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1:01

Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.

1:04

This is a Thinking Allowed podcast

1:06

from the BBC. And for more

1:08

details and much, much more about

1:10

Thinking Allowed, go to our website

1:12

at bbc.co.uk. Hello.

1:15

Now, our discussion of passports last

1:17

week took me all the way

1:19

back to 1953, when my mate

1:21

Dave and I, having learnt that

1:23

our new jazz heroes, Miles

1:26

Davis and Charlie Parker could be heard

1:28

live in Paris when we planned a

1:30

trip to France. But

1:33

how on earth did we get there from Liverpool? Well,

1:36

we eventually learnt that all you had to

1:38

do was take a special bus to a

1:40

place in Kent called Lid, where

1:42

you'd climb on a propeller plane to the

1:44

Touquet from where there would be a

1:46

train waiting to take you to Paris. Now,

1:50

the bit that still sticks in my

1:52

mind from that long, long journey was

1:54

the moment when the bus conductor, dressed

1:56

as an air hostess, came to check

1:58

our passports. see

2:00

you're from Liverpool," she said, handing them

2:02

back. Yeah, yeah, right. Then

2:05

visas, please. Visas? Yes.

2:07

If you're from Liverpool, you'll need a special

2:09

visa to leave the country. Well,

2:11

only the laughter around us revealed the

2:13

joke. A good joke, because

2:16

for us at that time being a

2:18

scouser or a river-puddling was somehow more

2:20

real, more us than being, well, English.

2:23

After all, what did English mean? What

2:26

exactly was English-ness? Well,

2:28

these are perfect questions for my first

2:30

guest today. He is David Matless, Professor

2:32

of Cultural Geography at the University of

2:35

Nottingham, and author of

2:37

About England. David,

2:40

you're writing about England since

2:43

the 1960s, as opposed to

2:45

the different or even longer stretch of

2:48

time. Why choose that period? Something

2:50

shifts from the 1960s in a number of

2:52

different fields. You find it in, for

2:55

example, attitudes to the built environment

2:57

and to heritage, criticisms of modern

2:59

planning and modern development. You find

3:02

it in terms of the natural

3:04

environment as well. You

3:06

also, of course, see significant changes

3:08

in England and Britain's place in

3:11

the wider world. You're talking about a time when

3:13

empire goes, Europe comes,

3:16

and then many of the assumptions from

3:19

the 1960s and early 1970s continue to shape

3:21

the way we think about things today. So

3:23

in that sense, writing about

3:25

that period, even though it's several

3:28

decades, it does seem in

3:30

significant ways to be our contemporary period,

3:32

rather than being some increasingly

3:35

receding past. The

3:37

starting point was to think of how people

3:39

of different kinds, different kinds

3:41

of institutions as well, have thought

3:43

about England and made claims about

3:46

England, and particularly to use the

3:48

lenses of landscape and place as

3:51

a way of getting into those themes.

3:54

Things like the role of pastoral

3:56

landscapes in symbolizing England and Englishness,

3:58

the Role of particular. The settings

4:00

such as the suburb and then in

4:02

terms of time in history the whole

4:05

shifts in the idea of heritage or

4:07

which come from nineteen sixties own woods

4:09

and indeed shifts in the attitude to

4:12

the modern which by the end of

4:14

that the period I now am the

4:16

modern itself stealth feel, a heritage objects

4:18

everything else double still best on each

4:21

other. As with this is Susan specifically

4:23

breeze you identify members of World War

4:25

Two. The press is critical to the

4:28

construction of English as even now. I'm

4:30

in what ways. if you think about

4:32

the way in which conservationist and heritage

4:34

arguments for made in the seventies eighties

4:36

they often looked back to innocence, the

4:39

hero, that moment of the Second World

4:41

War and then what they saw as

4:43

a betrayal of that heroic moment in

4:45

the P. So the criticisms of modern

4:47

building and planning and so on. Most

4:50

famously articulate other than Prince of Wales

4:52

in the Nineteen eighties where he he

4:54

suggested that has a lift welford knock

4:56

down buildings but it was us as

4:58

he said, who'd cause. The problems afterward.

5:01

So you get the war, The

5:03

war being invoked as a moment

5:05

of reference about time, but you

5:07

see ill so much more recently

5:09

in the whole episode of the

5:11

Pandemic. The way in which people

5:13

would cope with that moment was

5:15

in part by looking back for

5:17

parallels and the Second World War

5:19

became a moment of both patriotic

5:21

resilience and a time of crisis

5:23

but also of course obtain them

5:25

and of collectivism and the generation

5:27

of the Nhs which everybody was

5:29

clapping for. also cove it even

5:31

though it was a highly contemporary

5:33

moments seem to make sense not

5:35

just for i think older generations

5:37

it made sense through reference to

5:40

the second world war in a

5:42

series of seekers and had and

5:44

more or less prominent more com

5:46

parts in that story virulent dying

5:48

at that moment tom more historical

5:50

imagination not just because he was

5:53

elderly but because of his wartime

5:55

background as well i've got a

5:57

clip in this isn't babysitters nineteen

5:59

seventy documentary Metroland in

6:01

which the poet John Bertraman

6:04

meditated on the residential suburbs

6:06

near the Metropolitan line. The

6:09

Metropolitan had a very good idea. Look

6:12

at these fields. They were

6:14

photographed in 1910 from

6:16

the trade. Why not, said

6:19

a clever member of the board, why

6:21

not buy these orchards and farms as

6:24

we go along, turn out the cattle

6:26

and fill the meadowland with houses.

6:29

We would have a modern

6:31

home of quality and distinction

6:34

and soon there will be

6:36

estate agent, whole merchant, post

6:39

office, shops and

6:41

rows of meat dwelling, all

6:44

within easy reach of

6:46

charming countryside. Butts,

6:48

hearts and little sex yielded

6:51

to Metroland and

6:53

city men put breakfast on

6:56

the fast train to London town.

7:00

Tell me about how suburbia

7:03

has been represented, relationship to

7:05

notions of Englishness. Betjeman in

7:07

1973 making Metroland. He was doing

7:10

that at what was quite a moment

7:12

for suburbia in terms of cultural discussion.

7:14

In some ways suburbia is often

7:17

presented as classic middle England. But

7:20

of course the term middle is incredibly capacious

7:22

and not least in terms of social class.

7:24

So you have suburbia which ranges from very

7:27

well-to-do detached upper middle class

7:30

down to essentially public

7:32

housing on the edge of cities.

7:34

And you can find equally interesting

7:36

and rich representations

7:39

of these different kinds of suburbia, all

7:41

of which are thinking of it as

7:44

a place which says something about England.

7:47

So for Betjeman it's

7:49

typically a place of architectural interest

7:51

but it's also a place of

7:53

social interest and particular eccentric figures

7:56

who say something to him about the

7:58

world he lives in today. particularly

8:01

in the late 20th century suburbia

8:03

becomes an important place

8:05

for telling stories about England

8:07

partly because of the new

8:09

prominence of a particular medium

8:11

namely television situation comedies whose

8:14

archetypal setting is the suburban home the

8:17

dramatization of suburban life and if you

8:19

watch the more interesting ones in

8:22

part they are presentations of suburbia

8:24

as a place of comfort and

8:26

order and coziness but

8:29

it doesn't take long to find

8:31

stories about anxiety and worry

8:33

and you know breakdown as well

8:35

fallen rise of Reginald Perrin or

8:37

ever-decreasing circles those kinds of things.

8:39

Let me switch to another habitation

8:42

which you talk about in your

8:44

book the country house I'm going

8:46

to talk about that in some

8:49

detail with my next guest but I mean

8:51

you explored the country house with reference to

8:53

the the 60s band the

8:55

King's and their song sunny

8:57

afternoon and also you talk

9:00

about long-league the country house turns safari

9:02

park tell me why

9:04

you picked up these two instances what

9:07

do they illustrate about England? In sunny

9:09

afternoon is a presentation of an aristocrat

9:12

on hard times and of course the

9:14

hard times that he's suggesting satirically are

9:16

because of taxation it's a tax man's

9:18

taken all my dough and left me

9:20

in my stately home. A few

9:22

years after that a re-presentation of the

9:25

country house is something vulnerable and

9:27

under threat done partly through

9:29

exhibitions at places like the V&A in

9:31

the early 1970s that

9:33

cultural mobilization is done specifically in

9:35

relation to taxation plans it's done

9:37

to combat plans for a wealth

9:39

tax so Ray Davis

9:42

whether he was on to something

9:44

and read the political runes or

9:46

not anticipates perfectly all of the

9:48

arguments about the wealth tax and

9:51

its threats to country houses which was

9:53

successfully defeated by a very powerful Lobby

9:56

Group. You're fascinated by long release then

9:58

as well. Fascination to that

10:01

came from a partly my own visiting

10:03

there in Nineteen Seventy Five on a

10:05

junior school trip. So part of the

10:08

interest in writing about England as his

10:10

writing about my lifetime here, Longleat from

10:12

Ninety Sixty Six was one of those

10:15

examples of the country house becoming a

10:17

site for new kinds of enterprise and

10:19

generating new kinds of money. But what

10:22

I thought was sickly interesting about a

10:24

site lot Longleat is not only as

10:26

a country house story, but as a

10:29

story of England. And Britain and

10:31

the end of empire because it

10:33

sold at the time as going

10:35

to see Africa for the day

10:37

and will cheer on this is

10:39

the late sixties which is the

10:42

peak time. Full anxieties about the

10:44

end of empire and migration and

10:46

so on. And he you have

10:48

lions being imported from East Africa.

10:50

own show protected by and ranges

10:53

in land rovers. Born arguments in

10:55

your book which struck me that

10:57

is strong with this is the

10:59

arguments. About breakfast because you

11:01

are you incessantly that the

11:03

emotional language and imagery in

11:05

the Leave campaign was more

11:07

powerful than the economic arguments

11:10

used by the Remain Campaign

11:12

As the Leave Campaign were

11:14

adepts it tapping into emotions.

11:16

whether they were emotions the

11:18

people thought would, good, bad,

11:20

or whatever there wasn't a

11:22

language is English Europeanness to

11:24

tap into. And and that's

11:26

partly about the way in

11:28

which certain ideas of landscape.

11:30

in place will mobilize says he

11:32

just think about the amount of

11:34

times that certain figures associated with

11:36

bricks it would have appeared on

11:38

the white cliffs of dover or

11:40

in a pub quite deliberate mobilization

11:42

of particular site a site which

11:44

does not necessarily have inherently an

11:46

anti european meaning or pro european

11:49

meaning but that was done very

11:51

effectively we're also struck me in

11:53

doing this so as to think

11:55

now that bricks it is sort

11:57

of dumb the question remains i

11:59

think of how the 50

12:01

years of England and the

12:03

United Kingdom within Europe will leave a

12:05

legacy within the built environment and within

12:07

the landscape. I found one about half

12:09

a mile from where I live, so

12:11

in a park in Beeston on the

12:13

edge of Nottingham. There's a circle

12:15

of trees around a bandstand. You go up to

12:18

the bandstand and there's a plaque which says these

12:20

please were planted in 1993 as part

12:23

of a project called Tree Circles for Europe

12:26

and the 12 trees represent the then

12:28

12 members of the European community. One

12:31

of the trees didn't grow very well, had

12:33

to be replanted and is shorter than the

12:35

others which may or may not be symbolic.

12:37

I mean there may be other such circles

12:40

but I think it would be a genuinely

12:42

interesting exercise to think about what traces will

12:44

be left by that time. Traces of Europe.

12:46

Yeah one of the parallels again between the

12:48

1970s and today

12:51

are the ways in which devolution becomes

12:53

the focus for, if you like, the

12:55

English question, you know the representation of

12:58

England in Parliament but that as part

13:00

of a wider question about

13:02

culture and identity. One

13:04

of the most prescient narratives of that was I think

13:06

in 1977 Tom Nairn, Scottish writer, wrote

13:10

his book The Breakup of Britain which where

13:13

his argument writing as a Scottish

13:15

nationalist was that the key question in

13:17

all of this was the question of England and

13:20

it was about what kind of identity

13:22

the English were going to work out

13:24

for themselves post-empire and it's kind

13:26

of still an open question. David Masters,

13:29

yes thank you and thanks

13:31

also to Ted Milichap and Barbara

13:33

Zielinska and Ian Fox who

13:36

all emailed their experiences

13:38

with passports, emailed them

13:40

to me at thinking

13:42

aloud at bvc.co.uk. Actually

13:44

Ian Fox among all those various writers

13:47

had bragging rights. He said, Laurie

13:49

I was born in New Zealand, my

13:51

parents come from England, my mum is

13:53

from Preston and I'm married to an

13:56

Australian. Consequently I have

13:58

three passports. I

14:00

somehow think that makes me part of a

14:02

very small group of people in the world.

14:05

Well, I can now turn to consider

14:07

an even smaller elite. The

14:09

present and past owners

14:11

and occupiers of English country

14:13

houses. When I lived in

14:15

York, it was a summertime treat to motor

14:18

out to Castle Howard, the home of the

14:20

Howard family for more than 300 years, and

14:23

of course the chosen location

14:25

for television's Brideshead Revisited. But

14:27

although we all reveled in the house and

14:30

the beautiful gardens, we never

14:32

considered the manner in which Castle

14:34

Howard and other such country houses

14:36

embodied Englishness in all its strengths

14:38

and weaknesses. But I

14:40

can now hope to remedy that

14:42

serious failure of social curiosity, because

14:45

I am joined by Stephanie Barchefsky,

14:47

Professor of Modern British History at

14:50

Clemson University, South Carolina, and she's

14:52

the author of How

14:54

the Country House Became English. Stephanie,

14:57

you've already published a book entitled

14:59

Country Houses and the British Empire.

15:02

So tell me what you're exploring in this latest work.

15:05

There were really two reasons why I decided

15:07

to write the second book, one sort of

15:09

personal and one political. The personal was

15:12

that I found that in my previous

15:14

work that although I found a lot

15:16

of financial and cultural influence of the

15:18

Empire, the Empire hadn't really

15:20

had a significant impact on the architecture and

15:23

design of the country house. And

15:25

so that absence caused me to think a little

15:27

bit more carefully about how there might be limits

15:30

to English openness, to external

15:32

influences. And right around

15:34

the same time, as I turned to the political, right

15:36

around the same time as I was

15:38

starting to think along these lines in early 2013, David

15:41

Cameron announces that Britain is going to hold

15:43

a referendum on its continued

15:45

membership in the European

15:47

Union. And the surprising result, I

15:50

think mostly surprising result of that

15:52

referendum, not only confirmed

15:54

a continuing pronounced skepticism regarding external

15:57

connections, but also significant disparities in

16:00

in the attitude of the four nations that comprise the

16:02

UK. So it was England where slightly

16:04

over half, 53% of voters opted

16:06

to leave. That determined the outcome, right? A

16:09

relatively small percentage of English voters was able

16:11

to overcome a large percentage of

16:13

Scottish voters. And that forced all of

16:15

us to confront the often overlooked importance

16:17

of English nationalism in determining the course

16:19

of British history. Whatever one's

16:21

opinion of Brexit from the perspective of a

16:23

historian, I think it opened up new questions

16:25

about British history and England's

16:27

role. So you want to look at an

16:30

institution here which almost embodies notions of

16:32

Englishness. But if you make the point, don't

16:34

you, with rare exceptions, there's

16:36

no such thing as a British country house.

16:38

Those in Scotland and Wales

16:40

remain largely distinct. Now, your study makes

16:43

clear that country houses have long served

16:45

as points of reference for the English

16:47

aristocracy. Tell me a little bit about

16:49

this earlier history. From the

16:51

beginning, we have to think of country houses. They're

16:54

not just residences, right? They're also power bases. And

16:56

so one way in which they embody something that we

16:59

think of as very English is their role in

17:01

the struggle for power between the monarchy and

17:03

the aristocracy that's been going on in

17:05

England really since the Middle Ages. So

17:08

in medieval times, country houses take the

17:10

form of castles, their residences, from which

17:13

the aristocracy can maintain their local authority.

17:15

They can defend themselves against, among other

17:17

things, royal attempts to curb their power.

17:19

And even long after this defensibility is

17:22

no longer necessary in a kind of

17:24

formal sense, they remain the powerhouses of

17:27

a very rich and very powerful English

17:29

elite that dominates the politics and social

17:31

life of the country well into modern

17:33

times. So after 1688, the

17:36

struggle for power was resolved in favor of the elite

17:38

in the form of its dominance of parliament over

17:41

the monarchy. The very grand houses

17:43

of the 18th century become symbols not just

17:45

of this triumph, but also of

17:47

the ostensible stability of the English political

17:49

system. The different meanings get assigned to

17:52

country houses over time. Tell me a

17:54

little bit about those changing conceptions. The

17:56

beginning is castles, right? So their main

17:58

purpose is to defend. and to

18:01

display the power of their owners.

18:03

By the 18th century, the sort of great

18:05

age of the country house, the houses have

18:08

become the focal point of immensely large and

18:10

often immensely profitable landed estates. So in this

18:12

era they really are the centers of wealth,

18:14

power, and status. But in the

18:17

19th century their role changes again as

18:19

many of the industrial magnets and other

18:21

men of business who acquire country houses

18:23

in this era really have no interest

18:25

in being farmers. They just want the

18:27

social prestige that owning a country house.

18:31

And so country houses begin to evolve

18:33

into what they typically are today. So

18:35

they're big houses in the country in

18:38

which wealthy people live. They're no

18:40

longer the centers of landed estates dependent

18:42

on agriculture. This

18:44

process accelerates after 1880 when

18:47

economic changes mean that agriculture becomes much

18:49

less profitable. And so country houses

18:51

these days, and we should be clear,

18:53

right, that they continue to exist as

18:55

residents for real people and not merely

18:57

as heritage sites. They tend

18:59

to be financially supported by external sources.

19:01

So someone makes their money in the stock

19:03

market or by being a pop star

19:05

or something like that. And they

19:08

don't depend on the land that

19:10

surrounds them. For some cases they're

19:12

supported by revenues from tourism. We

19:15

do also have to consider them as heritage sites

19:17

because that's how most people see them today. And

19:19

they're meeting in that sense changes according to the

19:21

changing values of society. So we see them as

19:23

symbols for better or worse of

19:25

a vanished world of hierarchy and deference.

19:28

We also in recent years have come

19:30

to see them as symbols of wealth

19:32

accumulated in unsavory and immoral ways, in

19:34

particular through links to the slave trade.

19:37

It's enduring nature. It's often been celebrated

19:39

as a sign of stability and continuity.

19:41

But you want to suggest a rather

19:43

more complex reality. Yeah, David, and I

19:45

would agree that the one way we think of Englishness

19:48

and the way that country houses

19:50

traditionally embody Englishness is because they

19:53

seem to represent continuity. It's like

19:55

a physical metaphor for the English

19:57

Constitution. But beneath that

19:59

super. official permanence, we get a much more

20:02

complex history. So prior to the 18th

20:04

century, English history is very turbulent. We

20:06

might think of the Reformation and

20:09

the Civil War. In particular, we often kind

20:11

of overlook that the Civil War kills twice

20:13

as many people per capita than the First

20:16

World War does, and it also causes numerous

20:18

country houses to be damaged

20:20

or destroyed. Country houses also

20:22

reflect the upheaval of the Reformation, so

20:24

a lot of them are converted into

20:27

residence for the dissolved monasteries. That's why

20:29

the name Abbey appears in the

20:31

name of so many country houses today. Others are

20:33

the scenes of great violence. If we look

20:35

today at a house like Oxford Hall in

20:37

Norfolk, which is now a national trust property,

20:40

we see this beautiful late medieval house. It

20:42

seems to embody permanence and stability. It's the

20:44

same as it's always been, but

20:46

if we look at it more closely, we can see that it contains

20:48

a number of priest holes, which in the

20:50

16th century are these scenes of great violence where

20:52

priests who are at something to hide from the

20:55

Elizabethan authorities are forcibly apprehended and

20:57

often executed later in very vicious and

20:59

cruel ways. We can also see an Oxford's

21:02

very unchanged form, the long echoes

21:04

of that very turbulent time, because

21:06

Oxford looks the same as it did 500 years

21:09

ago because the family that owned it,

21:11

the Beddingfels, remain Roman Catholic. That meant

21:13

that they suffered from the severe financial

21:15

penalties the Catholics were under right through

21:17

the 18th century, and they were unable

21:19

to afford a substantial renovation of the

21:22

house. And so instead of representing permanence

21:24

and stability, Oxford's late medieval

21:26

appearance actually reflects its very turbulent

21:28

history. I expect many

21:30

of our listeners will have spent

21:32

an nostalgic day at a national

21:34

trust property, but you do note

21:37

that their emergence as popular tourist

21:39

sites really began a long time

21:41

ago, really, early in the early

21:43

19th century. I mean, it's Elizabeth

21:45

Bennet's visit to Mr. Darcy's Pemberley

21:47

in Pride and Prejudice nicely illustrates.

21:49

I mean, that was a Jane Austen

21:51

novel published in 1813. Tell

21:54

me a little bit more about that

21:56

earlier phenomenon, the business and properties, houses,

21:58

and how it relates to the to today?

22:01

In its earliest form, country house tourism is

22:04

on the one hand a product of kind

22:06

of noblest oblige, right? So people are curious

22:08

about the houses and the owners feel sort

22:10

of obligated to let people come

22:12

along and see them. It's also of course a

22:15

desire to show off, right? The kind of grandeur

22:17

and luxury of their houses. So

22:19

a curious visitor shows up and is shown

22:21

around the house by the butler or the

22:23

housekeeper, in rare cases actually, by the owner.

22:25

And so the houses function in

22:28

this context as a means of demonstrating the wealth and

22:30

power of the owner. Very much a

22:32

private business which is displaying and

22:34

reinforcing the hierarchies of contemporary

22:37

society. So there's something very

22:39

different from the public country house tourism

22:41

of today in which people go to

22:43

see what they perceive as the physical

22:46

remnants of a vanished world. They

22:48

might be happy that we live in a more

22:50

democratic society. They might feel a sense of nostalgia

22:52

for what they see as a kind of more

22:54

settled time in which everyone knew their place. There

22:56

was a paternalistic obligation of the

22:58

elite towards the lower classes. But either

23:01

way, I think the country house is

23:03

seen as a relic of a vanished

23:05

past. Of course this is a little

23:07

misleading, but it's wealthiest people still live

23:09

in country houses. And so country houses

23:12

continue to reflect the hierarchies of modern

23:14

society which are in some ways not

23:16

that different from the old ones. They're

23:18

maybe just not quite as visible. So

23:20

many of these houses have been lost,

23:22

haven't they? I mean country houses in

23:25

the first half of the 20th century, they

23:27

were sold and demolished in two great waves.

23:29

One after the First World War, another after

23:32

the Second. 1,200 or around one in six

23:34

houses were

23:37

lost forever. Tell me about the financial

23:40

as well as the cultural pressures which

23:42

they faced and how those that managed

23:44

to survive did manage to survive. So

23:46

starting in the 1880s there's a big

23:49

agricultural depression. And this has a massive

23:51

impact on the financial viability

23:53

of landed estates. This is compounded in

23:56

the early 20th century by changes in

23:58

taxation policy. David referenced it. that

24:00

which try to create a more

24:02

equal society and therefore hit

24:04

the landed classes pretty hard. They're

24:07

then hit again in the First

24:09

World War when many landowners are killed.

24:11

This forces their families to pay substantial

24:13

death duties, which the government has increased

24:15

in order to help fund the war

24:17

effort. Around the same time, domestic service,

24:19

which for centuries has been the largest

24:21

employer of working-class people in Britain, starts

24:24

to become less attractive when compared

24:26

to other employment opportunities. So for

24:28

example, secretarial work for women. And

24:31

so country houses start to become these

24:33

enormous white elephants because the profits from the

24:35

land around them can no longer support their

24:38

upkeep and pay for their taxes. And because

24:40

it's impossible to find the army of servants

24:42

necessary to keep them running. Some

24:44

are, as you referenced, simply sold and demolished.

24:46

Others are sold and converted to other uses,

24:48

so they become schools or they become care

24:51

homes, things like that. Others

24:53

still, probably the way that most people

24:55

encounter them today, are donated to the

24:57

National Trust and opened as tourist attractions,

25:00

or some remain in private hands and are also opened

25:03

to the public. So a house like Chatsworth, a very

25:05

famous country house, is still in the hands of the

25:07

Duke of Devonshire. But it's

25:09

an ongoing process of adaptation. Many houses

25:11

still struggle, particularly when they're owned by

25:13

old families. So the whole reason

25:16

why, for example, the Earl and Countess of

25:18

Canarvon pushed for the television show Downton Abbey

25:20

to be filmed at High Clear Castle, their

25:22

house, was because at the time the house

25:24

required 12 million pounds in repairs, and they

25:26

didn't know any other way to get that

25:28

money. So they enticed the show to come

25:30

and film, and it proved wildly successful for

25:32

them, not just because of the money

25:34

they were paid by the show, but because tourist

25:36

revenues increased so dramatically because of the popularity of

25:38

the show. I've

25:41

got here a 1947 reading of the

25:43

words of James Lees Mill, who was

25:45

then leading the National

25:48

Trust Country House Committee. At this

25:50

time he was negotiating the acquisition

25:52

of the Brockhampton estate in

25:55

Herefordshire. This evening the

25:57

whole tragedy of England impressed itself

25:59

upon me. This small,

26:01

not very important, seat in the

26:03

heart of our secluded country is

26:05

now deprived of its last squire.

26:08

A whole social system has broken

26:10

down. What will replace

26:12

it beyond government by the

26:15

masses, uncultivated, rancorous, savage, philistine,

26:18

the enemies of all things beautiful?

26:21

How I detest democracy.

26:24

More and more, I believe in

26:27

benevolent autocracy. Tell

26:29

me what you think that reading

26:31

illustrates in terms of shifting attitudes

26:33

towards the country. Well,

26:36

I think we can't help but when we

26:38

hear Lee's Milne's words today, we think good

26:40

who's going to snob, right? And

26:42

we congratulate ourselves that England is now

26:44

a much more equal place, one where

26:46

we hope merit matters more and heredity

26:48

less. And I think that's certainly true.

26:51

But I think there's also a little bit of a warning

26:53

to be heard in what he says. It is

26:55

feeling that democracy is difficult. It can

26:57

seem dangerous and scary at times. He's

27:00

writing shortly after the Second World War,

27:02

but I think his words really reflect

27:04

an interwar context in which many members

27:06

of the British elite have been disturbed

27:08

by the rise of socialism and by the

27:11

emergence of a much more democratic society. This

27:13

actually leads some of them to sympathize with

27:15

fascism, right, and to flirt with the politics

27:17

of the far right, people like Oswald Mosley.

27:21

And I think his fears are similar to

27:23

those expressed by Evelyn Waugh in Brideshead Revisited, which

27:25

had been published two years earlier in 1945. Waugh

27:28

writes that the fictional Brideshead House had, quote,

27:30

the atmosphere of a better age. Now,

27:33

these fears prove in some measure unfounded.

27:35

It turns out that a broad range

27:37

of British people share Waugh and Lee's

27:39

Milne's nostalgia for the past, which allows

27:41

the country house to enter its first

27:44

era as a destination for mass tourism

27:46

in the 1960s and 1970s. And

27:50

this is great in some ways because it opens

27:52

up a way to preserve many houses. But I

27:54

think it's important, Again, to present the houses

27:56

in a way that displays their full

27:58

complexity as historic sites. There are so

28:00

beautiful and because they seem to embodies a

28:03

simpler world and a more paternal a. They

28:06

can dilute us into thinking that

28:08

things were better in the past

28:10

and and I think for most

28:12

people that's simply not true. Thank

28:14

you both And to though most

28:16

businesses stephanie and today is now,

28:18

it's so hard to find amusing

28:20

and perceptive comments about the English

28:22

are they say of several pages

28:24

and dismissive quotations Spitzer my mind's

28:26

few, his rival. This contributions from

28:28

George Bernard Shaw is an observation.

28:30

Which kept his was he saw

28:32

his needs to the jurors as

28:35

an alleged national temperament Of these

28:37

lines they come from an account

28:39

of a musical events ensures played

28:42

Man and Superman. That

28:44

every one of these concerts is

28:46

England, you'll find rows of wiry

28:49

people who are they're not because

28:51

they really liked has a good

28:53

news is split because they think

28:55

they oughta noises. Swill. There's

28:57

the same thing in heaven. the

28:59

number of people sit there and

29:01

glory. Not because they are happy,

29:04

but because they simply, oh, it's

29:06

their position. To. Be in Heaven. They.

29:08

Are almost all English?

29:11

Nice. Was I thinking allows podcast

29:13

from Bbc Radio Four. You'll find

29:15

a treasure trove of other thing.

29:17

He allowed programs on Bbc Sounds.

29:20

About. A

29:23

thriller from Bbc Radio Four say

29:25

that. Six

29:29

hundred and three pounds to remind. The

29:33

price of a one way ticket to simple. Math

29:37

Were looking for Mr.

29:39

Manfred abandon. His

29:41

our process. Was.

29:49

Just. Went nuts.

29:52

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