The Strange Case of the Huge Country Pile
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 19 December 2019
⏱️ 68 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Nosing around Osterley House, currently owned and run by the National Trust, Matthew Sweet and guests discuss our enduring fascination with the grand country estate.
Countless stories, films and plays are set in the rarefied and actually very rare setting of the country estate, a world of valets and scullery maids, viscounts and self-mades, Kind Hearts and Coronets. This year has seen the TV series Downtown Abbey become a film. Every weekend hundreds of thousands of us visit the former homes of the 1% to gawp at the gardens and taste the tea. Have they become a place of reflection, of societal introspection where history was conceived and carved into the plaster? Or is it more about the lovely chutney and special scones? And what might visitors a hundred years from now expect to see about the current period of these houses' history?
Alison Light is a historian and author who has written about the realities of life in service. Her latest book, A Radical Romance, is out now by Penguin Random House. Will Harris is a poet who has worked on several projects exploring heritage and empire. https://willjharris.com/about/ John Chu has curated an exhibition, Treasures of Osterley: Rise of a Banking Family which runs at Osterley House in West London until 23rd Feb 2020. https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/features/treasures-of-osterley-exhibition-at-osterley-park Annie Reilly is Head of Producing at the National Trust, Ffion George is the incumbent housekeeper at Osterley House.
Producer: Alex Mansfield
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 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. |
| 0:32.2 | Hello, I'm so glad you decided to tell the underbutler to download this Arts and Ideas podcast. |
| 0:38.4 | In a moment, we're going to go upstairs and downstairs in the English country house, |
| 0:43.5 | rummaging about in its history, its ideology, and its second-best spoon drawer. |
| 0:48.5 | That's after this short message from the kitchen. |
| 0:51.4 | Hi, I'm Alistair Suk, and I want to tell you about the way I see it, a brand |
| 0:56.1 | new podcast from BBC Radio 3. It's a 30-part series in which we're throwing open the collection |
| 1:01.9 | at MoMA, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, to some of the sharpest creative minds of our |
| 1:07.6 | time. We'll be speaking to comedian, Steve Martin, writer Roxanne Gay, musician Steve Reich, and many, many more. |
| 1:16.3 | I'll be your guide throughout the series, so join me as I explore one of the greatest collections of modern art in the world. |
| 1:23.5 | If you'd like to hear more, just search for The Way I See It on BBC Sounds. |
| 1:32.9 | Let's begin with an act of extrapolation. |
| 1:37.0 | And I could choose some dark chocolate mint creams, I could choose some fudge, I could choose some jam, |
| 1:45.6 | but I think I'm going to go for this. |
| 1:48.0 | Mango and Ginger Chutney. |
| 1:49.2 | Let's have a look at the label. |
| 1:55.4 | There's a picture of a rather beautiful building on it and a garden, a planted garden. |
| 2:03.6 | And on the label, it tells me the ingredients, mango, sugar, spirit vinegar, stem ginger, gelling agent, garlic puree. |
| 2:06.2 | What is this jar telling us? |
| 2:10.3 | It's telling us I'm here at an English country house. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.

