The Century That Made Us - a new season focusing on the 18th Century for 91Èȱ¬ FOUR
Programmes M-S
Please note: some programme titles may change closer to transmission.
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McCall Smith Investigates: The Great Highland Hoax
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In 1760, a rumour was spreading like wildfire through the streets of Edinburgh.
The works of a third century Scottish poet had been found in the Highlands,
and were about to be published in the city.
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The Scottish literati could not
believe their luck. The blind bard Ossian, with his tales of great battles
and lost loves, proved the Scots had a literary pedigree to equal the ancient
Greeks. The epic works became the blockbusters of their day.
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The young Highlander who claimed to have found the verses and translated them
into English became an overnight sensation. They were
translated into every European language.
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Thomas Jefferson was a fan. They
inspired Goethe. Napoleon carried them into battle. Some say Ossian was
as influential as Shakespeare.
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But James Macpherson had little time to bask in the glory of his fame before his reputation was destroyed by Samuel Johnson, the great London writer.
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He pursued Macpherson relentlessly, accusing him of conning
the public, and asserting that there were no ancient manuscripts and no
epic poems.
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Macpherson could not produce the papers which proved his
case. For more than 200 years, it seemed that Macpherson was guilty as
charged. But was he?
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Now the best-selling Scots novelist, and Professor of Criminal Law, Alexander
McCall Smith (The Ladies Number 1 Detective Agency) investigates the
case against Macpherson.
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Two centuries after his reputation was reduced to that of
a fraudster, McCall Smith tells the true story of James Macpherson and
the Great Gaelic Literary Swindle.
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Producer: Lynne Mennie
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HM
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Princes of the East End
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With money to spend on lavish houses; furnished with opulent interiors, a new merchant class was making its presence felt in the 18th Century, fuelling the growth of large tracts of London.
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In Princes of the East End presenter Dan Cruikshank enters a glamorous sphere, where merchants from the City and East London, who were rising to new heights through trade and commerce, were conspicuously buying into the trappings and lifestyle traditionally associated with the aristocracy.
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This programme examines the explosion in building in this quarter of London and the palaces built, which were also used as working offices and showrooms.
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Producer: John Mullen
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JA4/EF
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Samuel Johnson The Dictionary Man
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Samuel Johnson's Dictionary was the first modern dictionary.
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Dr Johnson tells the extraordinary story of how a Fleet
Street hack with an obsessive-compulsive disorder set about mapping the
entire English language.
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Johnson was a one-man band, working in an extraordinary
household containing his opium-addicted wife, six copyists, a blind poetess,
a drunken doctor, a black servant and a cat.
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It took him nine years, but despite ill health, running
out of money and the loss of his wife, he did it, producing the first
modern dictionary with 43,000 definitions and 120,000 quotations – Johnson
was the first lexicographer to use quotations illustrating usage.
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First published in 1755, Johnson's Dictionary remains one
of the most innovative and influential books ever written – it was the
English Dictionary for 150 years and its fingerprints are still visible
on its successor, the OED, which still has 1,700 of Johnson's definitions.
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This drama documentary tells the story of the man and his book, with Roger
Ashton-Griffiths as Samuel Johnson.
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Producer: Paul Kerr, October Films
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JA4/EF
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