The golden age of the country house

Long before the modern debates over gun control, Renaissance Italy was grappling with many of the same questions. As firearms became smaller and easier to conceal, guns spread rapidly through society: moving from battlefields to appearances at court, and the streets of the Italia ...  Show more

How did the sign of the Red Vampire help British surgeons during the Second World War? Roderick Bailey, author of 'The Life Savers', explains to David Musgrove how Britain led the way in blood banks during the war, and how such prowess saved lives, strengthened the war effort, an ...  Show more

After the Restoration of the Monarchy, the upper classes took their cues from court life - its entertainments, costumes, food and leisure pursuits. The Stuart-era aristocracy were cultured, political, well educated, immoderate yet religious. So how did devotion and piety ...

How the Country House Became English (Reaktion, 2023) by Dr. Stephanie Barczewski is an exploration of the evolution of the quintessentially English country house. Country houses have come to be regarded as quintessentially English, not only in terms of their architectural style ...  Show more

The Gilded Age was a time of opulence and opportunism, an age that turned businessmen into household names. But it also created some of the biggest rivalries in the rush to unearth the past.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. 

In the late 1800s, American industrialists were raking in cash and living like princes, but they had no way, other than their mansions, servants and yachts, of making it clear that they were better than everyone else. Meanwhile, across the pond, the British aristocracy had come o ...  Show more