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How to Be Bohemian with Victoria Coren Mitchell

Victoria Coren Mitchell

Wingspan Productions

Archie Baron

Deborah Lee

Helena Braun

Virgin Xtravaganzah

Maggi Hambling

AA Gill

Jonny Woo

Will Self

Lewis Henderson

Grayson Perry

Virginia Nicholson

Stephen Fry

Molly Parkin

Tom Hodgkinson

Richard Coles

Pascal Monfort

Stephen Calloway

Alison Smith

How to Be Bohemian with Victoria Coren Mitchell: Episode 1

Documentaries

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media: Arts

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Episode 1

BBC Four - How to Be Bohemian with Victoria Coren Mitchell, Episode 1

A look at early bohemian artists in post-revolutionary Paris, and the Pre-Raphaelites.

Victoria looks at the earliest bohemian artists in post-revolutionary Paris and explores how its subculture took root in Britain through the eccentricities of the Pre-Raphaelites.

In the opening episode, Victoria traces the story of the first bohemians. She begins in post-revolutionary Paris, where poverty-stricken, garret-dwelling artists and writers gained a reputation for loose living, colourful clothing and wild, naked parties. They revelled in the absurd - for example, one legendarily took his pet lobster for walks in the park. Here the archetype of the bohemian was born, immortalised later in Puccini's opera La Boheme. But were they trailblazing creatives or irritating posers? And is living outrageously a necessary step towards producing great art?

Victoria goes on to explore how bohemian subculture took root in Britain through the groundbreaking art, eccentricities and bad-boy behaviour of the Pre-Raphaelites. Dante Gabriel Rossetti cultivated his image as an oddball, keeping a menagerie including a much-loved wombat. He caused a scandal when he became obsessively entangled with Janey Morris, wife of his friend, the designer William Morris. Victoria learns how bohemianism evolved into the dandy pose of aesthetes such as playwright Oscar Wilde and artist Aubrey Beardsley, whose explicit drawings intrigued and shocked the public in equal measure. 

And she recounts how, most surprisingly, bohemian living found one of its greatest advocates in children's author Arthur Ransome who, long before Swallows and Amazons, wrote a whimsical traveller's guide to bohemian London. 

Victoria's historical journey is given added resonance through her probing, highly entertaining encounters with a range of illuminating modern bohemians, including Stephen Fry, artists Grayson Perry and Maggi Hambling, pop star-turned-vicar and broadcaster Richard Coles, writer Will Self and drag artist Jonny Woo.

Knowledge, arts, music and culture from the UK and the world.

BBC Four reflects arts, music and culture with an ambitious range of intellectually and culturally enriching programmes, taking an expert and in-depth approach to its subjects.

Exploration of the history of artists and writers who have chosen to defy convention.

An exploration of the history of bohemians - weird and wonderful artists and writers who have chosen to defy convention, from radical romantics to sandal-wearing vegetarians and sexual-experimenters.

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