Free Thinking

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

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The ideas shaping our lives today - with leading artists and thinkers in extended interview and debate.

Free Thinking: The Dutch connection

The Dutch connection

BBC Radio 4 - Free Thinking, The Dutch connection

John Gallagher hears about new research into Anglo-Dutch trade and early publishing.

Adam Smyth, Esther van Raamsdonk and Elise Watson discuss the early days of the printed book with John Gallagher.

Adam Smyth loves books - as well as being a Professor of English Literature he runs an experimental printing press from a cold barn in Oxfordshire. Who better then to tell us about the quirky pioneers of print, the subject of his new publication The Book-Makers? In this programme he takes us to 1490s London to tell the story of Wynken de Worde, a Dutch immigrant who came to work at William Caxton's press, the very first printing enterprise in England. A canny businessman, de Worde set about making all things printed into Early Modern must-haves. 

At the same time as books and printing took hold in England, a network of communications grew across Early Modern Europe. Dr Esther van Raamsdonk is an expert in Anglo-Dutch relations and the people, goods and ideas that moved back and forth across the North Sea at the time. We will learn how myriad changes they brought  continue to shape our society and also about the many cheese-based jokes published about the low countries when relations soured. 

And Dr Elise Watson researches books and early modern Catholicism. She has stories to tell about crafty Dutch Catholic lay sisters running bookshops, establishing schools and outselling the guilds in Amsterdam with their book stalls and door-to-door peddling. What sort of influence did they have on Early modern England?


Producer in Salford: Olive Clancy

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