Free Thinking: Born in 1819: Ruskin, Clough and Bazalgette
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 9 January 2019
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The social campaigning, engineering and writing of three Victorians - art critic and philanthropist John Ruskin, poet and assistant to Florence Nightingale Arthur Hugh Clough and the builder of London's sewer system Joseph Bazalgette. Greg Tate, Suzanne Fagence Cooper , Stephen Halliday and Kevin Jackson join Laurence Scott to debate the way these 3 Victorians changed the way we look at the world and shaped our understanding of the Victorians.
Producer: Zahid Warley
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right? |
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| 0:32.1 | This is the BBC. |
| 0:47.0 | Welcome to BBC Radio 3's Arts and Ideas discussion programme, which brings together leading artists, writers and thinkers, in conversation and debate. |
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| 1:34.5 | Just search for the Listening Service on BBC Sounds and learn more about the music we all love. |
| 1:41.6 | Hello, the year is 1819. The SS Savannah is docking at Liverpool. |
| 1:46.2 | It's the first steamship to cross the Atlantic. |
| 1:48.9 | Birmingham is enjoying its first evening under the powdery glow of gas lighting. |
| 1:53.8 | Keats is composing his ballad, La Belle Dame Saint-Mercé, |
| 1:57.1 | and, as the composer Arthur Sullivan would later put it, |
| 2:00.3 | Britannio was about to awake. |
| 2:07.4 | So it came to pass that on May the 24th, 1819 at Kensington Palace, |
| 2:12.4 | the baby Alexandrina Victoria was placed in her mahogany crib. |
| 2:16.6 | According to her mother, the future Queen Victoria was |
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