Domestic life is coming out of the closet in a new radio series that will reveal the hidden history of private life in Britain. The series launches in September on BBC Radio 4 and has come about thanks to funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council.
Award-winning historian Dr Amanda Vickery presents this landmark series - unlocking the front door of the Englishman's castle to peer into the privacies and intimacies of life at home over the last 400 years, from the 1600’s to the mid-20th Century.
‘A History of Private Life’ will vividly recreate for its audience the real texture and fabric of life at home - from bed bugs to new goods, fashions and rituals, from the performances of the drawing room to the secrets of the dressing room, from the comforts of the domestic fireside to the horrors of domestic violence, from home making to home breaking.
The new series is funded by an AHRC Knowledge Transfer Fellowship and brings together over 20 years of academic research into families, culture, and women’s history, with radio programme production experts - Loftus Productions.
Mark Damazer, controller of Radio 4 confirms: “it is a boon for Radio 4 to broadcast a big history series with so much original research. Amanda Vickery’s work will be one of the highlights of the Radio 4 year and will be distinctive and important.”
Amanda Vickery says, “Visiting historic houses is well documented as one of Britain’s best-loved pastimes, and when the 1901 census went online in 2002 allowing the curious to find out who had lived at their address a century ago, it had over 30 million hits a day in its first week. Homes offer security, rest and warmth and are the basis for family life. But it’s not all delicious casseroles and piano lessons. Behind those closed, curtains cruelty begins at home and chaos often reigns, meaning curiosity about the domestic lives of others remains as intense today as it has ever been.”
“A great discovery for me has been the power of music and song to elaborate arguments. Loftus commissioned research from a music historian to find songs that developed the themes of the programmes from the Tinker’s Song to the Housewife’s Lament. These were then specially recorded by the baritone Tom Guthrie and the Jazz artist Gywneth Herbert. Gwyneth singing ‘how could you use a poor maiden’ will melt the heart of even the stoniest listener. These heart-breaking and witty verses are a delight and woven in throughout to give a rich texture to the narrative. The songs are the equivalent of images in a book. We use them not just to illustrate my arguments, but to drive the story on.”
A History of Private Life and will air five days a week for six weeks. Each week focuses on a different theme. Amanda explains, “Themes include, running the home - which looks at cleanliness, mistresses and servants, and ornamenting; Showing the house as a public stage - which looks at, tea, domestic harmony, and domestic violence; and Home as an expression of personality - which investigates, setting up home, and marriage and shared taste.”
Amanda Vickery was Associate Director of the former AHRC Centre for the Study of the Domestic Interior (2001-6), a partnership between the Royal Holloway, the Royal College of Art, and the Victoria and Albert Museum. The purpose of the AHRC Centre was to enrich understanding of the domestic interior in Western Europe and North America from the Renaissance to the present day. Amanda says, “One of the main aims of ‘A History of Private Life’ is to popularise much of the research undertaken at the Centre. We hope to bring new scholarly findings and rare archival material to a wide audience in a way that will capture peoples’ imaginations.”
A History of Private Life launches 28 September on BBC Radio 4.
Amanda Vickery is reader in history at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her latest book is Behind Closed Doors: At Home in Georgian England (Yale, 2009).
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Notes to the editor
AHRC Media contact Emi Spinner, Communications Officer, 0117 9876 770
1.)About the Arts and Humanities Research Council- Each year the AHRC provides approximately £102 million from the Government to support research and postgraduate study in the arts and humanities, from languages and law, archaeology and English literature to design and creative and performing arts. In any one year, the AHRC makes approximately 700 research awards and around 1,350 postgraduate awards. Awards are made after a rigorous peer review process, to ensure that only applications of the highest quality are funded. Arts and humanities researchers constitute over a quarter of all research-active staff in the higher education sector. The quality and range of research supported by this investment of public funds not only provides social and cultural benefits but also contributes to the economic success of the UK.
2.) Amanda Vickery is the author of The Gentleman’s Daughter: Women’s Lives in Georgian England (Yale, 1998) which won the Wolfson, the Whitfield and the Longman History today prize, editor of Women, Privilege and Power: British Politics, 1750 to the Present (Stanford, 2001) and Gender, Taste and Material Culture in Britain and North America (Yale, 2006) which was another product of the AHRC Centre for the Study of the Domestic Interior. Her latest book is Behind Closed Doors: At Home in Georgian England (Yale, 2009).
Amanda reviews for The Guardian and Radio 4’s ‘Saturday Review’. She wrote and presented ‘The Trouble with Love’, and ‘In Pursuit of Pleasure’ for BBC2, as well as several history series for radio 3 and 4, including ‘Just Looking’, a history of shopping, ‘Another Time Another Place’, on historical novels, and 'Never Go Back', a series about Northern women novelists.
3.) More information on the AHRC for the Study of the Domestic Interior (2001-6) is availalbe from their website.