Shappi Khorsandi on Emma, Lady Hamilton
Great Lives
BBC
4.2 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 2 April 2019
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Comedian and author Shappi Khorsandi has been desperate to tell the story of Emma, Lady Hamilton as she’s quite simply one of her greatest fans.
Everyone knows Emma Hamilton as simply the seducer of Admiral Horatio Nelson but according to Shappi she was more than that; history has simply palmed her off as a prostitute, a mistress, without looking at the deeper story of what she suffered and endured.
In this programme Shappi, with help from Professor Kate Williams, author of ‘England’s Mistress’, makes the case for how this woman born into poverty clawed her way up through London’s sordid underworld and became fantastically famous posing for artist George Romney. She also became an ambassador’s wife and mixed in diplomatic circles and became the confidante of both Marie Antoinette and the Queen of Naples.
Will presenter Matthew Parris be convinced and accept Emma, Lady Hamilton as a great life.
Producer: Perminder Khatkar
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2019.
Transcript
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| 0:36.0 | Before great lives kicks off, we just want to draw your attention to how to invent a country. |
| 0:41.0 | A new podcast from Misha Glenny. And here was the thinking behind them. What is a country? Where does it come from? Why do Germany, Italy, and Brazil look the way they do on a map? How long have they been there and why are their borders exactly where they are? |
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| 1:17.0 | That was nice. Often with great lives, there's a rags to riches story, |
| 1:22.0 | the turmoil and jeopardy, the glamour and fame and shame, that's |
| 1:26.0 | what makes this series. But rarely do I see it all in such quantities. Today there's poverty, sex, seduction, a war hero, heartbreak, a tragic death, |
| 1:36.9 | all thrown into the mix. |
| 1:38.9 | Our great life is Emma Lady Hamilton, the mistress of Admiral Horatio Nelson. |
| 1:44.0 | Everybody's heard of her, but how much do you know about her? |
| 1:48.0 | She's been chosen by the comedian and author Shapi Korsandi, |
| 1:52.0 | who toured last year with her show, Mistress and Miss Fit, which was all |
| 1:55.9 | about Emma Hamilton. |
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