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Amanda Vickery - A History of Private Life

Amanda Vickery - A History of Private Life: Episode 27: The Garden Indoors

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Factual: History

Factual: Homes & Gardens: Homes

Episode 27

Episode 27: The Garden Indoors

The Garden Indoors

BBC Radio 4 Extra - Amanda Vickery - A History of Private Life, The Garden Indoors

The Victorians contrived increasingly ingenious ways to domesticate nature.

With 19th-century town pollution rife, historian Amanda Vickery discovers the increasingly ingenious ways the Victorians domesticated nature.

Historian Amanda Vickery presents a series which reveals the hidden history of home over 400 years. She draws on first-hand accounts from letters and diaries, many of which have never been heard before. Including songs which have been specially recorded for the series. 

Homes were exposed to huge forces of change in the 19th and 20th century, responding to industrialisation, pollution and the imperial mission. Prof Vickery explores how they remained idealised havens in a heartless, dirty world.

By the mid-19th century, the majority of the British population lived in filthy polluted towns. Yet the Victorians contrived increasingly ingenious ways to domesticate nature, capturing ferns and sea anemones under glass in their parlours.

Readers: Deborah Findlay, John Sessions, Madeleine Brolly and Simon Tcherniak.

Singers: Gwyneth Herbert and Thomas Guthrie, with David Owen Norris at the keyboard.

A Loftus production for BBC Radio 4.

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Historian Amanda Vickery reveals the hidden history of home over 400 years

Historian Amanda Vickery presents a series which reveals the hidden history of home over 400 years, drawing on first-hand accounts from letters and diaries

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Episode 27: The Garden Indoors

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