The Edwardians – The Birth Of Now
Work week
The Real Mr Pooter (23 April, 9pm, 91Èȱ¬ Four)
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In 1892, George and Weedon Grossmith's The Diary Of A Nobody – a fictional account of the trials and tribulations of an undistinguished clerk who commutes on a daily basis form his suburban home in Holloway to the City – was published as a novel.
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The nobody of the title was a certain Mr Charles Pooter, and his diary is one long tale of his petty domestic, social and business troubles, coupled with his heroic attempts to resolve them.
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This is the story of a comic masterpiece and the men who created it, but it's also about a fictional character who, from the unlikely setting of a house in a North London suburb, began a lifestyle revolution which changed the face of Britain for the next hundred years.
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Diary Of A Nobody (starts 24 April, 9pm, 91Èȱ¬ Four)
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Andrew Davies's four-part adaptation of the classic comedy novel Diary Of A Nobody stars Hugh Bonneville (Five Days, Freezing, Beau Brummell, Notting Hill) as the wonderfully pompous diarist Mr Charles Pooter.
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Charles Pooter and his Edwardian blog on the minutiae of late Victorian manners first appeared in Punch as a two-and-a-half column sketch in 1888. George and Weedon Grossmith's superb satire on the snobberies of suburbia was considered so successful that it was released as a novel in 1892.
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It is testament to its success that it has never been out of print since publication. Evelyn Waugh described it as "the funniest book in the world" and this superb drama is sure to delight all those who love a good tongue-in-cheek comedy.
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Menace Of The Masses (91Èȱ¬ Four)
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John Carey, writer and critic, delivers an eye-opening critique of the response by turn-of-the-century intellectuals to the rise of popular culture.
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Many of the literary icons of the age, including DH Lawrence, EM Forster, George Gissing, HG Wells and WB Yeats, feared that the traditional culture of the nation would be destroyed by pandering to the inferior tastes of a rapidly increasing population.
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Based on his controversial book The Intellectuals And The Masses, Professor Carey identifies those aspects of the shifting cultural landscape that provoked fear and loathing amongst the intelligensia – universal education, suburban housing, tinned food, tabloid newspapers, popular fiction and photography among them.
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He reveals the extent to which this revulsion infected their writing and creative output and he argues that the modernism in literature was a reactionary movement designed to elevate reading beyond the reach and understanding of ordinary people.
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Carey looks at the influences behind this elitism, looking back to 19th century philosophers, Nietzche in particular, and explores how this contempt for the common man evolved into something much darker.
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John Carey is Emeritus Professor of English at Oxford and chief book reviewer of The Sunday Times.
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