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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 5

Factual: History

Factual: Politics

Perilous Question: The Drama of the Great Reform Bill 1832

Episode 5

BBC Radio 4 - Book of the Week, Perilous Question: The Drama of the Great Reform Bill 1832, Episode 5

After violence on the streets, can Parliament finally agree on political reform?

After violence on the streets, can Parliament finally agree on political reform? 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 that 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:


5. Reform of Britain's voting system wins the day and the Bill becomes law. 'It is difficult
to believe that it is done' - is the consensus, after months of dramatic debate and
hand-wringing..

Reader Adrian Scarborough.
Producer Duncan Minshull.

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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

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