Printing in England (Radio Edit)

You're Dead to Me

BBC

Comedy, History

4.7 • 10.9K Ratings

🗓️ 11 October 2024

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode, Greg Jenner is joined in 15th-century England by Dr Lydia Zeldenrust and comedian Robin Ince to learn all about the early history of book printing.

2024 marks the 550th anniversary of the first book printed in English: a history of Troy, produced in 1474 by William Caxton. In the decades that followed, numerous printing shops would be set up across the country, and a huge variety of texts printed, including those that carried potentially dangerous ideas.

Starting with the origins of printing in East Asia, this episode explores the first century of printing in England, looking at how books were produced and by whom, what sorts of texts were being printed, who was reading them, and how the state reacted to this new industry.

This is a radio edit of the original podcast episode. For the full-length version, please look further back in the feed.

Hosted by: Greg Jenner Research by: Jon Norman Mason Written by: Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow, Emma Nagouse, and Greg Jenner Produced by: Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow and Greg Jenner Audio Producer: Steve Hankey Production Coordinator: Ben Hollands Senior Producer: Emma Nagouse Executive Editor: James Cook

Transcript

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0:47.0	Hello and welcome to your dead to to me the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history
0:56.2	seriously my name is Greg Jenner I am a public historian author and
0:59.4	broadcaster and today we are coming to you live from the Hay Literary Festival in Wales, which means I get to say,
1:06.0	Hello audience!
1:08.0	And we have got a suitably literary subject for you today as we are grabbing our
1:15.0	library cards and book tote bags and heading all the way back to the 15th century
1:19.3	to learn about the first 100 years of book printing in England and to help us spread the word we have two very
1:25.6	special guests. In History Corner she's a lecturer in Middle English literature at the
1:29.7	University of Glasgow she's a specialist in late medieval literature and
1:33.4	handly for us she works both with manuscripts and early printed books.
1:37.9	It is Dr Lydia Zeldenrust. Welcome Lydia! Lydia. Did I get the name anywhere near right? Yes, it's a trickiest
1:48.8	a Dutch name, yeah, so it's always difficult.
1:50.5	Selden roost. And in Comedy Corner, he's an acclaimed comedian, author, broadcaster, he does absolutely everything.
	...

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