The Century That Made Us - a new season focusing on the 18th Century for 91Èȱ¬ FOUR
Programmes A-B
Please note: some programme titles may change closer to transmission.
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An Age of Genius
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The Scottish Enlightenment was one of the truly great intellectual and cultural movements of the world, delivering immense achievements in science, philosophy, history and economics.
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This is a story about the birth of the modern world. Ways
of thinking that had been dominant since the middle ages were swept aside
and replaced by a rational, empiricist view of the world.
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Set in Edinburgh and presented by Andrew Marr, this docu-drama is structured around the life and work of the philosopher David Hume.
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Radical in thought but amiable in nature, Hume wanted to
show that to be a moral man you did not have to resort to religion, and
that it was better to seek happiness in this life rather than in the hereafter.
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Interwoven into Hume's life are the other key figures of The Scottish Enlightenment
- economist Adam Smith, man of letters James Boswell, and judge and historian
Lord Kames.
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All were close friends, who ate, drank, and engaged in heated
arguments. The consequence of their socialising and high level clubbing
was a radical change in the way we thought about the world.
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Producer: Andrew Hutton
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HM
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The Battle For British Art
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At the beginning of the 18th century, most British artists were seen as incompetent, destitute and disreputable. A hundred years later, they'd achieved wealth, status and glory, and made the artistic breakthroughs that would kick-start an international revolution in painting.
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This film tells the story of their rise to greatness - and exposes the obsession, greed, rivalry, feuding and scandal that lurked behind their elegant Georgian canvases.
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They fought aristocratic disdain and public indifference.
They fought centuries of tradition and received ideas about how they should
paint. And they fought each other in a no-holds-barred race to the top.
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Along the way, we meet William Hogarth, the wily entrepreneur who used an orphanage to lure affluent patrons, and Joshua Reynolds, whose portraits of aristocrats and prostitutes made him rich and famous, but who betrayed his own highest ideals in the process.
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We uncover the dirty tricks and artistic tantrums that drove
Reynolds' long battle with Thomas Gainsborough.
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And we reveal how years
spent dissecting the rotting carcasses of horses led George Stubbs
to one of the greatest artistic discoveries since the time of Leonardo
Da Vinci.
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Presented by Andrew Graham Dixon the film also tells the story of the arena in which this battle was fought: the Royal Academy of Arts. It was an institution which bound together the finest talents of the age, but whose creation was marked by infighting, back-stabbing and deep divisions.
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And it was a training ground in which everything from high-flown
rhetoric to the flayed carcases of criminals was employed to produce the
young talents who would raise this country's art from the gutter to the
world stage.
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Producer: John Hay
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JA4/EF
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The Battle That Made Britain
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From a Scottish perspective, the Battle of Culloden has always been an iconic point in history, but now a new 91Èȱ¬ FOUR documentary reveals the lasting impact on both sides of 'the border' of the last battle fought on British soil.
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The Battle That Made Britain investigates the cultural and political build up to the battle, and the fall-out in its wake, illustrating the key issues while telling the stories of Charles Edward Stuart and the Duke of Cumberland.
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A young man with very limited military knowledge, Charles Edward Stuart, the Bonnie
Prince, nevertheless managed to galvanise disparate groups into a fighting
force which strode down through the Lowlands of Scotland and into England as
far as Derby.
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His men suffered a devastating defeat at Culloden. So how did the Bonnie Prince gain a romanticised reputation as a fighter for Scottish independence?
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On the other hand, the Duke of Cumberland was recently named one of the ten worst Britons ever for his part in the massacre at Culloden. Yet how was he perceived at the time for safe-guarding the British throne?
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How did the conflict influence the marriage of Scotland and England within Great Britain?
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Producer: Lucy McDowell, Wall to Wall Productions
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HM
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Beau Brummell: This Charming Man
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Many attribute the 'celebrity' as a modern day phenomenon - an individual just famous for hanging out with the right people, at the right parties, wearing a cutting edge 'must have' wardrobe.
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However, 200 years before Tara Palmer Tomkinson graced
our celebrity gossip mags and our TV screens, a curious character named
George Bryan Brummell, or Beau Brummell, was cutting a dash and causing
a stir amongst the glitterati of London.
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This drama based on a new biography by Ian Kelly tells the story of the rise and fall of the legend that is Beau Brummell.
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Beau rose to fame in Regency England because of his friendship with the Prince Regent. The ultimate man about town, he mixed with the best London had to offer, and consorted with the finest ladies.
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His individual style of dress led to the trend for beautifully
cut clothing adorned with neckwear which later became known as 'dandyism',
and is credited as being the forerunner to the modern-day suit and tie.
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Like his more modern-day celebrity counterparts, Beau's meteoric rise to fame was tempered by a spectacular fall. An argument with the Prince Regent led to his disfavour in society, he fled England in 1816 after amassing thousands of pounds of debt. He died penniless of syphilis in France in 1840.
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Producer: Taylor Downing, Flashback TV
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JA4/EF
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Bird in the Air Pump
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Joseph Wright's paintings are unique records of the Enlightenment which, during the 17th and 18th centuries, radically transformed man's view of himself, the universal order and God.
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Historian Ben Woolley examines the pictures and their cultural
context, inviting the viewer to share in the early scientists' fascination
with the world.
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Ben explains how Wright's circle of friends included members of an influential group of philosophers, scientists and engineers, collectively known as the Lunar Society - a title derived from their custom of meeting monthly on the Monday nearest the full moon.
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They demonstrated new experiments at public meetings and
discussed the latest developments in chemistry, medicine, electricity,
gases and biology – moments of sensational scientific understanding which
Wright captured on canvas.
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Among the members of the group famous today
were Josiah Wedgewood, James Watt, Joseph Priestly and Dr Erasmus
Darwin, grandfather of Charles Darwin.
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Wright's scientific paintings offer a dramatic insight into a world teetering on the brink of the modern age of industrial and technological progress.
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The scientists are depicted as showmen, building their experiments
towards an exciting climax, while the lay observers - who offer a window
onto wider society – react with awe, fright and anxiety, as well as admiration
and hope.
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The key paintings depicted in the programme are:
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An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump (1768), observers are being shown a mystery (why a bird in a glass jar collapses), which can be explained by science (a vacuum causes its lungs to deflate);
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A Philosopher Lecturing on the Orrery (c.1766), in an era
of strict social structure this painting idealises science over social
standing;
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The Alchymist (1771), a challenging painting suggesting that
science is not pure; it comes from the same driven, insatiable human curiosity
as alchemy.
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Producer: Mick Conefrey
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JA4/EF
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