Hello everyone, a quick message of thanks before we start.

To all of you who made donations recently to our 50 kilometre walk, thank you, thank you, thank you very much.

Davy and I did make it, about 12 hours of it.

Davy was singing happily to the end.

I almost died over the last few miles.

But we were given a free burger and a pint at the end, so there's that.

As I hobbled around the following day, I was warmed by your generosity,

over £5,000 for Anthony Nolan, which will pay for over 125 stem cell transplants.

Thank you.

Music Hello everyone and welcome back to the history of England, episode 432B, Europe in the Age of the Sun King, Part 2.

Last week we spoke about the growth of ideas of reason and rationalism, and all across Europe, it seemed that this should be applied now to government

just as much as any other area of life. And so, as well as the age of reason and the age of enlightenment,

the second half of the 17th century and the 18th century in particular will have a further tag

the age of absolutism. As you can see, this is also the age of ages.

Before we move on to that, though, I had an email from Shane, who is a member of this parish,

about the word rednecks, which I idly assumed last week had exactly the same origin as redleg.

Well, Shane tells me there is an alternative possible explanation derived from the Battle of Blair

Mountain in 1921, a conflict between mine workers and their bosses. The story goes that workers

put on red bandanas so as to identify each other. So there we go, thank you, Shane,

an alternative explanation.

Now, what we're going to do this episode is look at the political history of Europe for a little while,

and a theme will be how these new ideas of rationalising government under an absolutist banner goes for all these places.

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