that were founded in this period to keep craftsmanship alive. There was the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society in 1887. There was the Art Workers Guild in 1884, and they were a debating society where people just sat and debated about the principles of art and design. Yes, please. Very hardcore. Mm-mm. I'm there. Sign me up.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement (Radio Edit)
I would not be there because the debate makes me stressed because I hate confrontation. But you can go for me. You can tell me about it after. There was the Fine Needlework Association, which was an organization founded around the same time to give employment to... I really hope the Fine Needlework Association and what was the other one you said?
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement (Radio Edit)
There were so many embroidery societies. There was the Royal Embroidery Society. There was the Royal School of Needlework. There's the Fine Needlework Association. But these people... I mean, I like the Fine Needlework Association, but they're no Royal Needlework Association.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
Yes. He had so much going on. I mean, he was an architect, a designer, a practitioner of several self-taught crafts. He taught himself how to paint, how to make furniture, how to make tapestries. He was also a really acclaimed and talented writer, a poet, a translator. He was actually offered a largely honorary but still very impressive professorship of poetry at Oxford, but he turned it down. Oh.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
Sure, we've all been there. We've all been there. You just got too much to do. I understand. Too busy. He was such a machine. He was just constantly giving lectures and constantly writing about his beliefs. He was a socialist eventually, kind of later in his life.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
And it meant that by the end of his life in 1896, he saw all of his ideas kind of grow, flourish and become this arts and crafts movement throughout Britain. He wasn't without anger. He once broke down a door with his foot. But he, I don't want to paint a too positive or too negative a picture of him. Everybody's a complicated person, but he seems like he had, speaking of vibes, great vibes.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
It's footlights. It's footlights, guys. It's... Pretty wholesome, because he just kind of lucked into being friends with all these people, kind of. So in 1852, he goes to Oxford. He's at Exeter College. And he really soon meets Edward Burne-Jones, who is another, you've heard of this guy, right? Big arts and crafts figure as well. They're in the same college in the same year. They live together.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
And they actually both are training to be priests. But by the end of their education, they're like, nah, no. I'm leaving the church. Like, I'm going to be an artist.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
He, after his degree, trains with an architecture firm. He's a trainee architect after university. And between his time in Oxford and his time as a trainee architect, he is... It's kind of surrounded by all these people who share his ideals and his ethos. And so Edward Burne-Jones is there. And then he marries Georgiana MacDonald. Edward does.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
And then when they get married, Georgiana Burne-Jones joins the social circle. There's also the architect Philip Webb. There's also the pre-Raphaelite painter and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Have you heard of him? Is that a name that people know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's one of the more famous. He's one of the hot, sexy men of the 19th century. Oh, I love.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
I don't know if his impact is as felt in the US, so I'm still like, what's the vibe? He's definitely up there as a boy. A boy Rossetti. Okay, perf. We love that. So I don't even need to go into him. But I would like to. Hey, hello. Hello. How do I carry on after that? I know, I'm so sorry. No, it's great. Burne-Jones was his apprentice.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
And so then Rossetti, Burne-Jones, and Morris become like a tight trio, having a great time. Then there's also the embroidery artist and model Jane Burden. Jane Burden is the daughter of a stableman, and she is, quote-unquote, discovered by at the theater in Oxford by Rossetti and Burne-Jones.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
And she starts modeling for Rossetti and then she starts modeling for Morris and they actually end up getting married. They marry in 1859. Unfortunately for William Morris in this situation, eight years after Jane and Morris get married and have two daughters and after Rossetti's Wife, Elizabeth Siddle, unfortunately passes away very tragically. They start having an affair.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
And Morris and Jane Morris and Rossetti all live together at Kelmscott Manor, which is Morris's family home from 1871 to 1896. Yeah.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
I it's a relationship. There's a lot of discourse around it. And it seems like he wasn't clearly opposed. It was in his house. But I think that he knew that Jane and Dante, they had a lot of chemistry. And he was like, Oh, how can I stand in the way of this thing?
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
Yeah, it seems a little bit like he's just shrugging and being like, fine.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
Yes. Well, also embroidering. And modeling. She's doing it all with her very beautiful hair. She's absolutely killing it. Love that for her.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
Commune is where I'd go, but, you know... It can very quickly become a cult. He perhaps was just so extroverted, like, I really feel this. If I could just live with four of my friends all the time, I would love that. Maybe he was just like me.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was a full-on adult man by this point.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
Relatable king. That's me about most things, I feel.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
Yeah. So in 1857, I was going to say our boy. Is he our boy? He's one of our boys. John Ruskin, one of our boys, commissions our other boys, Rossetti, and then therefore William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones. So many boys in this. Yeah, I know. Boys on boys. So basically, Ruskin commissions Rossetti to do a mural. Rossetti's like, come on through, Morris and Burne-Jones, join me.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
And then they're also joined by a variety of other arts and crafts painters. to do these murals of Arthurian legend. Jane Burden is the model. My favorite is that yesterday I was like looking up the Wikipedia article for this because I was curious about what they said. And they call the artistic process, quote, notoriously chaotic.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
Because we forget that for the most part, not Rossetti, but these other folks were about 23 years old and just kind of having a nice time. They're really talented painters, but they... Classic commune vibes.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
So they're painting and Morris ends up actually painting his mural really quickly. And they don't realize that you actually have to plaster a wall or at least create enough of an underpainting to paint on top of. So they're painting and then the bare bricks are visible basically immediately. And it got restored in 1986. Oh, how sad. When you try so hard and you don't succeed. Yeah.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
Oh, it's so cute. Again, very wholesome, light commune vibes. All the friends and fam are there and they are collaborating to decorate and furnish it. So there are pre-Raphaelite style wall paintings and stained glass. And it's Rosetti who's painting as well as Elizabeth Siddle, his wife, Edward Bird Jones, always there as well.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
They're all contributing to these mural paintings and the furniture decoration. And Philip Webb, hilariously, actually designs a Gothic cart to collect guests from the train station to bring to the house. I would like it for myself. Yeah. But they weren't there for that long. So they move in in 1860. And by 1865, they move back to central London and they sell it by 1866. Wow.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
But like the commune vibes of it all get more extreme. Okay. In 1861... One of the friends, this painter named Ford Maddox Brown, suggests that, yeah, you've heard of him, right? All these big names. He suggests that he, William Morris, Burne-Jones, Webb, Rossetti, and some other folks that they establish a design firm. And they do. And it's called Morris Marshall Faulkner and Company.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
Doesn't roll off the tongue. Does not. But then by 1875, it's Morris and Company. And that's what we still have today. But what I love is that they simply called it the firm. Oh, the firm. The boys are in the firm. You know, my guy's in the firm.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
Yeah, they were all pretty good businessmen. William Morris was a great businessman. So they were in it for 14 years. And then there was a restructuring and the other guys left. And then it was William Morris as just him. That's when it became Morrison Company. But yeah, they were kind of killing it.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
They're doing everything. And it's actually really successful and convenient for them that this is a time, it's the 1860s, when the Gothic revival has meant that there are churches popping up all over the place. So there are new churches and old churches that are being restored, and they are the people who are making all the stained glass for that.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
And they're actually so successful, they're so skilled, that at the 1862 International Exhibition, they were accused of touching up original medieval artwork. Right. It was their artwork. They're just really good at what they do. I know. But then by the late 1860s, the interest in church work, the amount of churches that were being built, had shrunk.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
So things were kind of moving towards secular commissions. But they were doing everything from furniture to embroideries, jewelry, carpets, woven textiles, tapestries, metal and glassware, and wall hangings. Like, if you wanted it, you could get it from them.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
And the meatballs are delicious. Yeah, maybe they also made great meatballs. I don't know. You know, they were really mindful about their employees. This was part of their effort to make this art as accessible as possible and to get everybody involved. So they actually started hiring and training as apprentices, boys from the industrial home for destitute boys on Euston Road in central London.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
Yeah, it's basically to give them skills and opportunities that they wouldn't have otherwise. And I think that is absolutely rad. But it wasn't just boys. I mean, women were involved in Morris and Company from the very beginning. So decorative tiles were being painted by Lucy and Kate Faulkner, who were sisters of Charles Faulkner, who was one of the other members of the firm.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
And then Georgiana Byrne-Jones, she was involved in the tiles as well. And like every woman in Morris's family was involved in the embroidery. So his wife, Jane, embroidering his sister-in-law, Elizabeth, or Bessie Burden, embroidering his two daughters, May and Jenny, embroidering. It was a whole family affair. They were involved.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
Get your needle! Your knots and cuffs! Okay, sorry. Luckily for him, one of them loved it. One of them, yeah. I don't know as much about Jenny because she had epilepsy. So she was just, you know, she was ill a lot of the time. But Mae Morris, man, I'm going to spill some facts later. And she was a keen embroidery bean.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
yeah merton abbey okay yeah um that's in 1881 and and so they're sort of pivoting to interior design they did a dining room at the vna or what is now the vna yes yes so they did the green dining room this was the first museum cafe in the world is that the one that's still there now yes oh it's just so beautiful yeah and it has all of these like images of nature and plants and fruits in the turning year and it
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
evokes this idea of, you know, old green England. And that's exciting, not only because we still have it today, but also because it shows that they were making efforts to be part of this movement of making art accessible to all.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
It creates wealth that you can have a house that you want a tapestry for. Right. Yeah, they're reacting against it and they're also benefiting from it. Yeah. Because by the 1860s and 70s, there is a lot more wealth than there was before. So there's an increase in white collar jobs. There's improvements in state education. That's what we were just talking about with those destitute boys.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
By one estimate, the average income per head of household doubles between 1850 and 1900. And the middle class triples in size. So, yeah, more people with more money. meant that there was more interest in buying more objects. How many times can I say the word more in a sentence? But that is the vibe. It's more is more.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
artisan skills back to a middle class that's happy to buy it 100 so part of the thing is they have really i think very admirable ideas and goals but their process their this movement is not helping or affecting the people who are most hurt by the terrible working conditions of victorian england yeah
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
I wore this and I was like, maybe it's going to be him giving me his blessing. And he'll be like, you're doing great. But I'm a little bit scared that he will actually be violently turning in his grave. And I'm going to be talking about him while wearing this.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
No! It's every Ceramics' nightmare. But not even just the kiln, like his whole workshop. Oh my God.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
He lives though. He survives. And then he just moves. He's like, see ya. He moves to Chaney Walk. Very fancy. Love that for him. And he then actually has success with his various experimentations and he becomes renowned for... His stained glass windows and his tiles with Islamic decoration and his furniture.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
And in 1882, the year after Morris and company moves to Merton Abbey, he too moves to Merton Abbey for his business. And, you know, Morris, I think, has the power to bring people in not only like artistically and emotionally, but also physically. Yeah, gentrifying area. Just get all up into Merton Abbey and make it beautiful.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
britain's hottest spot i have no idea what merton abbey is to be honest it's near wimbledon i don't know what it is it used to be like a historic calico area but it meant that he william morris had created a world where other craftsmen were all working together to furnish big houses and churches he's the beyonce of the arts and crafts movement if he does a country album everybody thinks hey maybe we can all add this influence to our genre yeah he's a
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
Beautifully said. He is the Beyonce. I think he would love to know that he is the Beyonce.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
Yeah, she's most well known for her garden design. But she also was doing all sorts of interiors, including designing embroidery and doing the embroidery herself. Wow. And she had a great name, Gertrude Jekyll. It's a great name.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
But she really encapsulates this arts and crafts interest in blending together outdoor space and indoor space. They wanted these arts and crafts homes to have conversations between gardens and... and the interior.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
Yeah, yeah. The movement goes across the Atlantic and hits the US as well. via things like journals and lectures from people who are in the movement. It was going to the US after World War I. It was going to Japan. It had Thank you. Thank you.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
I think we should start with an overview. I hope that's okay. Just set the scene. So the arts and crafts movement is an art movement, as you could guess. That begins sometime in the late 19th century. Nobody can agree on the exact start date. Some people put it at 1861, which is when William Moore starts getting on the scene. Other people say it doesn't really start until the 1870s or 1880.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
And it lasts until about the beginning of World War I. The movement is a style of art. It's primarily domestic furnishings, and it promotes craftsmanship and aesthetic unity between all sorts of objects in the home. And those would range from textiles to furniture to ceramics to metalwork and everything in between.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
I've invented acrylic plastics.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
I mean, nothing changes things like war, I would say. So World War I comes in and the aesthetic changes massively. People don't have the need or desire for any of this fine craftsmanship anymore anymore. the war comes and all of a sudden it's modernism.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
And deco and like what comes after it. So while the arts and crafts movement technically ends at World War I here in Britain, it does have ripples in other places. So the American movement goes and becomes its own thing with like architect Frank Lloyd Wright. It's going to places like Hungary, Poland and Finland, where there's a real interest in traditional handicraft skills. It starts in Japan and
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
at World War I and after. So the implications are felt kind of far and wide. And even though, yeah, the movement is definitely over, we are still in a world where we are kind of constantly seeing arts and crafts images. So is it really over?
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
Yeah. Maybe I just wasn't paying attention. Maybe it's the friends we made along the way. Yeah.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
Really? Your stopwatch? I'm scared. Okay. If you ever see a William Morris design, whether it be on wallpaper, an advent calendar, or a fridge magnet, chances are it's probably Morris' work called Strawberry Thief. Not only is it Morris' most beloved pattern, it's also one of the most popular textile designs ever. It's inspired everything from a novel to a video game.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
It has some overlap with other contemporary art movements at the same time or just a little bit previously, and those include the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, the Aesthetic Movement, and even Art Nouveau. The name itself comes from the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society. That's a very long name for a society, I think, but okay.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
You can find Strawberry Thief-covered products on the shelves of John Lewis, Waitrose, M&S, Waterstones, and even Pets at Home, truly fulfilling Morris' desire to make his art accessible. With Strawberry Thief, Morris captures the thrushes that he caught stealing fruit in his garden at Kelmscott Manor. Amidst multicolored flowers, scrolling vines, and frilly leaves are pairs of birds.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
Those with yellow and pink wings have their mouths agape. Are they shocked that they've been caught mid-tweet or mid-munch? The birds with blue wings are the thieves in question, looking very satisfied with plump strawberries hanging from their beaks. Morris felt that everyone should have access to beautiful surroundings, rest, and work that inspires satisfaction and pride.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
And he was deliberate about what sorts of products should be made from each of his designs. In its original form back in 1883, Strawberry Thief was a printed cotton furnishing textile intended to be used for curtains, walls, or loose covers on furniture.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
Morris printed it using the indigo discharge method, a many centuries-old technique primarily used in Asia that took an especially long time to produce. Because of this, Strawberry Thief was one of the most expensive printed furnishings available from Morris & Company.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
But the price didn't stop those little strawberry-stealing birds from becoming one of Morris' most commercially successful patterns. Clearly, the commercial success of Strawberry Thief lives on. 140-ish years after the textile was produced, some things are different, though. That pattern isn't limited to furnishing fabrics, and it isn't expensive.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
This is the case for other arts and crafts movement designs, too. William Morris did intend his work to be widely available, but he was also strategic and specific about how and on what objects his designs should be used. Beautiful. Look at that. Look at that. Two minutes and two seconds. I'm sweaty.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
They loved wordiness, didn't they? So that Exhibition Society was founded in 1887 to exhibit decorative arts alongside fine arts. And it had exhibitions in London from 1888 to 1890. And there was one guy in it in particular, Thomas James Cobden Sanderson, speaking of long Victorian names, who first coined the term in 1887. William Morris is considered the head honcho. He's the daddy.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
The Royal School of Needlework. I'll accept it. It's hard because everything, if it's not a school, it's an institute, it's a guild. It's all of the words keep appearing again and again.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
Thank you so much for having me. I've had the best time.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
He's the grand poomba in the situation. It's his ideas and view of the world that inspires so much of the movement.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
Do you have to have like a... Who decides who's in and who's out? It seems like just a vibe. A vibe, okay. And it's kind of a term that we use to encapsulate people bound together by an ethos rather than a specific crew. They were all people with similar ideals at a similar time.
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The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
Yeah. Do you want to read the quote for us? Yeah. He says, and he's giving this lecture in December of 1877 to the Trades Guild of Learning. And I think he summarizes... What a great... Shout out to the Trades Guild of Learning. The Trades Guild of Learning. My favorite Trades Guild. Also, Trades Guild. Like, so confusing to say, but that's fine.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
He summarizes his feelings about kind of everything really well when he says, I do not want art for a few any more than education for a few or freedom for a few. He's really about... Art and wellness for everybody, as many people as possible. He's got great vibes, I think, generally, William Morris. William Morris fan club over here.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
He and the other arts and crafts people are really invested in handicraft and utilizing... really learned skills to create beautiful, pleasant, pleasing, comfortable, useful objects.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
Enclosure. Enclosure. So you have enclosure.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
Oh boy, you should have been in the Arts and Crafts movie. I would have loved it. I love the clothes. I love the vibe. It's all vibes. It's all vibes for me. But yeah, exactly. Like Victorian London, Victorian Britain saw a huge amount of change when it came to industrialization in good and bad ways.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
So in terms of the population, by 1851, the census tells us that more people live in cities than in the countryside. Right. That's a big change. You have huge numbers of people flocking to industrial city centers. But the conditions are bad oftentimes.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
People are living in slum conditions and slum housing with overcrowding and a lack of sanitation and generally just bad living situations, lots of disease. And industrialization is good for some people, for a lot of people, in that it means that there are more affordable items available to more people. But the actual manufacture is gnarly. The work is dangerous. The work hours are crazy long.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
The pay was abysmal. Disease is everywhere. And it's usually children who are most affected by this in the Victorian period. And I have a... I was going to say a fun fact. It's the opposite of a fun fact. I have an un-fun fact. A grim fact. A grim fact for you. So by the 1850s, the average life expectancy for mechanics, laborers, and their families in Manchester was 17.
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The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
Compare that to 38 years old in rural Rutland. So... Nobody is thriving. Nobody's thriving. 38 is also a terrible age to die at. But an average age of 17 to pass away at is so dark. A big leap, isn't it?
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The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
Mostly it's children, right. So, you know, that's...
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The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
Yes, they really romanticize it and idealize it. And they're interested in the medieval world because they perceive it as having a better run society and a better run system for making goods. So they are kind of idealizing and dreaming about this system where objects were produced in small scale workshops rather than these large, anonymous, brutal factories.
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The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
And they're looking for artisan sourdough bread. They literally are. They are the cottagecore folks of the late Victorian era. They would be happy in East London now. They are so obsessed with this medieval world, but they aren't alone in that.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
There are loads of people in the 19th century, especially artists who are involved in various art movements, who are really looking to the medieval period as this perfect moment in society. They're not right. but they are looking at it through rose-colored glasses. And they're like, wow, those guys, they had it so correct.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
But it wasn't surprising that they were interested in that because that was the artistic world. They were kind of becoming adults in all of these arts and crafts people. There was the Gothic revival in the 19th century, especially in architecture. And it meant that kind of wherever you looked, there were Gothic-style buildings.
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The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
And we can see that influence all over the place, not just in art, but there was also... this increased influence in romantic poetry and more study of folklore. And Walter Scott was writing these historical romances. And Alfred Lord Tennyson was writing Arthurian literature. And there is such a drive to look to this dreamed up past.
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The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
Yeah, so he is a leading figure in that Gothic revival movement. And he thought that society would be morally better, which is a bold move already, if art, design, and industry were reimagined along pre-industrial lines. He was like, let's just get rid of mechanization. We'd actually all be emotionally and morally better people.
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The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
And he saw that the best, the most good period was the medieval period. And he saw it in Gothic architecture. Right. And he liked the medieval stuff for the same reason that the arts and crafts people liked the medieval stuff. It was him viewing this period as a time when craftsmen were celebrated and honored and they lived in a society that was unaffected by corruption and immorality, which is...
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The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
So bold, but go off him. Yeah, tell Martin Luther, come on. But he went a step kind of further where he basically equated a nation's social health to the way it made its goods. So he was very, very interested in how production happened. And he wrote this trilogy of books between 1851 and 1853 called The Stones of Venice. And that middle volume was called The Nature of the Gothic.
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The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
And that became an arts and crafts manifesto. And he said... For art and design to be successful and morally uplifting an artist needed to be involved in every single step of the artistic process.
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The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
So there was another leading figure of the Gothic revival movement named Augustus Pugin. Oh, who did the Houses of Parliament. And Pugin dies, and then Ruskin starts writing like, his ideas were the worst. I hate this guy. Like, they were in the same movement, but Ruskin was like, this guy's trash. He had some spicy opinions and he was not afraid to let you know them.
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The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
Yeah, so Augustus Pugin did do the interiors of the Palace of Westminster.
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The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
How did he get his start? Okay, so he was basically, as we've already discussed, the guy when it comes to the arts and crafts movement. And he's born in 1834 in Walthamstow to a wealthy middle-class family. His dad is a broker in the city of London. His mom comes from a bourgeois family in Worcester. He's comfortably fancy. And his childhood was punctuated by his father's death, so not all great.
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The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
Thank you so much. I'm really excited to be here.
You're Dead to Me
The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
But other than that, some pretty good times. He read a lot and had a nice time. He would wander through the woods at his family's house called Woodford Hall, which was in Essex. And he also spent time in the nearby woods of Epping Forest. And my favorite fact is...
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The Arts and Crafts Movement: William Morris and his circle
is that he had a miniature suit of armor medieval suit of armor made for him and he used to wander through epping forest on his pony in the suit of armor oh love that for him my personal dream would love that for me and his childhood home in walthamstow is now the willie moore's gallery yes beautiful beautiful very beautiful great exhibitions as well yeah very good place to visit yeah so good
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Causes of the British Civil Wars (Radio Edit)
Yeah. So after the execution of Stratford, I mean, literally the day of the execution of Stratford, Charles met with his negotiators from Scotland and they said he's surprisingly cheery for someone who's just had his lead advisor beheaded. And the reason was that Charles, in the summer of 1641, had decided to go to Scotland. and try and win power there.
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Causes of the British Civil Wars (Radio Edit)
And to do that, he engaged in plotting to try and have his enemies arrested and possibly killed. Meanwhile, in Ireland, which of course had been subject to British colonial rule for decades now, was suddenly kind of bubbling up into rebellion.
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Causes of the British Civil Wars (Radio Edit)
And one of the kind of immediate issues was that Stratford had created this army of Irish Catholics, and then he'd been beheaded and the army was left with nothing to do. So essentially, it just kind of sat there. And then these people became, these disbanded soldiers became very, very angry. And that kind of fed into a rebellion.
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Causes of the British Civil Wars (Radio Edit)
And in October 1641, it all kind of explodes with this plot to take Dublin Castle, which is betrayed, and then a huge uprising in Ulster. which quickly gets out of hand. And there are reports of massacres, really quite nasty bloodshed. And some of them are true, but also they're massively exaggerated by the English press.
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Causes of the British Civil Wars (Radio Edit)
And that then creates a really kind of tense situation going into the end of 1641.
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Causes of the British Civil Wars (Radio Edit)
It's huge, which basically says what was wrong with Charles's rule, what we've done about it and how we're good and what we still need to do about it. And essentially, the kind of implication is that. Because Charles's government was so bad, we as Parliament need to take control over that government. We need to have control over the appointment of government officers.
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Causes of the British Civil Wars (Radio Edit)
So people like the Lord Treasurer, all those kind of things. And that's the implication. It's hugely, hugely controversial. MPs sit up until... 2am in the morning debating it. Eventually it passes by a whisker because there's lots and lots of opposition to Pym in Parliament by this point.
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Causes of the British Civil Wars (Radio Edit)
And the really important thing, I think, about the Grand Remonstrance is it's a moment where it's clear that in Parliament itself, in the House of Commons in particular, MPs are divided. There are royalists and there are parliamentarians and it's a split down the middle. That hadn't been the case in 1640. It had been much more unified in opposition.
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Causes of the British Civil Wars (Radio Edit)
So now we're getting closer to a situation where the political nation is divided and that can then lead to civil war.
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Causes of the British Civil Wars (Radio Edit)
Well, so the first thing that Charles did was he accused them publicly in the House of Lords on the 3rd of January and he accused five MPs and one peer. And then at some point he decides that the next day he will gather about sort of 500 armed cavaliers, march down to Westminster from Whitehall and he will pull them out himself. He'll have the five MPs arrested. And so that's what he did.
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Causes of the British Civil Wars (Radio Edit)
But by the time he got there, they'd run away. The 4th of January, when this happened, was an utterly shocking moment for the country because Charles had basically taken an armed gang down to Parliament and threatened to arrest. Now, he hadn't done it. He hadn't massacred them. But they thought he was within a whisker of basically having loads of MPs shot.
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Causes of the British Civil Wars (Radio Edit)
It was a hugely, hugely shocking moment for the political nation.
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Causes of the British Civil Wars (Radio Edit)
Well, I think, I mean, by this point, it's much more split down the middle. I mean, a lot of people are angry at the king, but there's a lot of people who are still loyal. And basically what happens is that both sides say we need to defend ourselves from the other side. So Parliament raises the militia and does so without the assent of the king, which they'd never done before.
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Causes of the British Civil Wars (Radio Edit)
Whereas Charles used something called the commissions of array, which was a medieval way of getting people to come out to slay and kill people who were attacking the king. And Parliament had put together another document. which sounds a bit less like a ballroom dance, I reckon.
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Causes of the British Civil Wars (Radio Edit)
The 19 propositions, or maybe it does, the 19 propositions, which basically is another attempt to say, look, things have got bad. The way that we solve this is we get control of the government. We take it away from the king. We get control of the militia. And of course, there's no way that Charles would agree to this.
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Causes of the British Civil Wars (Radio Edit)
And that's why he went to Nottingham and raised his standard on the 22nd of August.
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Causes of the British Civil Wars (Radio Edit)
Yeah, and it was a great base for raising troops in the Midlands and also possibly going over towards Wales, where Charles knew that he had a lot of support.
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Causes of the British Civil Wars (Radio Edit)
So, I mean, it's very easy when you're thinking about the British Civil Wars to think that it's basically all Charles I's fault. And lots of historians think that's the case. I'm not saying he's a success by any stretch of the imagination. He toys with militarism. He toys with authoritarianism. He marches to Parliament with an armed gang. He basically does mess things up quite significantly.
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Causes of the British Civil Wars (Radio Edit)
There's nothing which says that he has to impose his prayer book on Scotland. Nonetheless, I I think one of the things that's really important to have in mind is the fact that there are these really kind of deep level problems in the country at the time. We talked a bit about inflation and all this kind of stuff, and that makes it much harder to run a government. We talked a little bit about...
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Causes of the British Civil Wars (Radio Edit)
Social pressures. And again, that makes it much harder to rule the country. But also, you know, these kind of issues with Parliament are based on really kind of longstanding ideological differences. There are people who believe the king can kind of do what he wants. And there are people who believe that the king is much more restricted.
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Causes of the British Civil Wars (Radio Edit)
It's very, very hard to rule the country which thinks intelligently about these issues and comes to different conclusions. And it's the same with religion. The country, it's complex the way it thinks about religion. There are Catholics, there are Puritans, there are Protestants in the middle. And it's very, very, very hard to run one country like that, let alone three.
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Causes of the British Civil Wars (Radio Edit)
And remember that Scotland is more Protestant, more Puritan than England and Ireland is mostly Catholic. So it's very, very hard for Charles. So, again, I think with the Civil War, it's really, really important not to just pin this on one hopeless guy. And I'm not saying he's not hopeless, but it's important to think of other things that are going on. He's dealt a very, very difficult hand.
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Causes of the British Civil Wars (Radio Edit)
Well, we're going to look at the period 1625 to 1642. So that's from the start of Charles's reign to the moment when it all falls apart and the Civil War begins in England. But we're going to start with James I as well, because some of the things that we'll be thinking about will date back to the predecessor of Charles, his father.
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Causes of the British Civil Wars (Radio Edit)
So James I was very short of money and that created an awful lot of problems. And in particular, it created a lot of problems in his relationship with with Parliament because the assumption was at this time that for the King to take people's money, they had to give consent to it in Parliament, which met when the King wanted it to.
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Causes of the British Civil Wars (Radio Edit)
But the trouble is that when James called parliaments, they tended to want grievances to be addressed. So there's that. He's short of money. There's also a huge amount of kind of social stress In England at this period, there's been a long period of population growth. It means that people can't get on the housing ladder and food prices are very, very high. There's a series of riots in 1607.
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Causes of the British Civil Wars (Radio Edit)
This sounds familiar. And there's a lot of religious issues which have hung over from the Reformation.
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Causes of the British Civil Wars (Radio Edit)
The issue of tax didn't go away and completely poisoned Charles's relationship with Parliament because he basically sort of says, well, you know, there's a war. I really should be able to just take your money. But Parliament says, well, actually, we have to vote it to you. And before we do that, we want you to address these grievances that we have.
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Causes of the British Civil Wars (Radio Edit)
Tonnage and poundage, as funny as it sounds, it's a tax on imports and exports. And traditionally, Parliament had always granted it to the monarch at the start of their reign for life. But under Charles I, Parliament says you can have it for a year. And then we're going to kind of have another look and see if everything kind of tracks and everything's OK. And then it expired.
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Causes of the British Civil Wars (Radio Edit)
So Charles was faced with a bit of a problem, which is that he suddenly lost this source of income. And he approached that problem in the most direct way you probably could, which is that he just collects it anyway. And they've had a recent controversy over something called the petition of rights, whereby Parliament basically says non-parliamentary taxation is illegal.
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Causes of the British Civil Wars (Radio Edit)
Charles eventually gives his assent, but fudges it and eventually end up also fighting about religion. There's this group within the English church which wants much more kind of high church ceremonial. They are very much in the ascendancy. Charles likes them very, very much. MPs within Parliament got very angry about that because they saw it as a return to Catholicism.
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Causes of the British Civil Wars (Radio Edit)
There's more sort of ceremony. There's a lot less focus on private prayer, listening to sermons. One of the biggest things is that the communion table, which in the English church at this period was traditionally in the middle, so it's kind of accessible to everyone, gets railed off and put at the east end.
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Causes of the British Civil Wars (Radio Edit)
Yeah, he basically adjourns Parliament as a kind of prelude to dissolving it. But when he sends his messenger to the House of Commons, they basically bar the door so he can't get in. And they hold the speaker down in his chair for like an hour. And while they do that, MPs pass a series of resolutions, basically saying that if you support all this kind of stuff, you are a traitor.
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Causes of the British Civil Wars (Radio Edit)
I mean, he can and he does. He basically decides that he wants to rule without Parliament. So from now on, he will try to rule England without calling another Parliament for as long as he can.
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Causes of the British Civil Wars (Radio Edit)
Yeah. So, I mean, what he then tried to do was he tried to find new and creative ways of raising money. And in order to do this, the new ways are basically the old ways. And one of his civil servants, a guy called Sir John Burra, had been ferreting away in the 17th century equivalent of the National Archives, which is in the Tower of London.
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Causes of the British Civil Wars (Radio Edit)
And he'd found all these kind of crazy medieval ways of raising money and, you know, everything from, you know, attacks on beer, for example, or attacks on death or attacks on lawyers, which I think would have been quite popular.
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Causes of the British Civil Wars (Radio Edit)
Well, ship money is a well-established or was a well-established way of raising ships for the Navy. And basically what happened was that coastal communities were told you need to provide a ship for the Royal Navy and that would protect the country. What Charles did was he kind of rolled it out to inland counties on the fairly sensible premise that basically they get protected as well.
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Causes of the British Civil Wars (Radio Edit)
And it was very, very controversial because he was essentially doing a new tax and he was doing it without Parliament. But it seems to work. You know, he raises quite a lot of money through it.
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Causes of the British Civil Wars (Radio Edit)
It comes to a Dutch theologian called Arminius, and he argued for essentially a form of faith where you're not completely predestined to heaven or hell. You have a certain amount of free will. And that then kind of ties into this English idea of ceremonialism. You know, again, interior design, putting the altar, putting the holy table at the east end.
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Causes of the British Civil Wars (Radio Edit)
And it's connected by this sort of clumsy guy from Reading who is sort of a bit like a kind of short version of Ricky Gervais. who just alienates everyone, called William Lord. And he became the Archbishop of Canterbury. He was very, very controversial because, you know, the Calvinists and the Puritans didn't like it very much.
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Causes of the British Civil Wars (Radio Edit)
Well, because he liked to bow and do all this kind of stuff so much that he would fall over and drop the prayer book and all this kind of stuff. And this was all in the name of decorum, of course.
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Causes of the British Civil Wars (Radio Edit)
Root cause, it is inflation. There's a big growth in population. That means that there's more mouths to feed. There's also a series of really bad harvests from about 1628 onwards that led to food riots. There's a sense in the 1630s that the social order is really kind of fraying. There's a lot of anger out there.
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Causes of the British Civil Wars (Radio Edit)
Yes, I mean, women were very much involved in protest, particularly about food, because that was seen as kind of in women's domain. And so you would often see women leading food riots. There's also people like Lady Eleanor Davis, who's a really interesting character. She was an aristocratic lady and she began making prophecies early in the 17th century.
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Causes of the British Civil Wars (Radio Edit)
And then in the 1630s, she found herself angry about William Lord. And at one point she went into Litchfield Cathedral and she poured a vat of boiling tar over the communion table because she thought it was in the wrong place for which she was sent to bedlam. which was a mental asylum, and eventually the tower, although she was released eventually. So yeah, women are very much involved in protest.
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Causes of the British Civil Wars (Radio Edit)
Religion is one thing that women often end up protesting about. They're definitely part of the political nation in this period.
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Causes of the British Civil Wars (Radio Edit)
Yes, and Charles saw himself as having what he called an imperial crown. So it was his duty... to impose his ideas, his religion on Ireland and on Scotland. In Scotland, initially, it ran into a lot of difficulty. In 1637, Charles tried to impose Lordianism on Scotland.
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Causes of the British Civil Wars (Radio Edit)
And in 1638, the Scots en masse signed this thing called the Scottish National Covenant, where they basically said that they would protect their church, their kirk. It led to a plan by Charles to invade Scotland, and it all went terribly badly wrong.
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Causes of the British Civil Wars (Radio Edit)
Yeah, but also he can't dissolve it because he needs money. They also then passed an act called the Triennial Act, which is terribly important, which says Parliament must sit every three years. And if it doesn't, if the king doesn't call it, then leading kind of lawyers and politicians can call it anyway.
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Causes of the British Civil Wars (Radio Edit)
And that is a massive constitutional revolution because previously Parliament had always been called by the king. That was the only way it could be called. And now they're saying Parliament is permanent and it can be called even if the king doesn't.
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Causes of the British Civil Wars (Radio Edit)
Yeah, I mean, Cromwell's basically a backbench MP from Cambridge. He's virtually, you know, very, very little significance at all. Pym is this kind of longstanding, incredibly politically savvy guy. He's incredibly clever. He's incredibly sophisticated and has this kind of group of MPs and peers who support him and want to reform the state.
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Causes of the British Civil Wars: Royalists versus Parliamentarians
And he tells her that she will be sent to France as a secret agent. She will work undercover and if she is caught, she's going to be shot.
You're Dead to Me
Causes of the British Civil Wars: Royalists versus Parliamentarians
And he tells her that she will be sent to France as a secret agent. She will work undercover and if she is caught, she's going to be shot.
You're Dead to Me
Causes of the British Civil Wars: Royalists versus Parliamentarians
And he tells her that she will be sent to France as a secret agent. She will work undercover and if she is caught, she's going to be shot.
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Palaeolithic Cave Art (Radio Edit)
It's Lucy Worsley here and we're back with a brand new series of Lady Swindlers.
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Palaeolithic Cave Art (Radio Edit)
This is their version of an Instagram story, really. You know, it might take a bit longer, but it's like, you'll never guess what I saw last weekend.
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Palaeolithic Cave Art (Radio Edit)
And from what I know throughout history, a lot of it, like art supplies, are often like pretty nasty stuff. I'm not going to speculate, but we can all imagine whatever is available. Did you say ochre earlier? Yeah, that kind of thing.
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Palaeolithic Cave Art (Radio Edit)
Black and brown. Those are your choices. Black, brown, red and yellow. A little bit of white.
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Palaeolithic Cave Art (Radio Edit)
Yeah, definitely. Actually, no joke, I think a cave would be a great place for a stand-up comedy night. Because nice and dark, you probably just have one light source, which is the fire. Yeah. Because you want there to be as few distractions as possible. So that's a spotlight on me on the stage in the centre of the room. Ideally with a crowd there as well. That's one thing I do think of as well.
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Palaeolithic Cave Art (Radio Edit)
A crowd of cave bears. A crowd of cave men. You know, probably some toilet humour. That's their kind of ballpark. That's fine. I did a show last night and I had a PowerPoint presentation in there. As far as I know, they didn't have that technology back then. Probably not. But you want it nice and big, nice and clear.
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Palaeolithic Cave Art (Radio Edit)
It's just very important that everyone understands exactly what's going on in my experience. That's nice.
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Palaeolithic Cave Art (Radio Edit)
Oh no, I've destroyed an ancient piece of art. This was Greg's idea, I swear. Yeah.
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Palaeolithic Cave Art (Radio Edit)
Beautiful. Yeah, absolutely. The whole echo as well is like a theatre performer's dream. You know, it really helps you project, you know, tell the story.
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Palaeolithic Cave Art (Radio Edit)
I'll be honest, no. Do you want to have a guess? Yeah, is it the study of beach balls? LAUGHTER
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Palaeolithic Cave Art (Radio Edit)
I'm glad I have a word for it now because I see it on social media all the time when somebody's like, oh, this house looks like a face or this coat hanger looks like a drunk octopus that wants to fight you. I think that's the best one.
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Palaeolithic Cave Art (Radio Edit)
Wonderful. Thank you, Izzy. Sean. Yeah, I love that. So it's their equivalent of the photos on the front of the fridge, I guess. Beautiful, I love it.
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Palaeolithic Cave Art (Radio Edit)
I did for the last episode as well. I just do it for this podcast. Oh, I see. Yeah, yeah. So I need three months' notice before every episode appears, even though it's an audio format and it's completely wasted. But I need to know it's there. I'm really grateful you've done it.
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Palaeolithic Cave Art (Radio Edit)
In films. Now, I'm sure I visited something to that effect, presumably on a school tour as a kid. From what I know of it, it's recently, it's mainly from YouTube videos. There's lots of hands, usually some vague person shapes and maybe some animals as well. It's usually really delicate and needs to be well preserved.
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Palaeolithic Cave Art (Radio Edit)
Although when I make a hand painting and put it on the fridge, it's in the bin within days. Okay. But yeah, I know it's fascinating. And I know there's a few caves, a few in France. I have happened to watch a few YouTube videos about this topic in the past. This is good knowledge, Sean. Yeah, is it? Yeah. Okay, good. Yeah, this is good. First question, what is a cave? So, what do you know?
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Palaeolithic Cave Art (Radio Edit)
to 1989. No. I'm going to say thousands of years ago and I don't think I can be more precise than that. Am I in the right ballpark? You're kind of not actually.
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Palaeolithic Cave Art (Radio Edit)
And we don't know why. Did we just annoy them into disappearing?
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Palaeolithic Cave Art (Radio Edit)
Maybe the shape of a sheep with a flock of sheep. Nice. Now, I know you can't preserve that on a cave wall, but we're taking shepherding to brave new places.
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Palaeolithic Cave Art (Radio Edit)
What do you think he did to disprove its ancientness? Did he draw something himself? Did he? I'd be like, I can do that.
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Palaeolithic Cave Art (Radio Edit)
Probably heckling, to be honest. If somebody's done a very long set-up to a joke and then just going, no, I'll go through. It's really hard to recover from that. That's true. Trust me.
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Palaeolithic Cave Art (Radio Edit)
We didn't call Celia the bob-haired bandit. We called Celia Grandma.
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Palaeolithic Cave Art (Radio Edit)
What are you imagining on the wall? Deer, mammoths, because we've mentioned them already. I want to say cats and dogs, but I feel like that's, let's say wolves. Okay. That kind of area, terrifying animals.
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Palaeolithic Cave Art (Radio Edit)
Absolutely enormous. Right. I thought cows were already pretty big, Greg. Mega cow, Sean.
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Palaeolithic Cave Art (Radio Edit)
This one I think is absolutely gorgeous. Wow, that is pretty cool. That's a whole group of, what are they, lions?
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Palaeolithic Cave Art (Radio Edit)
Yeah, you can almost sense the movement of it as well, genuinely. That's really cool. It's like Lion King, the prequel.