In this three-part series, historian Amanda Vickery explores how the great British obsession with our homes began 300 years ago. Using the intimate diaries and letters of Georgian men and women, previously lost to history, she explores how the desire for a home revolutionised relationships between men and women.

She uncovers some surprising truths: about the lives of spinsters and bachelors, about how the home became crucial to the success - or otherwise - of a marriage and, perhaps the biggest surprise of all, that setting up home in the 18th century was not driven by women (as you might expect) but by men. Show less