Hello everyone and welcome back to the history of England.

Episode 319 would you believe, dearth and discord.

I need to start with a groveling apology about the much-fortoted sponsored Thames walk,

the legs of not shunned yet despite the application of the kind of stockings my dranny used

to wear, as soon as I can, as soon as I can.

But meanwhile, you have donated 7,300 quid you lovely people, which is just gobsmacking.

Thank you so much.

No more though please, it's embarrassing until I get walking again, but you are very,

very generous.

Now then, a few episodes ago, I spoke briefly and yet authoritatively, I thought, even

sensatively, about the last 10 to 13 years of Elizabeth's reign, the golden age thing.

You know the thing, dispatching our enemies to the boundary for successive sixes, a nation

newly found and self-confident, socially stable, and out one with itself setting out to explore

the world and create a corpus of drama, of sufficient size, to be able to torture young

people for infinite future generations.

I hesitate to say cry-haryon or that because I've been doing that a lot recently, but what the heck?

Cry-harygental listeners and if you will, Saint George and just to be properly inclusive,

the dragon, which does tend to get left out a lot.

Every one of the greats needs a great enemy after all.

This week then, we're going to ask, what was the golden age like for you?

A frankly dishonest device to allow me to squeeze some social content into the food processor

of history in the attempt to spice up the sausage of political history?

...