Hidden Treasures: Britain's Art in WW2

Warfare

History Hit

History

4.5 • 943 Ratings

🗓️ 18 April 2022

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

As Europe prepared for the Second World War, a challenge presented itself to the men and women of Britain’s museums, galleries and archives: how could they keep their many national treasures safe? From stately homes and slate mines, to castles and prisons, in today’s episode Dr Caroline Shenton explores the race to protect British heritage.

Caroline is an archivist and historian, her new book ‘National Treasures: Saving The Nation's Art in World War II’ can be found here.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Oh, he's cute. Mr. I can never sleep when I'm traveling. He's hugging his pillow like a sloth on a branch.
0:10.0	He couldn't sleep before. Now listen to him. Sounds like an elephant with a chest infection.
0:15.0	Well, they call him a dreamer. And now they're right.
0:19.0	All aboard, Mr. I can never sleep when I'm traveling.
0:23.0	Find all the comfort you need in the quiet lounge.
0:26.0	Pinedo Ferries, there is another way. Hello everyone. Welcome back to the History Hit Warfare
0:36.5	podcast. I'm your host James Rogers and in this episode we have a most
0:40.7	amazing story about attempts to save the nation's art during the Second World War.
0:47.0	What nation are we talking about?
0:48.0	Well, we're talking about the United Kingdom.
0:50.0	We had Laura Morelli on the podcast a few weeks ago talking about what happened in France and the attempts to save Leonardo da Vinci's greatest works from Hitler and his henchman.
1:01.0	Well, this time we have Caroline Shenton, the brilliant archivist who has just written a new book called National Treasures.
1:11.0	In it, Caroline shares the interwoven lives of ordinary, but I would say quite extraordinary people who kept calm and carried on in the most pressing, stressful, damning circumstances as they foresaw
1:25.6	invasion as part of Hitler's Operation Seeline and before that quite early worries
1:31.4	about what this new fearful fearsome technology air power could do to
1:37.4	the galleries, the archives and the museums in London and across some of Britain's largest cities.
1:44.0	And so of course they had to do something about it
1:46.0	in an attempt to save the nation's historic identity.
1:50.0	And that's the story we hear all about today.
1:54.0	So here is Caroline Shenton on National Treasures.
1:59.0	Enjoy.
2:08.0	Hi Caroline, welcome to the History Hit Warfare Podcast. How you doing today? Fine, thank you, James. Really pleased to be here.
	...

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