Original version

BBC Radio 4 Extra

Your digital radio entertainment station showcasing the best in comedy and drama

Your digital radio entertainment station showcasing the best in comedy and drama. With recent favourites from BBC Radio 4.

Book of the Week

Audiobooks

Factual

Serialised book readings, featuring works from various genres

Serialised book readings, featuring works of non-fiction, biography, autobiography, travel, diaries, essays, humour and history

BBC Radio 4 FM

BBC Radio 4 LW

Book of the Week: Perilous Question: The Drama of the Great Reform Bill 1832

Antonia Fraser

Duncan Minshull

Katrin Williams

Adrian Scarborough

Book of the Week: Perilous Question: The Drama of the Great Reform Bill 1832: Episode 4

Factual: History

Factual: Politics

Perilous Question: The Drama of the Great Reform Bill 1832

Episode 4

BBC Radio 4 - Book of the Week, Perilous Question: The Drama of the Great Reform Bill 1832, Episode 4

After the House of Lords blocks voting reform, unrest spills out onto the streets.

After the House of Lords blocks voting reform, unrest spills out onto the streets. Read by Adrian Scarborough. From May 2013.

'The struggle for the Great Reform Bill of 1832 took place a the crossroads of English history.' - so says Antonia Fraser in her lively and insightful account of the political change took take place during this period.

Times were in flux. The Industrial Revolution was underway. The reverberations of the French Revolution were still being felt. And the country would be ruled by a new monarch, William IV.

And political change, who and how we would vote, was now in the spotlight. Put there mainly by the
Whigs - led by Earl Grey.

Age-old corruption, rotten boroughs, even hereditary peers would feel these winds of change. But how would the Bill be made law? Bumpily and dramatically, as it turned out, and its path is followed in five episodes, which are abridged by Katrin Williams:


4. Reform of Parliament is stalling, the Bill cannot get through. So the Mob is on the streets of Sherbourne and Bristol. In fact, unrest seems likely everywhere..

Reader Adrian Scarborough
Producer Duncan Minshull.

BBC Radio 4

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

Antonia Fraser's account of a period of dramatic political change

Antonia Fraser's account of a period of dramatic political change, abridged by Katrin Williams. Read by Adrian Scarborough

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Book of the Week

Perilous Question: The Drama of the Great Reform Bill 1832

Episode 4

Contributors

Genres

Formats

Brand

Series

BBC Radio 4 Extra

About BBC Radio 4 Extra