New Thinking: The Botanical Past
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 1 June 2021
⏱️ 45 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Should Kew re-label its plants? What do you see when you study a still life painting on the gallery walls? How do nineteenth century authors depict deadly plants? New Generation Thinker Christienna Fryar discusses new ways of understanding British history through horticulture with her four guests: Lauren Working, is one of the 2021 New Generation Thinkers. She has studied the Jamestown colony, and delivers a postcard about still life painting and its connection to the exotic luxuries of early empire building. Her book is called The Making of an Imperial Polity: Civility and America in the Jacobean Metropolis. Katie Donington, has worked on a British botanist and plant collector George Hibbert who made his money from the plants on the sugar plantations, and then paid for specimens to be brought back to England from one of James Cook's expeditions. Daisy Butcher, has edited a collection called The Botanical Gothic, which brings together 19th century stories about deadly plants, mostly plants brought back to the UK from far-flung parts of the world that turn out to be threatening. Sharon Willoughby, head of interpretation at Kew Gardens, is looking at the way Kew presents its collections, starting for example, to use Chinese names for Chinese plants which were well known to Chinese scholars before the plant collectors arrived from countries including Britain to bring specimens to display here.
You might be interested in the Free Thinking discussion looking at Darwin's The Descent of Man https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000s31z Napoleon the gardener and art thief is discussed by guests including biographer Ruth Scurr https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000vr1w Trees of Knowledge hears from Peter Wohlleben and Emanuele Coccia https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0001nj1 And an upcoming episode of The Verb with Ian McMillan on June 11th will hear more from Peter Wohlleben and from poet Jason Allen-Paisant We are also launching a podcast made in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council - Green Thinking - which features academic research into the issues linking the climate challenge and society. You can find that on the Green Thinking playlist on our programme website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07zg0r2 and available to download as the Arts & Ideas podcast.
New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to work with academics to share their research on the radio. This episode was made in partnership with the AHRC, part of UKRI. You can find a playlist exploring New Research on the Free Thinking website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03zws90
Image: The Temperate House at The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew Credit: Paul Kerley / BBC
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? |
| 0:23.3 | It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's out of ice cream. |
| 0:28.8 | Listen to evil genius on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:33.2 | BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts. |
| 0:37.7 | Hi, I'm Christina Friar, and in this episode of the Arts and Ideas podcast, |
| 0:42.5 | we're focusing on new thinking in UK universities about plants, empire, and the ways we talk about both. |
| 0:49.5 | I'm going to hand the opening of this program to Nana Muscori. |
| 0:53.0 | How many gentle flowers grow in an English country garden? |
| 1:00.3 | I'll tell you now of some I know and those I missed, I hope you'll pardon. |
| 1:07.6 | Daffodils had season flocks, middle sweet and lily stalks, gentle lobin and tall holly hocks, roses, fox, gloves, no drops, forget me not, in an English country garden. |
| 1:23.6 | It's a fine list, but there are plenty more we could add. |
| 1:30.7 | Rhododendrons, magnolias, frieges, tulips. |
| 1:34.2 | They're in bloom in gardens throughout the country as we speak. |
| 1:37.3 | But their roots lie in other parts of the world. |
| 1:42.8 | For historians, plants like these raise questions that were only just beginning to address. |
| 1:45.7 | Questions about colonialism and classification and how Britain became the country it is, and how we should acknowledge and make sense of that legacy. |
| 1:52.3 | Today I'll be talking to four academics and practitioners about Britain's botanical past and its |
| 1:58.2 | deep connections to empire. We'll be unearthing a more complex, |
| 2:02.4 | much stranger, more global, and altogether darker history of plants. Joining me is Sharon Willoughby, |
| 2:09.7 | who is head of interpretation at the Royal Botanic Gardens Q. Katie Donington is senior lecturer in |
| 2:16.1 | history at London South Bank University. |
| 2:18.3 | Daisy Butcher is a PhD candidate at the University of Hartfordshire, where she is researching depictions of the feminine in Gothic and Weird Fiction. |
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