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A Short History of Solitude

A Short History of Solitude: Episode Three: Locked Down

Episode Three: Locked Down

BBC Radio 4 - A Short History of Solitude, Episode Three: Locked Down

Thomas Dixon explores the surprising history of being alone.

The historian of emotions, Thomas Dixon, explores the surprising history of being alone and what happens when naturally sociable humans are forced into isolation.

In this final episode, the historian Thomas Dixon explores solitary confinement, loneliness, and what happens when naturally sociable humans are forced into isolation.

Sarah Shourd was held in solitary confinement in Iran and now campaigns against it. In the US, around 80,000 people are held in solitary confinement on any one day. Some of them have been there for decades. It's a startling figure for a shocking practice that many, including Charles Dickens who encountered it on a visit to the United States in 1842, have described as torture. 

The keeping of prisoners in extreme isolation began in the late 18th Century as a way to encourage repentance, hence the word "penitentiary". It was devised by reforming Quakers, who believed that all humans were capable of redemption, whatever their crimes, and were keen to see the end of cruel punishments like flogging. It was used in English prisons too including at Reading Gaol where Oscar Wilde was held in isolation for more than a year.

We are often told that we are in the middle of an epidemic or even pandemic of loneliness, but what does that mean? With the help of the historians Fay Bound Alberti and David Vincent, and the epidemiologist Daisy Fancourt, we excavate the idea and history of loneliness. Daisy has been conducting a large scale research project during the Covid-19 lockdown and explains how different groups have reacted to social distancing and self-isolation.

Other contributors include the philosopher Lisa Guenther and anthropologist  Leo Coleman.

With music composed and performed by Beth Porter.

Barbara Taylor runs the research project Pathologies of Solitude and is academic adviser to the series.

Produced by Natalie Steed
A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4

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The historian of emotions, Thomas Dixon, explores the surprising history of being alone.

Thomas Dixon discovers how even the most extreme forms of voluntary solitude were often surprisingly social.

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