The Rural Idyll?
Thinking Allowed
BBC
4.4 • 997 Ratings
🗓️ 28 April 2021
⏱️ 30 minutes
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Summary
The Rural Idyll? Last year the National Trust produced a controversial report which revealed that 93 of its properties have direct links to colonialism and slavery. In this programme, Laurie Taylor talks to Corinne Fowler, Professor of Post Colonial Literature at the University of Leicester, whose new study engages directly with this painful history, uncovering the countryside’s repressed colonial past and its relationship to notions of Englishness. How have pastoral mythologies in English literature served to erase the story of Empire? In what ways do contemporary writers of colour offer a challenge to uncritical celebrations of our 'green and pleasant' land? They’re joined by Paul Readman, Professor of Modern British History at King's College London, whose recent research considers the relationship between landscape and English national identity, from the rural to the urban. Thinking Allowed is produced in partnership with the Open University.
Producer: Jayne Egerton
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Take some time for yourself with soothing classical music from the mindful mix, the Science of |
| 0:07.0 | Happiness Podcast. |
| 0:08.0 | For the last 20 years I've dedicated my career to exploring the science of living a happier more meaningful life and I want |
| 0:14.4 | to share that science with you. |
| 0:16.1 | And just one thing, deep calm with Michael Mosley. |
| 0:19.4 | I want to help you tap in to your hidden relaxation response system and open the door to that |
| 0:25.4 | calmer place within. Listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:30.3 | BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts. |
| 0:36.0 | This is a Thinking Loud Podcasts from the BBC and for more details and much, much more about |
| 0:42.2 | thinking aloud, go to our website at BBC.co. UK. |
| 0:47.0 | Hello I didn't really come across many landscapes when I was growing up. |
| 0:52.0 | There was the view across the Mersey to New Brighton and on a clear day the hills of Wales and there were a couple of day trips in the family car to Parbold Hill, but I think I always knew these were thin pickings compared to the promise |
| 1:05.5 | delights of the Lake District. After all, only there one could find the landscapes that had |
| 1:10.9 | captivated writers and artists for centuries, landscapes celebrated by |
| 1:15.4 | Harriet, Martinob, Turner, Ruskin, Arthur Ransom, and of course William Wordsworth. |
| 1:21.3 | And although that artistic enthusiasm has now been dimmed by the arrival |
| 1:26.2 | of the railways and mass tourism, there are still people who want to raise their voices |
| 1:30.6 | in praise of its lakes and bays and waterfalls, some are rather unexpected celebrants. |
| 1:37.6 | So while Taylor Swift must have kept herself pretty busy selling 200 million records |
| 1:42.4 | worldwide with such songs as |
| 1:44.2 | Look What You Made Me do, she still found time to him the delights of Windermere and |
| 1:49.7 | Coniston and Grasmere. |
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