Archive lectures and events

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dr watson look uh in the absence of a deer stalker but appreciated that um okay so today's

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gonna be about the 39 and the 59 versions um as you've seen in your literature

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both are on youtube uh so if you've not seen them already please do so if you're going to scroll

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down and look for the 1959 version there's two versions of the 1959 version on

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youtube one is in hd and it's a much better resolution so please please make sure and obviously

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click on that one you'll have the usual issues with watching a full movie on youtube adverts but you know most of the adverts

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you can click through and i have to say the 1939 version of this film of hound of the

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baskervilles on youtube is a remarkable version it's a very very good version indeed

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so unusually youtube has given you both versions very very good resolution

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right so um here we go so i'm going to talk about both films i'm going to talk about obviously the literature uh

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briefly i think talking about the literature is important because initially talking about the differences

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in how the films departed from conan doyle's original serialized story

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in for example the strand magazine so that's not a bad place to start in fact i wasn't going to start here but

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let's start here i'll start with how the 39 and the 59 film departs from

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conan doyle's original literature if you have seen uh basil rathbone and nigel bruce's 1939

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version there is a seance scene uh that seance scene is not in the book um

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but interestingly also representation of character there is a character called beryl in the

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1939 film who is the stepsister of jack stapleton

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who is the villain um in conan doyle's literature she was the wife so in the novel she was

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the wife now of course what this avoids doing is because if you remember if you've seen the 39 film again i'll try not to

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give you too many spoilers in the 1939 film beryl as stepsister of the villain

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doesn't know that he's the villain and she is completely innocent she's

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naive she's in love with sir henry baskerville and of course what you can't really have

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now remember these were early uh this this was uh basil rathbone and nigel bruce

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um establishing themselves as holmes and watson uh they didn't really want an adulterous

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uh wife as a good character so that's a real departure i think from

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the original literature obviously the hammer horror version from 1959

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is always going to depart from conan doyle's literature probably to establish the hammer brand

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but i will say that but i think both films do follow the original story

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fairly successfully just with a few tweaks i think 39 you've got the seance scene you've got

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beryller's stepsister and not his wife but with 39 with 1950 with the 1959 version

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what hammer had to do was make it into a haref make it into a hammer film now there's

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various ways of doing that you can sexualize characters you can make the violence more gory

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uh make it more tongue-in-cheek make it more camp which of course it was um selden for example seldon the uh

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escaped convict wasn't just killed by the hound in the 1959 version

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he was grotesquely mutilated by the hound so that very much gave it

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the hammer touch um i remember a scene in the 59 version where sir henry

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is attacked by a giant tarantula again completely not in conan doyle's

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literature now i'll have to be careful how i explain this departure from conan doyle

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without giving too many spoilers away the big difference um with obviously the uh 59 version

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is the villain there is a different villain so that's kind of where i'm going to

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stop i'm not going to go down that road too far i don't want to give too many spoilers away for those

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that haven't seen the film so there we go so there's some departures from uh conan doyle's

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original novel um it's worth remembering that that these

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two films are one of over 20 adaptations and not to waste too much time but just

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to contextualize it i'd like to just briefly sort of tell you what else has happened with

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howard the baskervilles outside of these two adaptations we're looking at today 30 1939

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and 1959 for example there were four versions that predated

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uh basil rathbones version basil rathbone and nigel bruce's virgin

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um including two silent films two german versions and quite a good i think so a michael

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balkan gainsborough pictures version of it which was the first hound talkie in 1932

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so there were four films that came before this um and two of them interestingly were

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german also worth remembering that after the 1939 version

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there were 13 other sherlock holmes films sherlock holmes and watson films

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starring um basil rathbone and nigel bruce i looked at one last night on youtube it's

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called the woman in green and again i don't really want to give you a plot you know the plot lines away

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for that one either but it's brilliant and it involves obviously his arch enemy professor moriarty so the 1939

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film was the start of the relationship between the iconic basil rathbone playing homes and the

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bumbling buffoon nigel bruce playing dr watson and 13 films later um

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they'd kind of you know finished that particular run so it was the start of a very long

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successful run starting those two started starring those two actors

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there was also uh i think it's worth it i think i'm doing you a disfavor if i don't tell you

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the worst adaptation i've seen uh the worst adaptation i've seen is a 1972 american

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made for tv version for abc starring stuart granger as sherlock

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holmes i have to say i've never seen a more

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a worse staged a badly staged more inappropriate representation of

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character of sherlock holmes in my entire life the cast was completely inappropriate

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it looked terrible and of course it was very very low budget indeed and it had that sort of low budget 1970s

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adaptation feel to it except with stuart granger who was a well-known actor in the role of sherlock holmes at the

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time there's also been some hilarious versions some absolutely

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um well i mean let's just talk about it the peter cook

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and dudley moore version peter cook and dudley moore took this

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film and took this story apart they ripped it to pieces um i've scribbled down here while i was

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waiting for you guys from memory um was the bishop in the hammer version the original book

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i don't think so the the bumbling bishop there's always a very good bishop there's always a very good

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cleric in films and he was a very very good cleric someone's asked me about the 18 1981

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version um the 1981 version is on youtube um i couldn't find it in a translation

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all i could find it is is in original russian so if you're a native russian speaker good luck

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but yes the 81 version is on youtube um the 1981 russian virgin is supposed to

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be the film where the dog is the most terrifying and we'll look at we'll look at the

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representation of the beast of the hound in a bit and i'll show you images of the 39 hound

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versus the 59 hell but apparently the russian version which um which neil you've mentioned yeah

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absolutely um it stays fairly faithful i think to the original story of the 81 version

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and by all accounts and absolutely terrifying hound i mean peter

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cook and dudley moore the spoof version was 1998 spike milligan as an absurd policeman

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the story involved three french nuns mrs stapleton vomiting pale liquid

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over sir henry and a chihuahua a chihuahua dog that urinates in dr watson's soup

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so you know there have been other versions and there have been other versions that have kind of gone a little bit off-piste

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to say the very least uh enough of the other versions we're here to talk about 39 and 59 um

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not the other 20-plus versions of this iconic story

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okay so a little bit um contextualizing i think um about conan doyle i

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i think it's interesting how this particular story came about um obviously conan doyle

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had effectively killed sherlock holmes off so this was um i think it was in the

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final i think was the final problem 1893 the final problem um watson told the story

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of the end of sherlock holmes but of course um the public wanted to bring him back

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and that's essentially the genesis of this story holmes disappeared at reich and back

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falls conan doyle killed him off because he felt that sherlock holmes was compromising his own

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art and of course um he comes again uh okay chris rathbone to some extent

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and cushion have played villains or i've got a little bit on rathbone versus cushion um

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i'll tell you i'll tell you right now about rathbone versus cushion for me rathbone dominant

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tall fearsome intellect as well as his physical representation

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for me basil rathbones homes basil rathbones homes was dominant physically and intellectually

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for me peter cushing was brilliant and he was rude and he was

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harsh but he was actually quite short obviously peter cushing was quite a short man

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for me the peter cushing and rathbone representation is very different um good point um more about that later i

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think that's a i think that's an interesting point so you know conan doyle thinks he's killed him off he's playing

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golf apparently he used to be a field doctor in the boer war uh again i didn't know this is from my

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research so conan doyle's recuperating from being a field doctor in the in the boer war

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and he's told by his golfing partner about this dartmoor legend of a giant hound

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so you know when he feels a bit better off he goes to stroll across the moors and he thinks i'm going to write a story

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but of course it needs one main ingredient and that of course

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is sherlock holmes and this is really the genesis of the origins of the story

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so if i may i'm just going to share some images of both films with you i'm going to look at the

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posters um i'm going to look at some screenshots we'll have time for a couple of clips

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and i'm going to just sort of start a discussion that i'm hoping you're gonna contribute to

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about the key differences between the films and the characters chris you've started that off already um

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the difference is uh between rathbone and cushing and whether they're villainous and

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sympathetic let's have a look so i'm going to start you off

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um with some i think the poster for me

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would be a good start here we go now this is interesting because we don't

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see basil rathbone and nigel bruce we don't see basil rathbone and nigel bruce

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because richard greene was a well-known actor now you could be forgiven for thinking

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that this was a romance film when you see the character obviously that plays beryl next to sir

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henry on the poster you don't see um basil rathbone and nigel bruce but of course

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this was the start of their pairing and going forward into 13 films after

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this so you've got conan doll's name foreground in the poster you've got a kind of a scary scary beast

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in the background that for me i'm just looking at it now looks almost like a looks more like a black panther

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than a than a hound but there you go um and you've got two actors that could be forgiven for

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looking like it's going to be a romance if we look at this this is completely

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different now obviously the whole idea of the story is that the stapletons claim to be the rightful

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heirs um and there's been a murder on dartmoor sherlock holmes is sent to investigate

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but here hammer give the poster a if you like a much more sort of kitsch camp

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approach you see an odd dog with stars in their eyes stars in

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its eyes you see a very startled christopher lee arguably sort of playing out of

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character and you see uh the stereotypical representation

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of sherlock holmes this time played by peter cushing and crucially directed by terence fisher

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who is a hammer stalwart director and i think his take on hammer horror

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films was very very important terence fisher uh had previously directed dracula and

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he went on to to to bring the hammer franchise to life and i think terence fisher's role in

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branding this film as a as a hammer version of hound of the baskervilles was very

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very important indeed not least the sort of exotic representation of the hispanic cecile

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i mean she's hispanic she's exotic she's very busty she's a stereotypical

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hammer busty winch okay and there she is so for me this is

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a departure and again i have to be careful here and not sort of go too far with giving you uh spoilers

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but this is hammer written all over it uh ruby red lipstick

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um she almost looks like a bride of dracula from the previous film so the

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representations are very very um hammer horror

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she's wild she's beautiful but she's ultimately treacherous and i

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like the way she pushes and makes christopher lee play out of character

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um her family think they're descendants of the hugo the sir hugo basterville uh estate

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they think they're the legitimate heirs and of course you know before i go on and give too much away

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you know there is a very very interesting ending involving cecile involving obviously

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holmes and watson and involving christopher lee playing

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sir henry arguably playing sir henry baskerville out of character all right so

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you know read chris's comment about um

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differences between basil rathbone and obviously peter cushing for me he was

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physically dominant as holmes uh basil rathbone not just in this pose

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but he was a tall man um his career was established he was known to play sort of

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suave um swashbuckling characters

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but his career catapulted from this moment onwards when he first

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played sherlock holmes so he was suave he did play sort of anti-heroes villainous anti-heroes he

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famously played the guy of gisborne for example um but ultimately for me he was perfect

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in this role sherlock holmes is an anti-hero he's both good and he's bad

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um if you think about the last line from the 1939 adaptation he

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asks dr watson to bring the needle he's solved the crime everyone says he's

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the best thing since sliced bread and then he says to dr watson bring the needle almost reminding

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audiences that he he is of course addicted to morphine he's addicted to

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opiates so he was the perfect sort of almost devilish representation

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um and here we have um the lovely sir peter cushing um i adore peter cushing i think he was a

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wonderful actor um a smaller man than rathbone a bit more wispy perhaps a little bit

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more thoughtful i found him to be brilliantly rude i think in the 59 version he's

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possibly the rudest man um i've ever seen in my entire life so i think

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he's ruder than basil rathbone but he's smaller and he's less physically dominant

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you've only got to look at this look at this is a clip i'm going to show you very shortly um a cab driver a handsome cab driver has

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been brought in to be interviewed because um there was an attempt

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assassinating sir henry from inside his cab just look at how basil rathbone is standing leaning on the mantelpiece

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his representation is dominant again for me this says it all um

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this says everything really you need to know about the key differences uh christopher lee uh towers

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over peter cushing as sir henry um if you look at the original 1939

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version sir henry is a relatively small man he's also quite a naive man i'm not

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saying that lee's representation of sir henry is not underpinned by naivety

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but his physical on-screen dominance for me is is relevant linking

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to the physical representation of peter cushing and there again is where

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the two meet uh i think what we've also the thought for peter cushing

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i think what's also worth mentioning before we see the first clip

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is obviously the difference between the representation of dr watson here we have

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the bumbling nigel bruce of course nigel bruce's um career signature role

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was playing watson i mean he he later on appeared in two hitchcocks he appeared in rebecca

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he played the lovable buffoon beaky in suspicion but fundamentally you know this was his

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career signature role as a bumbling buffoon and he played it to perfection in the

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1939 version as the foil to the um

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witty dominant insightful physically dominant rathbones

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representation of homes and here they are i believe in this scene they're discussing a cane and uh dr mortimer leaves a cane

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in his apartment and they're discussing the origins of the cane and of course holmes is right

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here is holmes in the 1959 version played by andre murrell now

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for me he was a completely different representation in this

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particular version i think andre morrell is in complete opposition

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to the sort of bumbling buffoon like character of homes of watson rather

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played by nigel bruce um look at his face he's got a granite face he's steely eyed

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he's determined there's one part of the 59 version where he leads sir henry through the moors with

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gun aloft for me the physical representation and the intellectual

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representation of dr watson in the 1959 version

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was a real departure and you've got this very sort of granite-faced andre morel

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playing a strong uh determined controlling and dominant dr watson

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compared to the absolute lovable buffoonery obviously of

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the nigel bruce representation okay um i do

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think it's probably time uh to play these films off each other using

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clips um it took me a long while to you know we've probably only got time for two clips so

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what i might do is i might introduce the two clips and and tell you um where i'm coming from what what my

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angle is oh interesting both are men of action though diana yeah i think both i think both are men

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of action but i just don't know i just

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i can't you know probably because because i i just you know absolutely

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i think it's you know you some of you that were in my previous um lectures will know my love of cary

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grant my love of cary grant almost extends to my love of basil rathbone and i just can't look past that i

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understand diana what you're saying they're both men of action interesting a puerto companion yeah like

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puerto's companion i think that's a really really valid point i think that's crucial i think that's

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very interesting helen you're talking about the difference between peter cushing and peter capaldi in the

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thick of it uh physically and yeah well peter compelled in the thick of it

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using the word discourteous i don't think that quite covers it just a horrible horrible horrible rude

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man interesting dinah just looking at your comment earlier is he on the autistic spectrum

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absolutely i think you know all of that including his opiate addiction i think is absolutely relevant

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in terms of obviously both representations right the clip um

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we'll start with 39 i think we'll start with 39 because it's 20 years before 1959 and

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for only that reason um i'll introduce the clip i've scribbled down what what i'd like you to

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know it's about 18 minutes into the film um and it for me is perfect

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in how the 39 film establishes character and narrative so i'll tell you

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what's happened before so you've seen that slide with um basil rathbone sherlock holmes leaning

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on the mantelpiece it's that scene as i just said an attempt has been made on the life of sir

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henry now remember that this was set in victorian times

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now a lot of the other 13 basil rathbone nigel bruce films

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weren't set in the victorian time period now that's crucial that's actually

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important because in this scene you see a handsome cab you see a horse-drawn handsome cab

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and you see a gun pointed out from the handsome cab and an attempt is

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made in the life of sir henry the scene i'm going to show you is

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sherlock holmes doesn't ask of course he demands he demands that the cab driver is found

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and brought to his hotel for an interview effectively obviously i'm sure you're

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aware victorian the equivalent of a handsome cab will be a london black cab today

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so the london black cabbie the victorian handsome cab driver is found and he's brought to the hotel to be

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interviewed by holmes it's only about a three minute clip but i want to show you it now because i think it's brilliant

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how narrative and character how narrative is advanced but how character is established so i

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will sort of fumble around and try and get um

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18 minutes and 18 seconds into this clip and i will do exactly that i will play

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you um your first clip tonight of the film

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so here we go so we need to get about 18 minutes in that is absolutely perfect it's a three

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minute clip enjoy listen if you can pitch them along to the hotel i'll do my best

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well now the dr mortimer has told you everything what have you decided to go there of

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course good that's what i thought you'd say and if dr mortimer will only guarantee that this uh supernatural hound of his

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will really appear i'd call the radio oh don't say that my boy sounds like a bogey story they tell kids

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to frighten them a night that's news to home yes rather it might interest you to know however

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that you were shadowed from my house shadow yes and probably have been ever

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since you arrived in london by whom i don't know a man in a handsome you must have seen

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me run after him and have the cabbie dash off oh bye bye did you ever discover your

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mislead boot no hello

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well the brown one's here but one of the black ones is gone following for the chambermaid perhaps

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she can explain yes do now why should anyone want to take an

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odd boot then exchange a brand new one for an old one can you explain it mr holmes no no i

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can't come in did you ring sir yes about that boot of mine oh i haven't

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found it yet sir i've made inquiries all over the hotel well it's back the brown one but now one of my black ones is gone

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oh sir that is odd who else except yourself has access to this apartment under the

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housekeeper sir and she wouldn't do a thing like that no no no of course i'm terribly sorry sir i'll do my best to find you

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all right thanks good evening gentlemen good evening dr watson i've got him come on in clayton come this way

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this is john clayton number 2704 and it is how do you know clay won't you once you

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sit down don't keep you alone it's good of you to come thanks

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now clayton i wish you tell us who your fare was that watched a certain house on baker street this evening and

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later followed these two gentlemen well i'm glad you you know as much as i do is it but not

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quite as much i hope that james says he was a detective oh he did yes

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how would you describe this uh this gentleman clayton i suppose about 35 years of age

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dressed like a turf had a small black beard and color of his eyes i can't say so

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i see uh when did he tell you that he was a detective at the station sir when he gave me the

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two guineas what he promised me um did he tell you his name yes what did

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he say it was sherlock holmes what well it's the name what he gave me he said

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sherlock holmes well whoever it is at least there's a sense of humor

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dear clayton is um he's something for your trouble thank you sir thank you

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is there anything else i can tell you nothing at all i think okay now let me explain to you why i've

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shown you that clip um we could have looked at many many clips you know exciting clips on the moors for

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example um i'm gonna sort of squeezing tonight my take on both films and i'm gonna

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enter into a little bit of a discussion with you and i'm interested in your comments in the chat

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about how different social class is represented in both films how social class is represented in 1939

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but through the next clip in a minute how social class is represented in 1959 so you know we can talk about

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all sorts of stuff uh but first of all i can see jan you're talking about the monochrome or color for me the

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monochrome by the way that was a that was a rip from youtube that's the quality of the 39 version on youtube yes

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jan you talk about monochrome that the high contrast black and white photography

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for me beautifully references his london you know the fact that he's he's a high

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status person that lives in london i mean he you know we talk a lot about how he's

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tall and in this scene elegantly dressed and intellectually dominant with his iconic

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signifier his pipe but let's talk about let's link about you know the monochrome and the black

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and white representations for me the beautiful black and white photography the high contrast photography

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is a lovely contrast to when they when they move down to dartmoor obviously it's studio settings when they

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move down to dartmoor as its studio settings here but this type of high production black and white photography

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for me is is far superior to um a lot of color versions yeah absolutely

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madeline you're saying black and white really contribute to atmosphere great expectations absolutely um you

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know if you've saw my lecture on on cities and kane i mean you know we we could talk about black and white

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photography and lighting for probably another hour okay so that's

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important for me um in that scene also how he lays the groundwork for the

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disruption later on in the film they talk about you know they talk about they laugh about the

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possibility of the hound um they call the legend of the hound a bogey story

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so it kind of like this scene lays the groundwork for what happens later on in the film

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but you've also of course for 1939 got very clear normalized

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differences in social class i mean bless him clayton the cab driver he's got rubbish hair

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he's got huge bags under his eyes no not bags he's got suitcases under his eyes he's got the weight of the world on his

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shoulders you've got this ridiculous deferential chambermaid whose kind of

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low status deference is utterly palpable um until the

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bumbling watson comes in and says i got him i found him and poor clayton comes in to be

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interviewed by um the hugely ideologically dominant and

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in terms of his status sherlock holmes so you've got these very normalized divisions of social class

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through clayton through the chambermaid um and obviously through the characters of watson

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um yeah madeline you're saying that the cappy holds his hands like yeah he doffs his cap doesn't he when he walks in brilliant comment here

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from madeleine he walks in and he duffs his cap to to sherlock holmes as he walks in the

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room and you've got this i know it's a hotel he interviews him in a hotel but you've got this stereotypically

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sort of middle class victorian parlor as the venue for the interview and if you look at all the objects and

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props and this and the soft furnishings again it reinforces class and status

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okay in the time we've got let's compare that to a clip from the 1959 version uh okay and and

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francis uh i didn't think the chambermaid was especially obsequious no okay i've seen her representation many times

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before i just felt i almost found her to be comedic i found her sort of like you know almost

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walking backwards like he was a member of the royal family to be to be quite interesting um right i've

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called the next clip um i've deliberately used this next clip now it's not a spoiler

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unless i stop it at a certain time now that's the most important thing i've called the next clip sex

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death and social class and the reason i've called it sex death and social class

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is for me it covers everything hammer related and it explains

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visually the makeover that hammer gave this film so i'll explain to you where it came

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from this particular clip um and we can talk about obviously uh

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and we can compare the two clips from different parts of the film a little bit later on now

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um what's happened is um cecile is about to betray sir henry now

34:54

remember sir henry if you've seen it um has fallen in love with cecile

35:01

it's the penultimate scene on the moors if i stop it i won't give too much away so cecile is with

35:09

sir henry played by christopher lee holmes and watson lay hiding ready to pounce

35:17

so this is the penultimate scene of the 59 version and we can talk about it on any level we

35:24

want yeah neil you're saying he's quite patronizing to watson for me that's the for me that's the unique

35:29

selling point of of the relationship between the two of them uh by all accounts the two actors rathbone and bruce were solidly good

35:36

friends they established this fantastic friendship um perhaps through that on-screen chemistry

35:42

where watson is totally okay being patronized on a regular basis okay

35:49

enough said here is the uh 1959 clip i would like us to compare so amusingly

35:56

called sex death and social class

36:03

swine you first was going to be the didn't you didn't you you won't be the first of

36:09

your family who saw that and you won't be the first to die because of it

36:15

remember the legend so hugh god died here his soul was stored now because of a

36:22

girl and so your dear uncle he died here didn't he

36:28

died because he wanted me like you died because he wanted a woman enough to bring me here alone

36:34

at night in spite of the hand of the basketball

36:45

and now you are here alone at night you don't understand do you

36:52

tell him plain i too am a baskerville descended from hugo descended from those

36:58

who died in poverty while you scum rule the more we waited and pray for this moment my

37:05

father and i now our time has come and yours

37:11

the cast of the hound is on you

37:33

okay i'll leave that on screen and i'll come back to you in a minute um for me this is possibly in one

37:39

screenshot the absolute worst representation of the hound i have

37:44

ever seen this looks like a scrawny dog um that's an old scrawny dog that's been

37:51

out in the rain too long but uh less of that and more of analyzing the uh the actual key scene

37:57

okay so if we talk about this hammer horror version of hound of

38:03

the baskervilles for me it's hammer at the absolute top of their game i know a lot of good hammer horror films

38:10

were to come but you've got you've got hammer horror taking liberties with the original

38:16

storyline uh you've got someone called peter bryan who used to be a camera operator

38:21

uh who's writing the script you've got the hammer stall that terence fisher directed

38:26

giving it the sort of sex and death gothic hammer horror approach um but you're still it's still remaining

38:34

faithful in part in lots of parts to the original story so you've got cleavage you've got sex and death

38:42

um you've got something exotic um that i think upsets the traditional conan

38:48

doyle victorian apple cart um yes i got a comment here color does spoil it much

38:55

better in monochrome absolutely i think i think with color though you've just got to accept it i think you've got to

39:01

accept that sort of you know the basil rathbone version was filmed in beautiful high contrast

39:07

monochrome and i think for me the color was important

39:12

to hammer i mean i've made some notes on color i'd like to share with you i i think color for hammer horror is

39:18

really important sorry it's really put my teeth in is really important if you think about the

39:24

impression impressionistic use of color you've got this very garish green

39:29

this exaggerated green behind holmes and watson you've got the sort of crushed the

39:36

crushed purple color of her dress you've got the ruby red lipsticks uh and you've got her yeah i think um

39:44

rochelle you can't trust someone with a foreign accent absolutely yeah absolutely i thought you

39:50

know why make a hispanic i love it i absolutely love it you know she is this exaggerated hispanic

39:56

representation but what she also is is a classic hammer trope um i think i said earlier that that she

40:03

could easily be a bride of dracula i mean in that particular scene i wouldn't have been surprised

40:08

if she bit him on the neck and it looks like you know and i think they did borrow from some of the sets i think a

40:14

lot of the set design was borrowed from dracula filmed by terence fisher a few months previous to

40:21

that so it really has got that hammer brand identity um and you've got

40:27

christopher lee on screen who looks scared stiff he's almost sort of going

40:32

you know i think chris dracula out dr absolutely um he he kind of really you know the

40:39

reaction shots to christopher lee are really interesting you know she absolutely runs

40:44

the show i mean talk about strong female representation in hammer horror films she absolutely nails it and i've done a

40:52

lot of work on hammer horror and i'd argue that yes sexualized uh for the time period

40:58

but i think a lot of hammer horror films you know there is a lot of strong female representation and there is

41:04

something to say maybe about the exploration of social class in this version

41:09

compared to the normalizing of the divisions of social class of course in the 1939 version

41:17

so color i know i know a couple of you have talked about uh color is disappointing but for me

41:22

color in the in the 59 version is crucial to selling that ham brand and making it

41:30

more impressionistic and i think the the poster even the the poster brag the 1959 poster

41:38

bragged it's ten times more terror in technicolor so it even said you know even use

41:45

technicolor as a way of obviously explaining that yes it's a hammer horror film and it's far more terrifying

41:52

because it's in hammer horror technicolor all right as promised um the bit on

41:58

social class i won't labor the issue but i just you know as i was drilling down and

42:03

doing some research on this i did this kept on this kept on popping its ugly head up

42:11

the representations of social class may i quote you from cecile in that scene

42:19

i too i won't be doing it in a hispanic hispanic accent because i can't i wish i could um i too am a baskerville

42:27

descended from hugo descended from those who died in poverty

42:34

while you scum ruled them all my goodness that's really full-on that

42:40

is a direct quote from the clip i've just shown you i am i too am a baskerville descended

42:45

from sahendra so hugo descended from those who died in poverty she spits out the words

42:52

descended from those who died in poverty while you scum ruled them all

42:58

so henry is in a relationship outside of his social class remember that she is the daughter of a

43:05

farmer sir henry's relationship with beryl in 1939 is far more legitimate

43:12

because they also uh are born of the same sort of social class in

43:18

terms of their background but here interestingly sir henry is seduced

43:23

by the hispanic daughter of a farmer who is of a lower social class

43:30

and i think you know her last comment was brilliant before i i froze uh i froze the image um

43:37

to obviously um show you the ridiculous representation of the

43:42

hound she says to him the curse of the hound is upon you

43:49

for me the curse of the hound could be another hammer horror film it's almost like that phrase the curse

43:54

the curse of the hound everything oh that's great let's now make a hammer horror film called the curse of the hound

44:00

and of course before the dog appears you hear the classic hammer horror music you see the um

44:09

disturbing soundtrack um that underpins obviously uh the

44:14

appearance of the hound before the hound attacks it's just

44:20

it for me the only downfall for this scene is this washed-out dog uh compared to you

44:26

know compared to the 39 film where you've got this quite beastly creature that um that basil

44:33

rathbone finds underneath a trapdoor

44:38

now i've got plenty of other stuff to

44:43

discuss i thought i'd just have a look for a second on some of these comments and just take

44:50

some of these i know i've taken a few has been going along um it can show luxury with the velvet

44:56

the fashion skimp waistline cushions camel coat yeah absolutely remember the time period this was this

45:01

was 1959 this was the precursor of the 60s um we went to see it if it was in technicolor yeah i think technicolor

45:08

was a selling point to a lot of films in that time period do you think some of the differences are the result of america versus british view of the uk

45:15

i think so i mean if you think about um i mean don't forget hammer horror what

45:21

hammer horror specialized in was remaking 1930s american universal

45:27

studio horrors like frankenstein and obviously like dracula for me this is this is almost a sort of

45:35

you know almost adopting the same sort of template this is hammer horror remaking um

45:43

a version from the 1930s but obviously from a victorian novel

45:48

but yeah i think the american british view of the uk is really really interesting uh yes you do expect her to turn into

45:55

the hound particularly when she bars her teeth i think as i said i expected her you

46:00

know in a sort of bride of dracula style to sort of bite her um oh she was actually italian interesting

46:08

so okay so forgive my um forgive my so it's an italian accent okay so yeah

46:15

i'm just hearing us speaking now yeah i think so i think it is yeah i'm just thinking of

46:20

all the italians i've known in my life yeah i agree with you i think that's fair i think there's almost a sort of a

46:27

an italian twang to it rather than hispanic twang to it but i think the whole idea

46:32

of it is she is the other it's the representation of the other uh the whole

46:37

idea of the exotic uh yet the dog does look like it's just come straight from a

46:42

taxidermist did the 59 version meet audience expectations of horror in the end

46:49

as there is nothing supernatural um well certainly the conventions of of hammer

46:55

horror horror if you like if you like the sort of the gothic uh tongue-in-cheek camp representations

47:02

absolutely i think so i think it did fulfill um the criteria

47:07

for describing the 1959 version as a typical hammer horror film

47:13

but i do think it did remain faithful up to a point um we've got about seven

47:19

or eight minutes left i'll just uh i've just sort of summarized here some key points

47:24

and i'll continue to take the chat so keep the comments coming as we go along um let's summarize 39 okay

47:32

so for me the 39 film was a film with a real sense of humor

47:37

i think one of you mentioned puerto earlier i think it had that classic whodunit

47:43

narrative and i think you know that the end of it you know the way puerto used to gather everyone together in the drawing

47:50

room uh you had the classic red herrings um for me

47:55

the whole sort of homage to uh conan doyle was was very very much relevant so

48:01

i like the 39 version i like basil rathbones representation of homes for me it's got a good sense of humor

48:08

it's a classic whodunit narrative um and i've pulled a quote from uh

48:14

the end of the film from dr mortimer again it's a shame i haven't got time to show you these key scenes um dr

48:21

mortimer says at the end of the 39 version after the big reveal aft after sherlock holmes big reveal

48:29

um dr mortar this doctor mortimer knowing that there is a man in england

48:35

such as you gives us a sense of safety and security

48:41

i love that i absolutely love that it's like complete homage to the absolute

48:47

brilliance of homes it gives us a sense of safety and security

48:53

30 seconds later holmes's last line is dr watson the needle again

48:59

reminding us that he is of course an anti-hero reminding us um that he is someone who

49:06

is addicted to opiates we said earlier it sort of strays slightly from the plot i

49:12

mentioned the seance scene the whole idea of beryller's sister and not not um and not wife um i've got a quote from

49:21

the bfi to describe um the 39 version they described it as gothic

49:28

styling and thick atmosphere that was their representation gothic

49:34

styling and thick atmosphere very interesting um oh can i quickly show you some

49:41

illustrations before we disappear right basil rathbone it's like sorry when you get to this age

49:47

you forget things apparently basil rathbone was supposed

49:53

to be the closest resemblance to the sydney pages original

50:00

illustrations in the strand magazine apparently the physical representation of basil

50:06

rathbone looked a lot like the illustrations in the strand magazine and very quickly

50:13

fingers crossed i've um i've got them here somewhere we can show you them oh brilliant okay

50:21

right so these are sydney paget's original illustrations of holmes

50:29

in the conan doyle stories serialized in the strand magazine and apparently

50:36

basil rathbone of all actors that played homes is supposed to look the most

50:44

like him there is another sydney page a illustration um

50:51

and here again we have holmes and watson on the train so again worth

50:58

remembering the whole idea of of how obviously um

51:04

even the representation of bazarathbone did remain faithful to the original

51:11

it was the 39 version critically and commercially successful

51:17

and it was again a very good vehicle for the introduction of rathbone

51:23

as holmes and of course nigel bruce as dr watson uh fiona are you about to

51:30

cut me off no no i've just seen i've just seen you appear uh jordan to stop or just go

51:36

you carry on we've still got a few minutes um i've probably got two or three questions to add in at the end if you like if

51:43

everybody wants to hang on for a few minutes um but no you carry on okay so that was

51:49

my summary of 39 um oh i like questions um and i know your questions are

51:54

going to be quite pertinent um so that was my summary of 1939 so here's my

51:59

summary of um the 1959 film uh yes hammer horror yes obviously

52:07

uh follow him for that particular framework um and yes gothic but for me

52:14

it stands out of all the remakes since 1939

52:19

i know we've talked about the russian version we've talked about the 1972 version um for me the hammer horror remake that

52:27

this is the reason why we're kind of here today i think this hammer horror remake um is the best remake

52:35

there's been um linking to obviously rathbone and bruce's 39 film now of course you've got i i

52:43

found an interesting stat when i was researching this the guinness book of records lists sherlock holmes as the most portrayed

52:51

movie character but for me um i know i've talked a lot about rathbone

52:56

i think it's about time i gave peter cushing the time of day for me um i think he's stylish and impressionistic

53:05

yes he's not basil rathbone but he's stylish and impressionistic um and of course

53:11

what you'd expect with hammer horror is considerable

53:16

deviation from the plot but again as i said earlier it does remain

53:23

faithful fundamentally to the original story i am now ready to take

53:30

any question you would like to throw at me okay well thanks very much for that rob that was brilliant and i'm very i'm

53:36

uh admiring your multitasking skills there i have to say okay keeping an eye on the chat and

53:43

talking at the same time um okay right so we've got a few questions which you may not have noticed

53:49

coming through in the chat so and we have one question from claire quite early on when you were talking

53:54

about christopher lee um she's asking was christopher lee known for playing villains

54:00

at this point he's not an obvious choice and it makes him much more sinister and

54:07

he has arrived with dr mortimer yeah you see that's interesting i think that's fair um this was early

54:14

doors in the sort of villainous characters that that christopher lee was going to play i think he went on to

54:20

play dracula many times after this particular adaptation

54:25

but he had played dracula before and i think in playing dracula before

54:31

uh i think for me he established that persona for me the physical representation of christopher lee as tall

54:37

dark and sinister um you know is is comes across naturally on screen

54:44

which is why i think it's such a shock when cecile um lets him down so very badly

54:52

and we understand as with the original story that the sehenri character is in fact

54:59

completely and utterly naive so i think reclair's coming i think there's a bit of a discrepancy

55:06

here there is discrepancy between how so henry is supposed to be

55:11

a bit green around you know a bit green a bit naive but he's played by sir christopher lee

55:17

this tall dominant man so yeah interesting point but i think most of his villainous roles came later

55:25

interesting thank you very much another question and from helen lawson is there a similarity between peter

55:32

cushing and peter capaldi in the thick of it physically in terms of discourtesy yeah

55:38

yeah i picked up that briefly earlier i i think um i think that's such a good point and i'll reiterate what i said i

55:44

mean the word discourteous doesn't cover uh peter peter paul in the thick of it just the

55:50

most rude man on the planet just the most rude man but i've watched

55:55

obviously in preparation for this i've watched and watched and watched these films over and over again and peter cushing is dreadfully rude he

56:03

just doesn't care you know he'll just push people out the way and you know basil rathbone has a

56:09

fearsome intellect but there's a certain you know there's a certain politeness to basil rathbone whereas peter cushing

56:17

just just gets the job done and he just doesn't care but comparing to peter capaldi peter

56:22

picaldi peter the pill peter capaldi representation was just a pig man he was just a

56:29

horrible pig man okay thank you um another question

56:36

uh brian morley okay and i understand the basketball baskerville family tried to take legal

56:43

action against conan doyle okay i didn't know that did you oh you didn't like that's the question did you do you know anything

56:51

and in about five minutes time or ten minutes time won't be finished i can assure you i'll be researching that that's really interesting

56:58

um presumably because uh you know the defamation of character because of their reputation

57:04

you know yes it wasn't a particularly good representation but can i just link

57:10

on that i mean the story is ridiculous ultimately if you look at representation of social

57:16

class the stapletons again i don't want to go down the spoiler route too much but the

57:21

stapletons are the legal heirs to the basketball estate you know for example in the 39 version

57:28

um he even has the sort of web fingers that is a trait of the baskerville family

57:34

so essentially what's happened is you know their their efforts to i mean yes murdery

57:41

murder murder treachery you know starving a dog so it attacks people

57:47

killing the baskerville heirs you know then at the end of the day they might be murderers and they might be

57:53

villains but they are actually the baskerville heirs but they are the villains and if you

57:59

think about the end of both films you know there is a disastrous end for both

58:04

villains in both films who of course are the legitimate heirs so i find

58:10

it in a world of the willful suspension of disbelief i have to remember that you know i have to think oh this is an entertaining film but wait a minute

58:17

they are the legal heirs

0:00

yeah right this um

0:06

lecture is as a as titled shelly as a revolutionary in life

0:11

and poetry um i'll won't talk very much about his life

0:18

just so i'll try and give you some of the bear outlines um in

0:24

uh fiona is going to send out i think tomorrow um

0:30

the 30-page document which i will be dipping in and out of here um

0:37

so there are 30 pages and i i will send a revised copy because that because i've added one or two things

0:43

particularly to this page um and uh you'll be able to if you wish to read

0:50

through that and get some of the detail that i won't have time for in this lecture

0:58

um as ron says what we'll do is we'll post it up on the members website alongside the recording of the lecture

1:04

and so that you can see it afterwards it might take us a day or two to do that after the lecture okay thanks ron thank you um so

1:13

shelly percy bish shelley born in horsham say 4th august 1792 and drowned in the gulf of

1:21

lotzpezia if i pronounced that correctly 8th of july 1822 at the age of 29 there

1:26

was a storm that day um and uh one or two um details of his life

1:36

he was um he was uh the um the daughter of a minor baronet

1:43

who pulled foot rather sardonically describes as occasionally attending parliament he was

1:50

an mp sir timothy shelley um he pretty well disowned his son for

1:55

much of his life um and cut him off so that uh

2:01

shelley was very short of funds um he wrote her he went to quite a number

2:07

of palettes and one pamphlet that he wrote was from ireland

2:12

was um published and printed and the printer was sent to prison

2:18

and well at least he was fined but shelley couldn't afford to pay the fine

2:23

and so he um he did go to prison um he was um some of his education

2:31

was at eaton college which he hated uh just quoting a little bit from

2:36

wikipedia which you can look up a period which he later recalled with loathing

2:42

he was subjected to particularly severe mob bullying which the perpetrators called shelly

2:48

bait um and uh some of the

2:54

um he he was perhaps seen as rather aloof and different he certainly did not approve of fagging and wouldn't

3:01

take part in it later on um and he he had virgins which helped to earn him

3:09

the nickname mad shelley at interest he was interested in the occult he was

3:14

interested in science um his poem the cloud

3:20

reflects this um t uh matthew arnold and if i leave it suggest

3:28

that he didn't really know what he was talking about but in fact he did if you look at if you read the cloud

3:34

it's a pretty accurate um it contains a pretty accurate account of how clouds

3:40

are formed uh he knew he was very interested in science he experimented

3:46

in his rooms at home had one or two explosions um and uh and wasn't

3:53

very popular for that either at home or later um in his room at school or at oxford

3:59

he experimented in with electricity experimented with chemistry you might pick up on that word

4:05

electricity of um the interest of his second wife mary shelley which is of course

4:12

reflected in frankenstein which is a lot to do to with

4:18

electricity um so he was interested in science he was

4:23

interested in electricity he was interested in chemistry chemistry um and

4:30

he did attend a few lectures while he was at oxford he was he wasn't there for very long and

4:38

he spent long hours reading and conducting these scientific experiments in the laboratory he had set up in his

4:44

room he met fellow student thomas jefferson hogg and he became his closest friends

4:52

and they developed anti-christian views very strong radical views um which were dangerous in those times

5:01

in the actually political climate that was then prevailing and if this was during courtrooms war

5:08

with napoleonic france shelly's father warned him against hogg's influence but

5:13

to no avail he published a series of anonymous political poems in the winter

5:20

of 1810 11 you can work out how how young he was there

5:26

um he um he did he was then eventually expelled

5:33

from oxford with his friend hogg for writing a pamphlet which they put in

5:41

a bookshop called the necessity of atheism and the necessity of atheism

5:49

the pamphlet is also in your 30-page booklet the whole of it

5:56

which ends qed quarter act demonstrandum uh which i remember for my geometry

6:02

lessons at school and of course it comes out with logic and

6:07

i can remember also my um maths teacher tubby taylor um using the term qef when he put a

6:14

force theorem on the board quite easily fudged but qed anyhow at the end of the defense

6:21

um of the necessity of atheism um he

6:28

um met harriet westbrook when she was 16 they corresponded me frequently

6:36

they got married in edinburgh when they were very young and

6:42

again later remarried in i don't know why a blue line has

6:48

appeared on my screen but they then remarried um uh a little later

6:55

years to a couple of years later it was um a marriott when a marriage when

7:01

harry was already pregnant and they they didn't really know each other all

7:07

well it was a bit of a rush the whole thing um it was sort of doomed to failure

7:13

um eventually shelley met um the daughter of one of the

7:20

greatest influences on his life we'd been introduced to i think by hogg

7:25

um william godwin william so mary wollstonecroft

7:32

shelley mary wollstonecraft god winner she was and of course her mother was the radical

7:40

um feminist mary

7:47

um and uh that marriage was as i say

7:54

because um he eloped with mary they went they went to italy in 1815

8:02

um he did eventually did eventually divorce um again of course cut off had no money

8:09

because of his father's disapproval of what he'd done um and so

8:16

that was his became his second marriage uh successful marriage and there was

8:23

this little group of them in italy who um one night decided to write stories about

8:31

the occult um and of course mary's contribution was indeed frankenstein so

8:39

um you can as i say you can look up for yourselves all the details of his life um but i'm

8:46

simply the moment going on to look at shelley and asking these

8:52

questions matthew arnold described him as the beautiful but ineffectual angel

9:01

beating in the void his luminous wings in vain and he was quoting from his ownership

9:06

owners on shelley esses in criticism second

9:14

series um and my questions were

9:19

in this obviously this is where i usually start my ten week course on shelly was he

9:25

always beautiful an angel well you can see already

9:30

he wasn't angelic in his behavior always towards women although

9:36

he had a great respect for women he believed um he did not believe in

9:42

um uh he did you know he didn't believe in unfaithfulness and so on he believed

9:49

actually that harriet shared his sort of philosophy

9:54

of free love um and is he always beautiful no we can see

10:00

that in some of the poems they are harsh um some of them

10:06

and but in the um as paul foote writes in his

10:13

um as he says in the lecture he gave and as he writes in this book red shelley which i have

10:20

beside me um that he was by no means ineffectual

10:30

and he certainly didn't beat his wings in vain um

10:36

he fed into um he was admired by karl marx

10:43

he um he had views which are expressed in the marks

10:48

of anarchy which we were looking at and elsewhere he had he had views on revolution and resistance but

10:56

non-violent resistance which again anticipates mahatma gandhi

11:03

um that's the full quotation from matthew arnold just a quotation from one critic critic

11:11

harold bloom now um i'm going to start looking

11:18

at the poetry so you're going to have to be used to oh yes used to me

11:25

maybe just close your eyes a little bit occasionally there's one of the covers of paul foote's book

11:31

red shelley um and uh there is

11:37

um sorry i should mention he published in 1821 so 200 years ago

11:46

um the defense of poetry a long essay um

11:54

and this is what he says about reason of course all the romantics for them the imagination is central

12:02

um very much the opposite of the augustine poets in the age of women that preceded

12:09

the romantic error starting if you like particularly with words with

12:15

reason the enumeration of quantities already known imagination is

12:21

the perception of the value of those quantities both separately and as a whole poetry in

12:27

a general sense may be defined to be the expression of the imagination and poetries connect with the origin of

12:34

man a poem isn't the very image of life expressed in its internal truth

12:41

ethical science arranges the elements which poetry has created and propound schemes and proposes

12:48

examples of civil and domestic life noise it for want of admirable doctrines that men

12:54

hate and despise and sense you and deceive and subjugate one another but poetry acts in another and diviner

13:02

manner um and these quotes of these passages that i've highlighted

13:09

poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world and makes familiar objects be as if they

13:15

were not familiar the great secret of mars is love or going out of our own nature and an

13:22

identification of ourselves with the beautiful which exists in thought action or person

13:28

not our own a man to be greatly good must imagine intensely and comprehensively

13:35

he must put himself in the place of another and of many others the pains and pleasures of his species

13:41

must become his own the great instrument of mole good is the imagination

13:47

and that's very much also a wordsworthian belief poetry strengthens the faculty

13:54

which is the organ of the moral nature of man in the same manner as exercise strengthens a limb

14:00

so strengthens the imagination the faculty the organ of the mild nature of

14:06

man by exposed writing poetry poetry is indeed something divine these

14:12

are perhaps some of the most the memorable lines it is at once the center and

14:17

circumference of knowledge it comprehends all science

14:22

and that to which all science must be referred it is at the same time the root and

14:28

blossom of all other systems of talk of thought now by science

14:35

he would have meant of course all knowledge in general the older

14:41

meaning of science but he would also have meant at that time science as we

14:46

understand it and because i will as i've already pointed out he was

14:52

very very interested in science

14:57

um poets that's making them poetry thus makes immortal all that is

15:03

best and most beautiful in the world poets are the trumpets which seem to

15:09

battle and feel not what they inspire the influence which is move not

15:14

but moves poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world that's where

15:20

the essay ends um the trumpets we will

15:28

meet again in the mask of anarchy the central poem of this lecture

15:35

um there is paul futs rather sardonic description of his origins

15:41

nice decent wig family baronetta was somebody of great importance indeed he

15:46

was even from time to time when he felt like it a member of parliament now here i'm going to i'm going to use

15:55

some extracts from queen mab which paul foote

16:01

looks at in the lecture the trumpet of a prophecy which he delivered in june 75.

16:11

queen mab the spirit of the uh queen man some of you may remember mercutio's speech in romeo and

16:18

juliet referring to this fairy queen who he called

16:24

[Music] who is she she is the um

16:31

fairy's midwife the spirit of a young girl is wafted into the stratosphere by

16:37

a fairy queen who shows her the world distorted and corrupted by wars and exploitation

16:44

the spirit shrinks in horror the inevitability of it all it was written in 1812 when shelley was

16:51

19. that gilroy cocoon of pittsford's death

16:56

and a white horse probably influenced uh the imagery in shelly's mask of anarchy by

17:04

the way i see the shrink surpassing spirit

17:10

without human else i see a shade of doubt and horror fleet across thy stainless features yet

17:17

fear not this is no unconnected misery nor stands uncaused and irretrievable

17:24

man's evil nature that apology which kings who rule and cowards who

17:30

crouch set up for their unnumbered crimes sheds not the blood which desolates the

17:36

discord wasted land nature no kings

17:42

priests and statesmen blast the human flower you can see from that

17:49

why shelley was marked down by the um if you like

17:56

the equivalent of the political or secret place in um lord liverpool's administration

18:05

working for them the poet is about those kings priests and statesmen

18:11

um these are notes to queen map which are well worth um

18:18

reading and these lines written during the castleway administration

18:24

now i put there's a note on lord casaray which i just updated um half an hour ago or so giving a

18:31

little bit more detail um he was of course foreign secretary

18:37

and he was um in charge he was responsible for um for

18:44

so some of the impres oppression in ireland and shelley of course spent quite a bit

18:51

of time in ireland visited there and visited people in ireland ordinary people peasants

18:57

people and towns and villages and in the countryside and he was well aware of the sightings

19:05

of the irish people and again i've put i've given you and we shall have a quick look at

19:12

the address to the irish people that you wrote here we are

19:19

on castaway i married thy ghastly wife let fear and

19:26

disquiet and strife spread thy couch in the chamber of life marry ruin thou tyrant and hell be thy guide

19:33

to the bed of thy bride um hardly

19:40

beautiful there and not ineffectual either and

19:47

these are two similes for two political characters which he wrote in 1819

19:53

i.e two vultures sick for battle two scorpions and one wet stone two bloodless wolves whose

20:01

dry throats rattle two crows perched on the marined cattle to viper tangled into one

20:09

there is a view of certain political characters um

20:17

the heart of peterloo the massacre came to be known hangs over many of shelley's later poems

20:23

um december it was earlier it was june i think 1819 i'm not sure if i've got the

20:29

month right december 1819 he finished peter bell the third which was a satire

20:35

on wordsworth um and wordsworth of course was originally a revolutionary who

20:41

influenced shelley in whom shelley admired but the poem shows how peter was slowly

20:47

seduced from his revolutionary ideas by the pressures of society until he was

20:52

writing drivel this is these are paul foote's words like any old bernard levin in the times

20:58

some of us might remember bernard levin um and

21:04

yet the reviews which heaped abuse from people for freedom as soon as his song they spy

21:10

the folly that spells tyranny praise him for those who feed him then peter wrote

21:15

odes to the devil in one of which he meekly said may carnage and slaughter thy niece and my daughter may rapine and famine

21:22

thy gorge ever cramming gladly with living and dead may death and damnation and consternation flit up from heaven with

21:29

pure intent slash them at manchester glasgow leeds and chester drench all with blood from avon to trent

21:37

and manchester of course is the referee the reference to peter lou the peterloo massacre

21:44

um it's well thought the tyrant another satire joke play in which the

21:50

king and his ministers are hunted down by their pig people

21:55

foot pointed out that in the standard anthologies of the time when he was

22:00

writing there was no masculinity no peter bell no swell foot of tyrant no men of england

22:08

none of the shorter political poems of 1819 um the notes of queen mag of mab of

22:14

course hadn't appeared they didn't appear to very much later um there it's

22:20

interesting that he was bound up his love was bound up for the with the

22:27

battle for human rights women's rights which put says he was even more

22:32

dedicated to crusader than his mother-in-law mary wollstonecraft all in all his revolutionary poems the

22:40

revolutionary leaders are women he gives symphony

22:45

he gives the examples of sithna in revolt of islam in prometheus supreme atheists

22:52

unbound which is about the in the prison prometheus chained to

22:59

the rock and made to suffer by the gods um for eternity jin queen mab

23:08

there's iona in swellfoot and he wrote this

23:14

can man be free if woman be a slave chain one who lives and breathes this

23:21

boundless air to the corruption of a closer grave can they whose mates are beasts

23:28

condemned to bear scorn heavier far than toil or anguished air to trample their oppressors in their

23:35

home among their babes thou knows to curse would wear the shape of woman hoary

23:41

crime would come behind and fraud rebuild religion's tottering

23:48

dome but he didn't have any time for an intellectual sensuality

23:54

he was for love sex women's liberation against chastity prostitution and promiscuity

24:01

paul wrote um but nevertheless

24:06

uh his christian contemporaries

24:11

detested shelley and the ruling class did its best to persecute him so that in

24:17

fact he really had to flee to italy um when he did

24:25

he wrote this song to the men of england men of england for the lords who lay you

24:33

low wherefore weave with toil and care the rich robes your tyrants wear

24:39

the siege is so another reaps the wealth you find another keeps

24:46

the robes ye weave another wears the arms ye forge another bears

24:53

sow the seed but let no tyrant reap find wealth let no imposter heap

25:00

weave robes let not the idol wear forge arms in your defensive air

25:09

so those verses from song to the men of england indicate his political

25:17

beliefs his aspirations um

25:22

right i'm going to those are the um descriptions those are

25:29

the pen portraits of the people he mentions in the opening of the mask of anarchy

25:37

and let's now look at least at the beginning and the end of the mask of anarchy um

25:44

normally i would deliver this poem intact in a lecture in in a class

25:53

before discussing it it takes about 25 minutes if i'm on form

26:01

but i'll just read the opening and so on and you've got the references to the people the

26:06

politicians mentioned earlier

26:12

as i lay asleep in italy there came a voice from over the sea

26:18

and with great power it fourth led me to walk in the visions of poetry

26:25

i met murder on the way he had a mask like castleway very smooth he looked

26:32

yet grim seven bloodhounds followed him all were fat and well they

26:38

might be an admirable plight for one one and two by two he tossed them human hearts to chew

26:46

which from his wide cloak he drew next came forward

26:52

and he had on like eldon an ermined gown his big tears for he wept well

26:59

turned to millstones as they fell and the little children who round his feet played to and fro

27:06

thinking every gem had their brains knocked out by them clothed with the

27:13

bible as with light and the shadows of the night

27:18

like sidmuth next hypocrisy on a crocodile

27:25

rode by and many more destructions played in this ghastly masquerade

27:32

all disguised even to the eyes like bishops lawyers peers

27:39

or spies last came anarchy he rolled on a white horse

27:46

splashed with blood he was pale even to the lips like death

27:52

in the apocalypse and he wore a kingly crown and in his grasp of scepter shone

27:59

and on his brow this mask i this mark i saw i am god and king

28:06

and lord with a pace stately and fast over english land he passed

28:12

trampling to a mile of blood the adoring multitude and a mighty troop around with their

28:19

trampling shook the ground waving each a bloody sword for the service of their lord

28:25

and with glorious triumph they robed through england proud and gay drunk as with intoxication of the wine

28:33

of desolation or fields and towns from sea to sea past the pageant swift and free

28:43

tea tearing up and trampling down till they came to london town

28:48

and each dweller panic-stricken felt his heart with terror sickened hearing the tempestuous cry of

28:55

the triumph of anarchy for with pomp to meet him came clothed

29:01

in arms like blood and flame the hired murderers who did sing

29:06

loud god and lore and king we have waited weak and loaned for thy

29:13

coming mighty one our purses are empty our swords are cold give us

29:18

glory and blood and gold lawyers and priests totally proud to the

29:25

earth their pale brows bowed like a bad prayer not overload whispering thou

29:33

art law and god then all cried with one accord thou art

29:39

king and god of lord anarchy to thee we bow be thy name made holy now

29:44

and anarchy the skeleton bowed and grinned to everyone as well as if his education had cost ten

29:51

millions to the nation for he knew the palaces of our kings were rightly

29:57

his his the scepter crown and globe and the gold in woven robe

30:03

so he sent his slaves before to seize upon the bank

30:08

and was proceeding with intent to meet his penchant parliament when one

30:15

fled past a maniac made and her name was hope she said

30:21

but she looked more like despair and she cried out in the air my father

30:28

time is weak and gray with waiting for a better day see how idiot like he stands fumbling

30:35

with his pulsed hands he has had child after child and the dust of death is piled

30:42

over everyone but me misery oh misery then she lay down in the

30:49

street right before the horse's feet expecting with a patient eye

30:55

murder fraud and anarchy when between her and her foes amidst

31:03

a light an image rose smaller and weak and frail like the vapor of a

31:10

veil till as clouds grow on the blast like tower crowned giants striding fast and

31:17

glare with lightnings as they fly and speak in thunder to the sky it grew

31:23

a shape a raid in mail brighter than the viper scale and are born on wings whose grain was as

31:30

the light of sunny rain on its home seen far away a planet

31:36

like the mornings lay and those plumes its light rained through like a shower of crimson

31:43

dew with fit as wind it passed are the heads of men

31:52

so fast that they knew the presence there and looked but all was empty air

31:58

as flowers beneath may's footsteps awaken as stars from night's loose hair are shaken

32:04

as waves arise when landscall thought sprung where air that stepped it fall and the

32:11

prostate multitude looked an ankle deep in blood hope that made him of serene was walking with a

32:17

quiet mean and anarchy the ghastly birth laid dead earth upon the earth the horse of death

32:25

tameless as wind fled and with his hoosted grind to dust the murderers thong behind

32:33

a rushing light of clouds and splendor a sense awakening and yet tender was heard and felt and at its close these words of joy and

32:41

fear arose as if their own indignant earth which gave the sons of england birth had felt their blood upon her brow and

32:48

shuddering with her mother's flow had turned every drop of blood by which her face had been bedued

32:55

to an accessed unwithstood as if her heart had cried aloud

33:01

men of england heirs of glory heroes of unrwa story

33:09

nurselings of one mighty mother hopes of her and one another rise like lions after slumber in

33:16

unvanquishable number shake your chains to earth like dew which in sleep had fallen on you

33:24

ye are many they are few what is freedom you can tell that which

33:31

slavery is too well for its very name has grown to an echo of your own just to work and have such pay as just

33:37

keeps life from day to day in your limbs as in a cell for the tyrants used to dwell

33:44

so that ye for them are made loom and plow and sword and spade with or without your own will bent to

33:51

their defense and nourishment to see your children weak with their mothers pine and peak when

33:57

the winter winds are bleak they are dying whilst i speak tis to hunger for such

34:03

diet as the rich man man in his rot cast to the fat dogs that lies suffering

34:09

beneath his eye just to let the ghost of gold take from toll a thousand fold more than there its

34:15

substance could in the tyrannies of old papered coin that forgery of the title deeds

34:21

which ye hold to something of the worth of the inheritance of earth just to be a slave in soul and to hold

34:28

no strong control over your own wills but be all that others make of ye and at

34:33

length when ye complain with a murmur weak in vain just to see the tyrant's crew

34:39

ride over your wives and you blood is on the glass like dew

34:46

then it is to feel revenge fiercely thirsting to exchange blood for blood

34:51

and wrong for wrong do not thus when ye are strong

34:58

birds find rest in narrowness when weary of their winged quest beasts find fear in woody fair when

35:05

storm snow or in the air woody layer ashes swine have litter spread and with

35:11

fitting food affairs all things have a home but one thou o englishman

35:16

has none this is slavery savage men or wild beasts within a den

35:22

would not would endure not as ye do but such ills they never knew what

35:27

art thou freedom oh good slaves answer from their living graves

35:32

this demand tyrants would flee like a dream's dim imagery

35:38

thou art not as impossible say a shadow soon to pass away a superstition

35:44

and a name echoing from the cave of fame for the laborer thou art bread and a comely table spread

35:51

from his daily labor come in a neat and happy home thou art clothes and

35:56

fire and food for the trampled multitude no in countries that are free such

36:04

starvation cannot be in england now we see and they're going to pause their moment

36:10

and of course in ireland to where to um where he'd been

36:16

um he talks about freedom being a check to the witch

36:22

freedom being justice freedom being wisdom peace um [Music]

36:28

here what if english toil and blood was poured forth even as a flood it availed o liberty to dim but

36:34

not extinguish thee thou art love the rich have kissed thy feet and

36:40

like him following christ give their substance to the free and through the rough world

36:45

follow thee we note the reference to um the new testament to matthew and to

36:53

the sermon on the mouth on the mount um i'm just skipping quite a bit

37:00

looking at the time science poetry and thought are thy lamps they make out of the dwellers in a cut

37:07

so serene they curse it not um so he goes on then to

37:16

deliver this rousing um call let a great assembly be of the

37:22

fearless and the free on some spot of english ground where the planes stretch wide around let the blue sky overhead

37:29

the green earth on which you tread all that most must eternally witness the solemnity

37:35

from the corners uttermost of the bounds of english coast from every hut village in town where

37:40

those who live and suffer moan from the workhouse in the prison where pale as corpses newly risen women

37:47

chilled young and old grown for pain and weak for cold from the halts of daily life where his

37:53

wage the daily strife with common wants and common cares which sows the human heart

37:59

with tears wheats lastly from the palaces where the murmur of distress echoes like

38:04

the distant sound of bones alive around those prison halls of wealth and fashion

38:11

where some few feel such compassion for those who groan and toil and wail us must make their deathwing pale

38:19

ye who suffer woes untold or to feel or to behold your lost country bought and sold with a

38:25

price of blood and gold let a vast assembly be and with great solemnity de clear with

38:33

measured words that ye are as god has made ye free

38:39

be your strong and simple words keen to wound as sharpened swords and why does targets let them be

38:44

with their shade to cover ye let the tyrants pour around with a quick and startling sound

38:50

like the loosening of a sea troops of armed emblazoned let the charged artillery drive till the

38:56

dead air seems alive with the clash of clanging wheels and the of horse's heels let the

39:02

fixed bayonet gleam with sharp desire to which bright point in english blood

39:08

looking keen as one for food let the horseman's scimitars wheel and flash

39:14

like sphereless stars thirsting to eclipse their burning in a sea of death and mourning

39:19

stand ye calm and resolute like a forest close and mute with folded arms and

39:25

looks which are weapons of un-vanquished war and let panic who outspeeds the career

39:31

of ahmed steve's pass a disregarded shade through your phalanx

39:37

undismayed so appeal to the old laws of england rely on them to stand by the old

39:43

laws and if the tyrants dare let them right

39:48

among you there slash and stab and maim and hue what they like that let them do

39:55

with folded arms and steady eyes and little fear and less supplies look upon them as they slay till their

40:01

rage has died away then they will return with shame the

40:06

place from which they came and the blood thus shed will speak in hot blushes on their cheek

40:13

every woman in the land will point at them as they stand they will hardly dare to greet their

40:18

acquaintance in the street and the bold true warriors who have hugged danger in wars

40:24

will turn to those who would be free ashamed of such base company and that slaughter nation

40:32

shall steam up like inspiration eloquent irregular a volcano heard afar

40:39

and these words shall then become like oppression's thunder doom ringing through its heart and brain

40:45

heard again again again rise

40:50

like lions after slumber in on vanquishable number

40:55

shake your chains to earth like dew which in sleep fall on you

41:02

ye are many they are few

41:08

and you can see the why i say it anticipates gandhi in its

41:14

appeal to non-violent civil disobedience resistance

41:20

you can see why i say it anticipates karl marx with its emphasis if you like on um

41:27

first of all um material things as a key to to freedom

41:35

freedom and so on um this call to revolution um

41:42

as i said there wasn't published by hunt the essayist until um after

41:49

um 1819 i sorry after 89 until 1832

41:56

when hunt felt the passage of the reform act made it to do so um

42:03

i'm just going to do just really um and then i think it'll be time for

42:10

questions actually i've gone over a bit i've done a lot of reading but i i hope the poetry largely has spoken for

42:17

itself there um indian in 1819 um an old mad blind despised and dying

42:27

king princes the dregs of their dull ways flow through public scorn

42:32

mud from a muddy spring rulers who neither see nor feel nor know but leech like like they're to their

42:39

fainting country cling till they drop blind in blood without a blow a people starved and stabbed in the

42:46

until field an army which liberticide and play makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield

42:53

golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay religion christless godless a book

43:00

sealed senate times worse statute unrepealed our grave from which a glorious phantom

43:08

may burst to illumine our tempestuous day that of course is a shakespearean sonnet

43:15

14 lines building up in one sentence to having

43:20

given the negative building up to one sentence um in anticipating a future

43:29

times worst statute it's unrepealed i think if i remember was the

43:34

combination acts which for bad uh assemblies

43:40

would forbid assemblies like um peter lou right

43:47

there's a lot more in the pamphlet um but perhaps if i stop sharing

43:55

and um let you ask your questions thank you

44:01

very much for that ron that was a rather rousing

0:00

phew okay let's try again so francis power cobb she was born on the 4th of december in 1822 and died on the 5th of

0:08

april in 1904. she was born to a prominent irish family

0:13

she was a journalist social reformer anti-vivisection activist

0:18

and leading women's suffrage campaigner she founded a number of animal advocacy

0:26

groups including the national anti-vivid society in 1875 uh

0:34

but later on in 1898 when she felt that the national anti-vivisection society

0:39

weren't proactive enough she founded another society called the british union for the abolition of

0:46

vivisection she was also a member of the executive council of the london national society

0:53

for women's suffrage she compared campaigned extensively for

0:58

better education for women um uh you know one of the prominent campaigners behind

1:04

uh the campaign that women should be allowed to take uh examinations and thereby earn their

1:10

degrees at oxford and cambridge and she also campaigned about abuses

1:16

uh that she believed the medical profession were guilty of and some of that is what i'm going to

1:21

draw on this evening let me give you an idea of the woman that we have

1:27

from the novelist uh writer of little women louisa may alcott

1:33

she met cobb once when alcott was on a visit to london in 1864 and she recalled

1:38

the encounter in a newspaper article that she wrote about her visit um she wrote that one

1:46

morning the door suddenly flew open and enrolled and immensely stout lady with skirts kilted up

1:54

a cane in her hand a flyaway green bonnet on her head and a loud laugh issuing

2:00

from her lips as she cast herself upon a sofa exclaiming breathlessly my dear creature

2:07

if you love me a glass of sherry um we've all been there i'm sure the wine being ordered i was called from

2:14

my nook and introduced to miss cobb i had imagined her to be a serious severe lady

2:20

and was much surprised to see this merry witty falstaffian personage for half an hour she entertained us with

2:26

all manner of droll sayings as full of sense of humor one minute talking earnestly and grievely on the

2:33

suffrage question which had just absorbed the circle in which i found myself the next criticizing an amateur poem in

2:40

a way that convulsed her hearers and in the middle of it jumping up to admire a picture or trot about the room

2:46

enthusiastically applauding some welcome bit of news about our petition cheery sensible kindly and

2:53

keen she seemed and when she went away talking hard till out of the gate and vanishing with a hearty laugh

3:00

it was if as if a great sunbeam had left the room so genial and friendly was the

3:05

impression she made i saw her several times afterward and always found her the same wherever she

3:10

was people gathered about her as if she was a social fire and everyone seemed to find warmth and

3:16

pleasure in the attractive circle which surrounded her it was truly delightful to see a woman

3:22

so useful happy wise and beloved now obviously

3:27

in 40 minutes or 45 minutes or there or thereabouts i can't possibly cover every aspect

3:33

of cobb's life and so given that this is the week of international women's day my focus today is on her

3:40

work that combined her concerns about the rights of women her fears over vivisection

3:47

and her concerns about abuses by the medical profession that particularly affected women

3:54

i do want to reassure people however that i'm going to be that although i'm going to be talking

3:59

about cobb's concerns over the practice of vivisection i'm not

4:04

going to be talking about the actual practice of vivisection there are no unpleasant details coming your way

4:10

no graphic descriptions nothing like that i just wanted to reassure people that might suddenly feel oh is this going to be a pleasant it's not

4:17

we're talking about it um as a concept not looking at the fight you know detail

4:23

of it as i say my focus is going to be on how cobb feared that vivisection would taint

4:30

the medical profession and subsequently have a detrimental effect on people so you

4:38

have no concerns about anything unpleasant or graphic about vivisection happening in this talk it won't be uh

4:45

francis perakob is probably most well known for her campaigning against vivisection and equally her campaigning

4:52

for improvements in the right uh rights for women um and so i want to

5:00

look about today at how she contributed to these public debates

5:05

and actually combined these two issues that she felt so strongly about

5:10

both directly and indirectly and how she expresses her fears about

5:16

the medical profession and what threats she perceived

5:22

they they posed to people and most especially women through her writing which you'll

5:28

see lots of short extracts from this evening we can trace her implicit and explicit concerns

5:37

that what came to be called human vivisection which was in fact

5:42

experimental medicine on people was she perceived and many others

5:48

perceived to be a very real threat so cobb combined two of her most

5:55

well-known campaigning issues uh arguably to fan

6:00

the flames that surrounded the medical profession at this time and their uh supposed proclivity

6:08

for human vivisection uh cobb was aware that ev through the

6:15

19th century every aspect of society was structured to see women as less than men women were

6:22

property essentially who hob believed cop feared could and would be subject to abuse at the

6:30

hands of a patriarchal society mainly because this is how she believe

6:36

this is what she believed young boys into men were schooled into thinking

6:43

she wrote how can a boy be expected to honor women when he realizes that his mother

6:50

is classified by the constitution of his country along with criminals idiots lunatics

6:58

and minors this is uh something she wrote about in her lecture on the duties of women

7:04

so by signaling the second class status of women cobb was highlighting the system the

7:11

systemic problem of women being seen as worthy of less consideration and

7:18

respect than men and if you think about that classification that

7:24

we see that women were grouped with sections of society who have been amongst the most

7:30

susceptible to abuse especially through the medical profession

7:35

and experimentation um there's a history in america of slaves being experimented on

7:41

and many cases in the 19th century many documented cases in the 19th century are in england of

7:49

medical experiments being conducted on the inmates of lunatic asylums

7:55

cobb notes that in old times physicians indulge their curiosity in

8:00

the simplest way by cutting open unhappy slaves and prisoners

8:09

so in her writing cobb uh repeatedly conflates women with the

8:15

powerless and her continual use of this device her continual highlighting of this

8:23

uh bracketing of women with other powerless people reinforces the point

8:29

that she is trying to make that women can be so easily relegated

8:34

to the position of lower the lower animals in the minds of men and wider society

8:42

she reminds us in one of her pieces of the old proverb that any stone is good enough to fling

8:48

at a dog and so some men and some women also

8:53

think any accusation just which can be levelled at women

8:59

and it's cobb's continual use of metaphor and simile in her writing that reinforces she likes to

9:06

reinforce this parallel between women and the lower animals to make that vulnerability to

9:15

make the association between the vulnerability of the two groups and she makes that a linguistic backdrop

9:23

really to her writing um in her essay on the medical profession and its

9:29

morality uh she writes about how the medical profession refer to women in

9:37

their writing um and she wrote uh she cited a doctor called clifford

9:44

albert who gave a lecture in 1881 to the royal college of

9:50

physicians and in this lecture he referred to women as a flock and he also referred to

9:58

women being caged up by their medical complaints and

10:04

problems um and so what cobb is doing by

10:09

highlighting this use of language is that she wants to draw attention to what

10:15

she sees as this or pervasive misogyny

10:20

in how society and particularly the medical profession

10:25

referred to women and how this makes them particularly vulnerable she felt that

10:32

the language they used spoke volumes about attitude

10:37

uh as well um an interesting aside to this is uh something else that cobb

10:44

does in her writing again it's this conflation of women and

10:50

uh animals and domestic pets she puts the responsibility of the care

10:56

for domestic pets very firmly on the shoulders of women and she argues in one of her

11:03

essays that the mistress of a house should make sure that every sentient

11:10

creature under her roof is well and kindly treated

11:18

and i think suggesting perhaps that women understood the similarities between

11:24

their own place in the domestic hierarchy and lots of domestic animals um

11:32

that domestic animals had no autonomy and most women knew they had no uh or very little

11:39

autonomy or power in the domestic setting um cobb also

11:45

utilizes domestic imagery and she's talking about pets as the likely victims

11:52

of vivisection we met we know the most common animals used with

11:57

for vivisection were regularly cats and dogs and rabbits the sort of animals

12:02

that were domestic pets and she writes about vivisection

12:08

and talks about domestic pets and how these are the types of animals used for vivisection in a way

12:15

where the word cat or dog could very easily be replaced uh by wife

12:22

um she talks of the chosen victims at present are the most intelligent and friendly of

12:28

our domestic favorites the cats who purr in love and confidence as they sit beside us

12:34

on the hearth the dog who dogs whose faithful hearts glow with an affection for us now

12:41

given the sep i think this is very deliberate on cobb's park given the separate spheres ideology of

12:47

the time and the role of women at the domestic hearth the imagery here i think is far from

12:54

subtle and seeks to reinforce the associations cobb is making

12:59

between women and domestic animals which then draws our attention to

13:06

the vulnerability of women as second-class citizens with very few rights over um

13:15

very few rights over themselves and very few rights similarly that criminals idiots minors

13:22

and animals had and so she clearly demarcates if you like the battle lines

13:29

between all powerful medical practitioners which were

13:35

predominantly male and certainly when she started writing all male and all other sentient beings

13:43

so let's talk about how this extends further into arguments about vivisection and the

13:49

medical profession um it's perhaps unsurprising that cobb

13:54

presumes that the practice of vivisection will only ever be a male pursuit

14:01

because she argued the practice is naturally abhorrent to the very nature of women

14:08

now this wasn't true then and it's not true now but it's what cobb believed indeed she goes

14:16

uh on to highlight the dichotomy that surrounded the position of women um in the 19th century as

14:24

seemingly seemingly too weak to play an active role in society

14:30

yet supposedly capable of having the moral strength and standards

14:35

to make society a better place arguing that if women were more active in public

14:41

affairs it would be the best hope for the moral and still more emphatically for the

14:48

spiritual interests of humanity she goes on because it is the task of

14:55

women to make society more pure more free from vice

15:02

which leads cobb then to state as more of a rhetorical question than an actual

15:08

inquiring question would any women woman's devotion

15:14

to science does the reader think lead her to practice vivisection so she

15:20

clearly does not conceive it being possible for a woman uh who entered science and and the field

15:28

of medicine when women were able to could possibly consider wanting to practice

15:34

vivisection to further scientific knowledge as i say that wasn't actually correct then any more than it

15:39

is now but it is what she argued um the link between women and animals

15:46

is made even more explicit when cobb considers the power men have over women in that

15:53

they make obedience a virtue in a wife as it is of a dog

16:01

so the affinity that women seemingly have with the lower animals is made

16:07

explicit in her writing in order to reinforce the

16:13

idea that the very notion of such a monster as a woman

16:18

vivisector simply could never be

16:25

so because of the power dynamic that cobb sees as intrinsic to an understanding of her

16:33

contemporary society women are more likely to be victims not

16:38

perpetrators of acts of experimental medicine or human vivisection

16:43

and her views on this were in line with other voices who feared a similar progression

16:50

and she uses concurring arguments from other sources to reinforce her rhetoric

16:57

she quotes a writer in the newspaper the daily news and we read that quote if it is if it be

17:05

proper to torture a hundred affectionate dogs or intelligent chimpanzees to settle

17:12

some curious problem about their brains will they advocate doing the

17:18

same to a score of idiots in our asylums to criminals to infants to women

17:25

um i think also what's interesting there is is you notice it's idiots criminals infants and women right on the end there

17:33

that she's quoted from this uh article now this is posed as a question

17:40

rather than a declarative statement but the overall agenda of cobb's

17:46

essay is such that the question itself almost predicates an answer in the

17:51

affirmative as i say it's more of a rhetorical question she's assuming people are going to think

17:56

well yes of course that progression is going to happen so cobb's style in writing about her

18:04

concerns over this is is persuasive almost by sleight of hand in that she presents claims about the

18:11

risk of human vivisection or the progression of vivisection from animals into

18:17

experimental surgery on humans as seemingly outrageous

18:22

statements or rhetorical questions as we have there um she offers another one the surgeon

18:30

who would act on the assumption that he could safely perform an operation on a woman

18:35

because he had done it on a guinea pig would deserve to be punished as a homicide now she's not

18:42

stating this as a fact but she's saying if a surgeon did think like that and the results uh

18:50

and the operation resulted in the woman's death it would be akin to homicide to murder so she's not

18:57

stating these uh propositions as facts but the seed of an idea

19:03

about progression of experiments from animals to humans is planted

19:10

allowing for the movement from shocking idea to real event

19:17

that progression becomes part of the persuasive language that she's using here

19:23

this idea gathered momentum with her what starts as a form of fear becomes an

19:30

absolute certainty in her writing medicine as she perceives it becomes

19:37

knife science and because of its connection to

19:43

vivisection she argued that vivisection should be banned

19:48

rather than restricted she initially the organization she initially set up advocated for strict

19:55

controls over vivisection to absolutely minimize the possibilities of a vivisection be

20:01

being carried by very few licensed medical practitioners

20:08

but after not very long she decided this wasn't enough she wanted an outright ban

20:14

of vivisection which many people were behind and still are to this day um

20:21

so she wanted an outright ban because as she argued for the sake of the poor brutes

20:27

but also in the higher interests of the human race and for the sake of averting a reign of

20:34

cruelty such as the world has never seen and which will by no means stop short

20:43

at the torture of the lower animals so the progression again here we can see

20:49

is clear uh and is much feared and presented as being unavoidable an inevitable

20:57

consequence what starts as possibility becomes probability and is then

21:05

presented as absolute fact cobb sees this as a natural

21:12

dis result of a doctor's desire to make a name for himself there's a certain logic to

21:20

this idea because many in the medical profession may well have been desirous of fame and

21:27

prestige we've got to remember this is very much an emerging profession through the 19th century uh

21:33

through this period the profession itself was leaving behind the sort of saw bones

21:40

notoriety and being seen as an increasingly respectable profession one in which

21:47

vast sums of money could be made and at a time when one's name

21:54

could also be made by ground-breaking discovery or pioneering surgery one example being an

22:03

operation that was commonly referred to as bati's operation this was the name that

22:12

was given to the operation of uvarotomy which was the removal of diseased

22:17

ovaries cancerous ovaries an incredibly dangerous operation as you can imagine

22:23

when it was first pioneered in the middle of the 19th century and had uh a phenomenally high

22:29

mortality rate um eventually it began to become successful primarily

22:36

on the work of a man called robert batty he was considered the pioneer of the

22:42

procedure and looked to make it to reduce the mortality rate of this procedure

22:50

so his name was made by his championing uh of this operation

22:57

and it's examples like this and there are others um obviously we're limited for time as

23:02

to how many i could reference but it was these examples like this that cobb saw

23:10

and that concerned her she felt very much that an experimental doctor was happy to cut his way to

23:18

knowledge and notoriety so there are times when cobb in her

23:25

writing moves into the realm of seeing all doctors as egomaniacs with an unquenchable

23:33

bloodlust and that the practices of vivisection uh merge with experimental medicine

23:41

and the two become interchangeable um i stress that's what she perceived

23:46

and she perceived it to be within the whole profession now clearly

23:51

there are problems with that thinking um it's not that she's wholly right but it's also not that she's wholly wrong

23:58

either um but she was very much in her writing a writer of absolutes

24:04

so we we don't see any leeway in her thinking of some in the medical profession might be

24:11

guilty of this feared all would become so and by choosing her sources carefully

24:19

con cop continually presents evidence to indicate her worst fears she cites

24:27

in one of her essays a very famous russian doctor called elias scion who practiced in france um

24:34

he's a very public advocate for vivisection and she cites him this

24:39

is his writing the true vivid sector must approach a difficult vivisection with the same

24:46

joyful excitement and the same delight where with a surgeon undertakes a

24:51

difficult operation from which he expects extraordinary consequences

24:58

so clearly by citing this source it's drawing attention to the use of

25:04

the the language there joyful excitement delight language which seems clearly at

25:10

odds with the suffering perceived to be involved in vivisection

25:16

and surgery so thereby reinforcing the supposed callousness and lack of

25:23

morality of both vivisectors and experimental surgeons

25:31

similarly she responds to the defense of give of vivisection that was given by

25:36

the english surgeon sir james padgett now he was considered to be one of the founders of scientific medical

25:44

pathology um and she cites uh paget's claim

25:49

that the sections are after all only like surgical operations on human

25:56

beings under another name now paget is making this claim and offering

26:04

this claim as a reassurance about the ethics of vibsection

26:09

that it's not torture or cruelty it's like a surgical procedure

26:17

but cobb uses his words to illustrate her view and the view of

26:23

many that if the two are barely indistinguishable vivisections are after all only like

26:30

surgical operations so if they're so indistinguishable then human beings can also expect to be

26:37

tied to iraq and experimented on indeed the only way of prison preventing

26:42

these outrages as i have mentioned was her desire to ban the dissection

26:47

completely and thereby she believed bring a halt to any further notion of

26:53

experimental medicine cobb also uses uh other books published

26:58

uh in the mid 19th century uh in the last half of the 19th century one was called saint bernards and the

27:05

other book was called dying scientifically these were two books that were written

27:11

to expose the practice of vivisection and medical experimentation

27:16

in london teaching hospitals in the 19th century and she uses them as reference points

27:22

and goes on to say that if the great evils signalized in these books be ever

27:29

stopped and men and women patients relieved from useless operations and endless

27:36

experimentation it will be thanks to those who have denounced scientific cruelty

27:42

exercise alike on man and beast so the claim is clear if

27:49

vivisection is allowed then there will be a progression to the surgical experimentation of human beings

27:57

now clearly human experimentation requires what cobb often refers to citing medical

28:04

practitioners as clinical material meaning obviously patients and she

28:12

argues that those anxiety most at risk of becoming clinical

28:17

material are the poor who were forced to make who were forced to be to make use of the charity hospital

28:24

system so lack of money means lack of autonomy and so charity patients were forced to

28:31

accept whatever helped available to them at their local charity hospital

28:38

and cobb amongst many others firmly believed that one of the motivations for doctors

28:45

who gave their time to such establishments was so that they could conduct

28:51

experiments on people who had no power to question their treatment

28:56

so treatments would be conducted on charity patients before it was then used

29:02

on paying patients um because you wanted to make sure it was actually working before you tried it on people

29:08

who were paying you fast sums of money for your care in her essay the moral

29:14

aspects of vivisection she writes that the weak have absolutely no claims at all

29:20

against the strong but maybe tortured infinitum

29:25

even on the chance of discovering something interesting now here she's referring to

29:32

dogs and cats and rabbits animals routinely vivisected again but she regularly equates as we've looked at already such

29:40

creatures with the poor and the dispossessed in charity hospitals

29:45

now cobb had been involved in her career of campaigning um with the ragged school movement

29:52

and various other movements um which looked to give voice to those that

29:59

had no voice to the voiceless and the powerless her campaigning career really is fighting

30:04

for the voiceless and the powerless and she's openly critical here of what she sees as

30:11

an outrageous abuse of power by the medical profession on the most

30:16

vulnerable within her contemporary society those very hospitals of london the

30:22

typical monuments of english philanthropy are diverted as we know

30:28

from their benevolent purpose and turned into what may better be called museums of disease in them doctors may

30:36

experiment and students may learn but the patients are continually sacrificed to the demands of

30:43

insatiable

30:48

science [Music] writing about this topic pod moves

30:54

revolving door of motivation which she believed made for an inexorable

30:59

march uh to a state of absolute moral absenteeism

31:05

in a field where humanity should be paramount but she believed had lost its

31:10

way indeed she considered any person who um sorry wrong slide

31:18

any person who was inspired to become a doctor purely because of scientific

31:23

motivation rather than a desire to help humanity was a medical tartuffe

31:29

um so cod became increasingly scathing of the medical community as the years of

31:36

her campaigning progressed and she became ever more forthright in her open criticism

31:42

of what she perceived to be the outrages of a profession who had lost sight of any

31:48

kind of philanthropic agenda and were now for the most part motivated

31:54

by the call of science and fame and money now cob does acknowledge that there is a

32:01

need for institutions such as charity hospitals because some cases of disease and some degrees

32:07

of poverty require them uh but where the system fails however is

32:13

because it allows for patients to be sacrificed for the betterment of science she argues

32:19

a powerless group of dispossessed individuals are just not in a position to challenge

32:26

the actions of those who are bestowing charity on them subservience and gratitude are silencers

32:33

in this particular power dynamic cobb supplies in much of her material

32:40

anecdotes of such abuse and rights it is believed

32:46

patients having disease which is scientifically interesting are needlessly detained in hospitals and

32:53

instead of being treated with a single-eyed view to restoration of health are subjected to experiments

33:02

calculated to elucidate pathological problems even at the cost

33:08

of prolonged suffering or increased danger so that the interests of patients across

33:15

the spectrum are being sacrificed is implicit in this claim but then cobb zooms in on how this is

33:22

particularly degrading for female patients in charity hospital settings

33:28

as decent women afflicted with some of the most dreadful diseases of humanity

33:33

find in the so-called charitable institutions moral tortures of

33:40

outraged modesty added to their bodily anguish so cl cobb clearly has in her

33:47

sights here the most vulnerable women in society those near the bottom of the social

33:52

ranking that govern society and also speaks out for those who would

33:57

have been considered at the absolute bottom of the pile she refers to the most wretched fraction of the human race

34:05

the women given over to vice and goes on to cite the tyranny of the

34:10

contagious diseases acts and the enforced examination and incarceration

34:16

of women in loch hospitals during the period in which these acts were on the statute

34:22

books however never loses sight of the fact

34:29

that all women are vulnerable to the machinations of an unscrupulous medical professional and that actually wealth

34:36

does not preclude a woman from being exploited by the vagaries of avaricious doctors she says that doctors

34:43

have much to answer for in the way of demoralizing weak and impressionable women

34:48

leading them to a deadly concentration of their thoughts upon disorders and weaknesses of their frames

34:54

we should see these women for 20 years on the sofa while the doctor draws a comfortable

35:00

income of 50 or 100 or 200 a year from the unhappy household she writes of

35:06

all the nameless woes of rich and feminine mortality

35:12

that the female body is more susceptible to pathologization during this time becomes abundantly

35:19

clear through the widespread diagnosis of hysteria for a range of female maladies real and

35:25

perceived that women were often subjected to

35:30

and cobb lists the various stages of a woman's life through the lens of the medical

35:36

profession when she writes we women above all are born to be their patients we are ushered into the world

35:43

by them we are vaccinated as patients become mothers as patients are perpetually

35:50

being treated and coddled as patients and of course at last we die as patients

35:59

so the entire life of a woman therefore is defined

36:04

controlled and pathologized in cobb's view by the medical profession who she sees

36:11

as an omnipotent force she argues that doctors have failed as guardians of the health of

36:18

women indeed that the medical profession has proved doubly treacherous to women

36:26

so throughout her writing on vivisection cobb utilizes language to express

36:32

concern about the risk science and medicine poses to the general population and sees explicit links

36:40

between uh lack of humanity in the medical profession

36:45

being caused by the increasing practice of vivisection there is to her a very clear

36:53

exploitation of power in that vivid sectors and the medical profession are able to exploit

37:00

the weakest and most vulnerable members of society animals criminals the insane and

37:06

women her concerns over the encroachment of human vivisection into medicine which she

37:13

believed had debased what was once an altruistic endeavor to serve humanity into a profession

37:20

which she believed has become directed and shaped by the forces of fame

37:25

and wealth and this speak to her lifelong support of the voiceless and

37:30

the powerless her movement into what are the appropriate boundaries

37:36

for science gives her campaign writing arguably quite a timeless feel the boundaries may

37:42

have changed her manipula manipulation of facts is at times problematic but her concerns

37:50

about where science may go and what paths the quests for cures may

37:56

take remains relevant we go earlier uh pre-cobb and think of when mary shelley

38:02

gives us victor frankenstein playing god in creating his monster shelley created the persona of a

38:09

maniacal abuser of power and cobb suggests that this is what the medical profession was becoming

38:17

in the 19th century a profession she believed had scant regard for humanity

38:24

of its own members and for the wider population with women amongst those most at risk

0:00

cameras off and david i shall finally hand over to you

0:06

okay can you hear me okay yes oh good okay well um good evening everybody and um first of

0:12

all thank you very much for um for inviting me to give this talk about a subject that's become

0:17

really dear to my heart and that's um an encounter i had with laurie lee in in in the in the 1990s now so it's an

0:24

awfully long time ago actually um i'm going to start screen sharing because i want to put up a photograph of

0:30

lori to give you a sense of um who we're talking about here actually so um here we go

0:35

um let's just um see if we can get this um

0:42

photograph of lori up here

0:53

um i hope you can see that actually that's that was a photograph of lori that was taken um in um in the summer of 1994.

1:02

um i'll leave that photograph up while i talk for about 10 minutes uh as a sort of preamble about how how

1:10

this encounter with him came about as fiona has said i came to bristol in

1:16

1973 as a tutor organizer for the wa working

1:21

in adult education in the southern part of the city and i had 13 extremely happy years with the wea i

1:28

thoroughly enjoyed myself but i i was able to move across from

1:34

from making um from from organizing and teaching in the wa to

1:39

to running a tv production company a cooperative uh in 19 in in 1984 because um

1:47

at that time channel 4 was just getting going and it was it was going to make its programs not

1:53

in-house as the bbc and the itv companies did but by inviting new talent independent

1:58

producers to pitch ideas that it would then either commission or reject and we set up a little group of

2:04

cooperatives to do this and we started pitching ideas to channel 4 and they liked some of these ideas and

2:10

invited us to begin to make them so we started making television programs and i was able to move across from the

2:16

wea to to to this company and i carried on doing that for for a

2:22

number of years and um um the double the the the channel four was the only

2:27

um broadcaster at the time that was taking its programs from independent producers as they were

2:33

known that group it was midwife to really a new way of working in television that we

2:38

were part of but it was quite quite evident to the conservative government at the time that

2:44

this was a good way of working um and mrs sacher was the prime minister at the time uh

2:50

was encouraging uh in her words or insisting in other people's words on the bbc and

2:55

the itv companies and going to an extent down the road that channel 4 had already gone down

3:01

and so they brought in a broadcasting act which insisted on the bbc and itv taking

3:08

25 percent a quarter of all the programs that were made for those channels from independent producers and so this

3:14

was a great opportunity for organizations like mine to begin to put ideas and approach the other

3:21

broadcasters with ideas that we hoped we could make into tv programs and we formed a very quickly

3:27

a very good relationship with the local itv broadcaster here in bristol

3:32

which is htv um every region the country had would have a different

3:38

broadcaster may whether it was thames or tsw or granada or yorkshire

3:43

television or central they were all making programs for their own regions where

3:48

they were encouraging program makers to make programs where the region would speak to itself in

3:53

about its history about its culture about its about social issues and so on and so forth

3:59

anyway we've been working with htv for a while and um and one of the things that they did was they put out a

4:06

call to independent producers like like the one i work with because they wanted to make a series

4:11

they wanted to transmit a series of local profiles people who were

4:18

who were significant characters and significant individuals in their region and in this region they wanted to call

4:25

that strand of documentaries great westerners a good title actually because um

4:30

you know great western railway gwr was very important to the west of england

4:35

and so they were inviting individual indepen independent producers to to to send them ideas about who might

4:42

make a half-hour documentary in a strand called great westerners and i was thinking about this and i thought well laurie lee would make

4:50

a good great westerner i mean he's a great westerner he is you know he is a famous person he's well known

4:56

i've never seen anything on television with or about him i've seen television

5:02

adaptations of his work as i walked out and side with rosie but never anything with

5:07

him so i thought well he would be a good great westerner so i called a chap called steve matthews htv and and

5:13

put this to him wouldn't it be wouldn't it be great if we had laurie lee and he laughed and he said um it would be great but

5:20

we've tried many many times to get larry lee to do programs with us and he's always refused

5:26

he doesn't do television and if he's refused does he certainly won't accept an invitation from you so if you can

5:31

think of other people we'll we'll gladly take your ideas anyway so i thought about this for a

5:38

while and i thought well that's a shame so i didn't leave it there i i then

5:43

found out who laurie lee's um literary agent was and it was a chap called charles walker who

5:48

worked for one of the london literary agencies called peter's fraser and dunlop

5:53

and in those days you could telephone these people these days it would always be an email and but in those days you could tell it for

5:59

them so i telephoned charles walker and i said to him

6:05

um i'm interested in making a tv program with laurie i've never seen him do anything on television do you think he might be

6:11

interested in working with me on a program called great westerners for for the local itv broadcaster and he

6:18

laughed as well and he said it's a very nice idea but i'm afraid larry doesn't do television he doesn't like television

6:24

and he wouldn't do anything like this so i'm sorry about that and he was about to put the phone down i think but i somehow managed to keep him

6:30

on the phone and started talking to him about what i felt would be a great tragedy and that

6:36

would was if laurie lee dies and he's never been able to talk about

6:44

the the approach to his writing how he shaped his writing what inspired his writing wouldn't it be

6:50

a great shame if one of the significant authors of the 20th century writing in english

6:56

died without ever conveying those ideas to to a general public and charles said

7:03

well that's a fair point actually i think that is a good a good point he said why don't you send me a letter

7:09

or send a letter to larry by me and i'll i'm putting those points to him so that's what i did i wrote to i wrote

7:15

to laurie via his agent and made and made those points anyway i was busy making other programs as well

7:22

and i thought not much more about this and went off doing my other doing my other programs and um

7:29

i was making a tv series about exmor at the time with a photographer um a chap called chris chapman a

7:35

documentary photographer from dartmoor but anyway um about a fortnight

7:42

after i'd sent that letter i came home one night from um what's called a recce on exmoor and my

7:48

answer machine in in the house was flashing the red flashing light

7:54

and um i was living on my own at a time with with two of my children my two children and um the

8:00

eight-year-old um i got him to put the answer machine message on my answer phone so if you'd

8:06

phoned me in 1993 when this when this incident happened this is what you'd have heard at the end

8:12

on the end of our telephone answering machine it would have said david jones and louie aren't here at the moment but if you

8:18

leave a message one of us will get back to you when we come in anyway so that was the machine answer

8:24

the message i played i played because i could see one there was a message on the phone and i played it

8:30

and a voice came across the machine and it said what a very nice answer machine message

8:36

would you tell your daddy that laurie lee called him and he gave me the number and put the

8:42

phone down so i was really startled by this the hairs on the back of my neck stood up and i rang

8:48

him back and i said it's david parker and he said oh it's laurie lee here from from gloucestershire he said i've got

8:54

your letter in front of me and how can i help you so i again said what i'd said to htv and

9:00

i'd said to charles walker his agent that i would very much like him to make a film with him and he said

9:06

well i'd very much like to help you but the only thing is i wouldn't want to be in it and i said to him that would be very

9:11

very difficult to make a film about you without you being in it and he sort of took the point there and um he laughed and he said um

9:18

we had we chatted for quite a long time and he said um why did you come up and have a chat to me in my local

9:24

and i said fine fair enough i said what is that and he said it was a pub called the wool pack in his village

9:30

in slaad in in the in the cotswolds and it was about 45 50 minutes away from

9:36

from bristol so one march um um morning i uh

9:44

when i'd arranged to meet him i drove up to this pub beautiful old pup some of you may have visited it actually

9:50

in in the village of slab called the wool pack and turned right and there in a bar sat

9:55

laurie lee with a with a half a pint and a whiskey and a an old plastic carrier bag with

10:03

handwritten notes in it so i went up to and introduced myself and we i we had a drink and then we had another

10:09

drink probably and was chatting away in this really beautiful day like today uh very cold but very

10:15

bright it's a beautiful day and we chatted and he said well what really do you want and i told him and

10:21

i said again for about the fourth time what i wanted to do and he said again he wouldn't want to be

10:28

in it but he would like to help me and we chatted away about the work i've been doing

10:33

and then at about two o'clock two o'clock two thirty he said um you've got a car haven't you and i said i had so he said come with me

10:41

and what we did was we got in the car and he drove me to it seemed more but it was probably

10:48

only three or four locations in that valley that meant something to him and in each

10:55

location he got out of the car and he told me a story about that location

11:00

we went to the village pond we went um up to a place called bulls cross a

11:06

crossroads at the top of the valley and a couple of other places and just watching him

11:11

and listening to him talking about that landscape was absolutely it was absolutely mesmeric and it just

11:18

made me think even more what a fabulous thing it would be to make a make a tv program with him so

11:27

this went until about 3 30 and um and we got back in the car and i was taking him back to

11:32

his his house which was just on the road below the woolpack which is local and um

11:39

i talked to him and i said look i said um um suppose suppose um we um

11:46

we didn't bother with the film we didn't bother with a camera we just we just came up with um with a

11:52

friend of mine who was a sound recordist and instead of filming you we just did

11:57

um we just did um a sort of a sound radio interview with you so you wouldn't be on screen at

12:04

all you would just be the sound of you how would you feel about that and you thought for a while and he said i think

12:10

i think that would be all right actually so we dropped him off and i went back to bristol and i arranged with a very very

12:16

good friend of mine chad was actually watching this um this uh presentation this evening he was a

12:22

voluntary tutor in the wba um bob pitt and i went back to slav with bob

12:29

and with the chap i was making the tv series on exmoor with the photographer chris chapman

12:35

and we um and we sat laurie down and got him to talk into

12:42

this into the microphone about his life and his writing in the cotswolds i'm just gonna put up

12:50

another slide now which shows you a photograph of the um of that um

12:56

of that moment

13:06

the photographer chris chapman didn't take many photographs on that day but this is one that really tells a

13:12

story and there's bob on the left with the um with the sound recording equipment

13:17

and laurie sitting on a log overlooking uh the sheepskin sheps come as he called

13:23

it cricket pitch and myself kneeling at his at his feet as it were talking to him about um about

13:31

the influences that shaped his life and what happened was that we took him first to the village pond

13:37

and then it was quite saturday morning and it got quite noisy so after about an hour bob suggested we go

13:44

somewhere else because it was interfering with the with the sound recording and then we took him to a little lane overlooking the cricket pitch

13:51

where he sat there and this is where this photograph was taken and um it's a very special photograph

13:57

for me this is because this was the beginning of a of a journey through that summer of 1994

14:02

which really has stayed in my memory for such a long time and what happened was on that morning i

14:09

thought my goodness i thought this might be my only opportunity to get laurely

14:14

on tape saying anything about his about his past and about his about his life

14:20

so i really really interviewed him as hard as i could actually and we sort of exhausted him on that

14:25

saturday morning and um um so we um he was already 79 years old

14:31

by then and so um we talked to him about about his past about the influences which

14:36

shaped his writing about his literature about his poetry about his family about the valley

14:42

bob recorded all this on his on his tape machine and as i said i really worked him hard

14:47

thinking this could be my only opportunity to talk to laurie lee anyway that's one point towards the end

14:52

of the conversation we were talking about poetry and about the cricket pitch and he talked about a friend of his

14:58

long dead a man called frank mansell and frank was a sort of working poet

15:07

um a working-class man from the cotswolds who wrote poetry and was a friend of

15:13

lorries and he talked about frank in very very affectionate terms what a brilliant poet he was

15:19

and how he was buried at a village called nizodon just up the valley in this really beautiful

15:26

beautiful churchyard and he said i'll i must take you there to see it sometime when you next come

15:32

and i just took that that line as a cue and i said suppose we came back with a

15:38

film camera and with bob and instead of doing this we just filmed you talking not about

15:44

yourself but about frank mansell how would you feel about that and he thought for a while and he said

15:50

i think that would be all right actually so so with some in elation we um we

15:56

we we drove him back again to the wool pack and we probably stayed and had a beer in the world pack and then drove back to bristol

16:02

and i telephoned um htv on the monday morning and said

16:09

we've got laurie lee and they said okay you can you can have the program then

16:14

and that led to a summer of me going back sometimes with bob sometimes of the

16:20

sometimes of the big film crew talking to laurie in these locations and

16:25

and putting together excuse me a half hour documentary for

16:31

htv it was a glo it felt like a glorious spring and summer and it was a glorious landscape and what

16:37

we did was we we took him back to the places where he'd taken me in his car and asked him

16:42

to talk in these individual places so that's there's a quite a long preamble

16:48

to um to me giving giving over to him now so that he's

16:53

he's taking over the talking what i've done is i've put six clips of our conversations together

16:59

the first two were taken from this scene that you can see in front of you now on this photograph

17:05

when he was talking to me in sound only so there's no pictures so what i've done on these first two

17:11

clips is to just take some photographs and put these photographs on so you're not staring at a blank screen

17:16

while laurie's talking and um and i'll say something about each clip and then we'll stop it and then i'll go

17:22

to the next clip and then this the final four clips they're all short all about three minutes

17:27

are our envision you'll get a sense of glory talking and vision about his life so let me just get rid of this slide now

17:34

and we'll go to the fir we'll go to the um we'll go to the video here we go

17:51

okay this is the very first place we interviewed him was the very first place he took me which was the um the village pond in

17:58

sled and so this interview is at the village pond

18:09

okay can you start by telling us where we are then larry yeah well we're down at the bottom of the valley on the edge of slaad

18:15

this is really our village pond it's uh it's about half a mile but it was the

18:21

center of all our juvenile uh recreations summer bathing and winter skating and

18:28

general gathering together we called it square jones's pond he was he um uh he glorified in having that

18:37

this ancestral or almost feudal possession of this place but he never held us he never checked our

18:44

license so we were unlicensed and could do what we wish but it's still a free gathering place

18:51

and it's inhabited by coots and more hands and dab chicks i'm not sure

18:57

what that chicks are but i'm sure i wrote an essay when i was at the village school

19:02

um raw society birds and trees i used to give prizes for for essays about

19:08

wildlife and i i think i made up dab chick i certainly never saw one but i wrote an

19:14

essay but i still got it beautiful copper plate handwriting the dab chick is called a dab chick because he dabs

19:21

and dips i don't remember ever coming down and looking at a dab chick but the coots of course were very close

19:28

full of chunks we spent many a happy hour together what was the was the original purpose of

19:35

the pond well this is a dam this is built up we're standing on the edge of the dam

19:41

the stream which runs past it would have been dammed up about six feet this

19:47

would be held in order to feed the mill the cloth mill which is just down the bank there

19:53

um steam bridge mill because the whole of this valley was a series of stepping stones of uh

19:59

cloth mills run off the streams but you'll find that there are

20:05

uh stockades and dams of water and this was one of the few left and that and that

20:11

wall was generated in these in these valleys you think i'm not being serious yeah of course it was generated

20:17

and these trout was many of the great houses around here are built on the fortunes of the world trade

20:28

um but what interest the reason i've shown you that little clip i mean that was uh

20:34

taken from about 45 minutes of um of sound recording around that pond was a

20:40

there's two or three things that come out of for me one was the the dab chick story um i never saw a doptic i think i made

20:47

it up i mean side with rosie and and the other books are full of um of of sort of

20:55

questionable aspects of history really laurie's imagination his memory everybody's memory i think when they're

21:01

writing about such a long time in the past tends to be selective and um and i think

21:07

that's true of laurie as well so some of the history that you get um

21:12

in his writing is is um not necessarily

21:17

rooted if you look in the um in the written word i mean he tells a story about king charles

21:23

driving across the area to painswick and resting his horses up in the church and

21:29

then attacking um see besieging gloucester and failing and coming back and hiding in a tree and saying if

21:35

anybody tells you that it's their theirs is the king charles oak it's not because ours is the king charles oak

21:40

so there's that aspect of his writing i think but the other aspect is the is the authentic real history i suppose

21:46

really that comes through when he describes the purpose of that valley

21:52

and the purpose of that pond that we were standing next to it was a man-made damned mill pond

21:58

and there were a series of them in the valley and stroud was a very very important place and the whole of that valley was was driven by the by the

22:06

demand of the woolen industry before it all disappeared up into into west yorkshire

22:11

so those two aspects of telling stories about the past interested me a lot and the third thing i think was and i

22:17

think it comes across in that clip is that this is the very first time we interviewed him and i was very keen to establish a very good

22:23

relationship with laurie um i didn't know whether we were going to talk to him again

22:29

ever or whether this was the first of many times and so i wanted to win over his confidence really and i

22:35

think that um that laughter between us when he talks about um you think i'm not being serious

22:42

suggested to me even then and certainly now that we were beginning to forge a re a

22:47

relationship without which really it would have been impossible to make this program so i was very very pleased by that and

22:55

then of course childhood is really really important to laurie and it's such an important part of his

23:00

of his makeup his experience of childhood and lots of his childhood was spent around that pond and that's why we spent a lot

23:07

of time at that pond and it was the first place he took me to which um which was really um which is really

23:13

important to think for us both but the other thing that was important to larry's writing is the valley and i

23:19

wanted to talk to him about about what it was about the valley that shaped the sort of

23:24

the sort of writing the sort of writer that he became and we moved off as you've seen in the

23:30

photograph to to look back over the valley and this is where a snatch of the conversation we

23:36

had there again in sound only just a snatch of that conversation i'll i'll play for you now

23:45

putting it all down on paper the the writing it all down where did all that come from

23:50

i suppose it came to revisiting the sensations and smells and adventures of my life

23:58

but a very compact life you can see around here all one's adventures and experiences of

24:05

early early life contained in these little seed pods of these valleys i reckon all in the

24:11

village because we were brought up on this particular diet is food

24:18

of the old testament and the prayer book no wireless no television and no

24:25

newspapers they feel good the older souls couldn't read they had very compact vocabularies

24:34

but they told stars with such command of their vocabulary they met perhaps 200 500 words

24:40

they never had to hesitate to grab and use second-hand cliches and say at the end of the day

24:46

let's have a level playing field and having said that and and um all these jargon you get the second hand

24:53

westminster but to have that command of language that this these valley people had

24:59

they could tell a story as the mariners in homer's day must have been able to

25:04

tell a complete command of a very effective vocabulary and they could

25:11

set your hair on in retelling the old uh the old novel the old dramas

25:19

of the valleys but i had i was lucky in having this this very rich start in life

25:28

better than any soap opera this script that i was living and enjoying and

25:34

sharing with my neighbors wasn't the product of an

25:39

exhausted scriptwriter beer stained instead of tear stained about someone who was recycling for

25:46

money some second-hand experiences that he picked up from a mate of his up the old kent road no

25:53

what we were sharing was certainly

26:01

a live thousand years old perhaps in the habits the greatness the goodness and the evil

26:07

and the sins and the hungers and the the habits of relying on each other

26:15

for help was natural to us natural to his past

26:27

i think that really conveyed for me and i hope it does to an extent for you the the the importance of that locality

26:33

not just the physical locality we were all like broad beans in a pod we were so snug

26:39

but the social landscape as well the the fact that the the villagers knew each other that their conversations around the pub

26:45

or the churchill or the school were important to this young man growing up there

26:52

um the geography of the of slaad again some people may have

26:58

visited it but for those who haven't the job is very interesting it lies in a valley that runs up from

27:05

stroud there are there are five of these valleys like fingers going into a hand that run up from stroud in the southern

27:11

cotswolds and um they're quite steep sided uh chalk and um so beautiful for spring flowers

27:19

and um each of these valleys has got us got its

27:24

own character uh now the the village that uh larry came from slaad it's a street

27:31

village so it runs up this runs up the valley and um it's not the classic sort of duck pond and church

27:38

and um and farms around it it's as a discreet village and so you've got the pub on one side of the road

27:45

the wool pack a victorian church and a victorian school on the other side of the road and that's

27:50

because the road that was pushed through was a a victorian early victorian

27:55

sort of a new road and there was a new church and a new school together with an old pub that was that

28:01

was found in this village and the houses spill out along along the street

28:06

laurie went to that school and until he was 10 years old just up the road from his

28:12

house and we took him back to the school to get him to talk about school but also to talk about music because

28:19

music was a very very important part of his his life he learned to play the violin at a very early age

28:24

he was good enough later on in life to play duets with julian bream who's just recently died of

28:30

course on guitar and he's very accomplished as a whistle player as well

28:35

and a guitar player in his own right so larry larry knew about music and we wanted to talk to him about the importance of music in

28:42

the valley and the importance of music to him as somebody growing up in that in that valley in the in the in those

28:48

pre-war years when when pre-recorded and recorded music really really didn't exist

28:56

you used to play at um the penny dances that took place in the village yes i knew a couple of other

29:02

chaps were interested in in bang dance music of a very rudimentary kind

29:09

and we filled in a gap because at that time many dances in the very in the various villages around there

29:15

were no discos and no electronic music to advance to

29:20

long before those days the only music would have been performed

29:26

on a very strict eye by look at some local well-meaning spinster

29:31

and if you were dancing and you swung a girl off her feet this uh it's been sort of well-meaning

29:39

is marked up a member of the road not my club forgotten her name now but anyway she used to ram

29:45

the top of the piano down lock it and go home well you can't do that when youths are having its fling so

29:53

what we decided to do the the three of us the chaplain of drums was a local uh

29:58

beekeeper the chap on the piano was a cobbler a cousin i know he was brother-in-law

30:06

dear harold uh from strode amiona berlin we colored

30:13

the market because it was very important to have a free free-for-all dance once a week

30:19

any dance not particularly sinful but we got a chap who loved going out at

30:27

night he had a little a little uh taxi he loved getting away from home

30:33

because no television so there's no reason why she stayed home he was he was a non-alcoholic

30:40

but anyway in order to get out he's come and pick us up once a week and take us free

30:48

to disney bird lip ships come painswick sled of course

30:55

and um ruscum chalford we were we were currently we

31:03

paid five hundred dollars in free lemonade we were rich we were able to transmit

31:12

early jazz which we we learned i mean the beekeeper i had a lot of old jazz

31:18

records and we could learn it from that why we caught ourselves three blind mice because none of us at that stage could

31:24

read music and we did very well when you were with the three blind minds what sort of music

31:29

were you playing well old-fashioned most of it

31:34

as i said by here it could have been well-known foxtrots or something you would learn from the

31:40

cinema then some very odd dancers breakfast

31:45

barn dance i can hear it now i don't know how to dance it the um hesitation dip

31:53

was another one perhaps we hear it on music on come dancing hesitation dip very

31:59

formal roger de coverley with another one but generally speaking with foxtrots and

32:06

rumbas and i remember a girl in pain coming up and

32:11

saying laurie you're driving me crazy

32:17

i thought i'd made it i'm the uh i'm i'm the mick jagger of over the

32:23

district and i realized that she she wanted to chew and call you're driving me crazy which i can still hear

32:30

now this great um disappointment but only one of many

32:39

um when i was talking to laurie often um he would often end something with a

32:45

sort of a touch of humor and a sideways look and it was a really really lovely way of ending a sentence

32:51

or ending ending ending a bit of the interview and it was perfectly summed up there i think

32:56

actually um it very very quickly became obvious even

33:02

in the research that laurie wasn't just a memoirist you know he's very very well known for side with rosie somebody was telling me

33:09

that side with rosie is britain's biggest selling biography or biographical piece

33:15

so it sold huge numbers actually but well before he was writing um the

33:23

literature he was writing poetry he wrote poetry at school he was published while he was at school

33:29

and he continued to write poetry and um um during the the war later part of war

33:36

and in the 1940s he wrote for a magazine called horizon edited by a man called cyril connolly

33:42

and there he met cecil day-lewis a c day-lewis and it was lewis who listening to him talking about and

33:49

seeing a piece where he'd written about his childhood life in sled urged him to write more and that was the

33:55

genesis really of of side with rosie but as a poet um i'd read this i've read the poetry

34:02

before before i began to interview him and a lot of the poetry was about landscape and about

34:07

gloucestershire particularly and um a lot of the poetry was about

34:13

seasons too and i was thinking by this time how i'm going to how am i going to construct

34:18

this program this one this one program about him with him and i wondered if i could punctuate it

34:24

uh with poems about the seasons and we could move through the seasons by listening to laurie talking about

34:30

and reading a particular poem so i got him to read and talk about half a dozen poems that related to the

34:36

seasons and i just wanted to play you one little piece about one poem

34:41

because it tells you something about i think about about about writing poetry about the structure

34:47

of um uh syntax of poetry and about about imagery and poetry and how he

34:53

was able to convey this in one particular poem in this program this poem is about winter and it was

34:59

written for for the bbc who um were commissioning poets to write

35:05

in the winter of war so this poem was written in the blitz while laurie was living in

35:10

london in the blitz in the winter of 1941 and um

35:16

and we filmed him talking about and reading this poem on a sunday evening uh in his in his

35:23

garden in his house next to his house

35:28

we're still trying to get you onto a winter poem but uh by the time we finish it part it will be winter won't it

35:35

by the time we finish yourself i'll put the problem they commissioned a number of poets to write about poems which

35:42

in some ways reflected the bitterness of winter and the bitterness of the winter of war

35:48

and i couldn't i couldn't um get started on this bone i said yes i

35:54

would do one and then i didn't deliver anything and they said

36:00

and closed the check and said when can we have the farmer and because the program goes out on

36:07

friday and on tuesday they ran up and said is it ready and i said yes i said how long is it and i said was

36:13

about that long and i hadn't started it but no well we know that i

36:18

must have it on thursday said all right you love it so on wednesday night i spent all the

36:24

wednesday evening writing about robin's you couldn't get started

36:30

and about midnight some lines came into my head

36:37

and how bitter that winter was and the lions came in from nowhere because i've been messing

36:43

about with these images of christmas cards

36:50

it may not be a great poem but the lines were real and it goes

36:57

tonight the wind gnaws with teeth of glass the jackdaw and i shivered in caged

37:04

branches of iron the stars have talons

37:10

there is hunger in the mouth of old badger silver agonist of breath in the

37:17

nostril of the fox ice on the rabbit's paul

37:23

tonight has no moon no food for the pilgrim the rose tree is bare and the ground is

37:31

bitter with stones and this time goes on for about 12 verses that's just the beginning

37:37

when i got down the first verses i thought well i'm on the track now at the time i

37:43

wanted to write i put it away and got up before breakfast finished it off

37:48

sent it the bbc and it never changed since had to start it and about to feel that

37:54

the messages were coming through the images were floating in and from gloucestershire and at that

38:00

time i recognized them as true messages about the bitter winter on war

38:07

time nobody messing about with robbins anymore chopped up the robin's sentiment

38:14

to a bird fantasy of mine but jackdaw shivers in caged branches of

38:20

iron stars have talents there is hunger in the mouth of old

38:28

badger silver agonist breath in the nostril of the fox ice

38:35

on the rabbit's paw i can go on but i want that just struck

38:42

seven and that's when the puddle i even know i feel bad about that

38:48

because we made him do more we didn't let him go to the pub at seven o'clock and we we carried on for about another half an

38:53

hour after that but um uh that line the stars have talents really stayed with me it really does

38:59

still stay with me and it sums up i think um the the the impact that that um that writing has

39:06

um just got two more clips to show you and uh this one

39:12

uh was shot in mizdan church i if you remember back uh to the beginning of this presentation

39:17

i said that um uh it was laurie talking about his friend frank mansell who was um

39:23

who um who lived in near missouri and who is buried in the churchyard and

39:28

he must take us there well that's we got him to take us out so this this this scene here is the first scene

39:35

we filmed with him we were all a bit sort of um nervous and with a bit of trepidation

39:40

didn't quite know how it was going to work what i was going to happen and larry you can see he's walking with

39:47

a stick so he's not the uh he's not the most uh agile person uh but i wanted to show you this and talk about

39:53

a couple of aspects of it when i'm showing you the clip

40:05

this is a grave of my old charm frank manson it's a misterton churchyard very near to

40:12

where he was lived and was brought up and we had some grand times together he's a remarkable

40:19

fellow very cotswold cotswold is a dry stone wall he's rugged

40:24

windswept honest rooted in these hills he was also a strange mixture of

40:32

he was a workman he worked for the post office he was an astrologer he was a demon bowler and a local

40:38

cricket he used to come up the hill it's a sloping field and you'd see the top of his head as he

40:44

was running out and then you see his shoulders furious face

40:50

and then the rest of his body was just like a galleon coming over the horizon to see all guns

40:57

blazing and then he whipped the ball down and if the ball didn't kill the batsman he's look of

41:04

furious anger and frustration would kill him that should have got you there and he'd say that should go

41:14

and he was all also a genuine poet we used to meet in the pub that goes through each other's work

41:20

and his his party was so direct and so local

41:25

and so genuine innocent and strong like him

41:34

and then the recording was both giving a double recital you can imagine

41:41

the feeling of the daredevil feeling we had at the cheltenham ladies college we

41:46

marched in together one on the left of this stage me on the right

41:51

and we really played it all any questions yes

41:59

what makes you what makes your true point never get married he said never get

42:05

married death to poetry may the teachers twitch a bit

42:14

um the um that scene uh at the cricket pitch laurie was very fond of that cricket

42:21

pitch in fact he paid for the the pavilion uh really lovely pavilion at shepstone cricket pitch

42:26

and um there's a couple of a couple of lines though where he's talking about um frank mansella's cotswold as a dry stone

42:33

wall and um the coming up the hill with his with his shirt bellowing like

42:39

the sails of on a galleon really wonderful imagery i think there and i was

42:45

showing this present doing this presentation to a group in halifax uh last year and um

42:52

played this clip and um at the end of the session um uh we said any questions anybody got any

42:58

questions and there were a couple of questions and a bloke chat put his hand up and he said i've got a comment not a question

43:03

and i said what's your comment and he said he said frank mansell never bowled up hill at

43:10

shep's come cricket club he couldn't stand running up the hill he always bowled down the hill and i thought it was really funny

43:15

actually the way laurie had used if if if his version was true and loris wasn't

43:20

the way lori had used turned the idea around so that frank would emerge up the hill

43:25

out of the out and out of the out of nowhere um but you know it's truth and fiction where

43:32

does where does where is the truth and where is the fiction it's quite an interesting subject for discussion i think um

43:39

but um i want to finish where we finished with him um there's a very very beautiful um

43:45

hill on the uh on the side of the valley uh overlooks the valley and overlooks

43:51

stroud and the um uh the southern veil and um it's called swift's hill

43:57

and in the springtime it's absolutely full of orchids and the cow slips it's a really

44:02

really beautiful place it goes back to the iron age and the bronze age and there's evidence of um neolithic settlement there so it's very

44:08

important a very important place for laurie and we took him he couldn't get up swift till we couldn't take him up there he

44:14

wasn't well enough to get up there but from below the hill we interviewed him about about something which really

44:21

interested me and i wanted to find out more from him about and that was leaving the valley as well as living there because he came

44:27

he came back to the valley in 1959 when cider with rosie was published but

44:33

he left the valley left his family when he was 17 years old in the um in the 19 in the middle of the 1930s

44:40

so he's away from the valley for for a long time and i wanted to know why left and why came back and

44:46

this is what he talked about

44:52

i want to finish by with the fact that you left it when you were 19. yeah why tell me why you left it well i

44:59

think it's it's a thing that that is normal but with the

45:05

the young they leave they leave the home as they grow the doctor the cottage is

45:12

like a nest and they grow and they fill it and they're too many of them and they go off to see the world make their fortune

45:20

they have they have to do that i think it's it's it's a an instinctual movement is to go out

45:29

to leave home and see the world and then possibly send money orders back

45:36

to your mom when you've made it and i went off one

45:43

summer's morning i walked i never seen the seas i walked

45:49

out to southampton then along the south coast and then up into london and worked

45:55

on the builders i remember somebody saying when anybody leaves home they always end up working on a building site

46:01

well i did and then when that job was over i went to spain for you know for a year with my valley and that was

46:09

one of the most carefree happiest times in my life discovering

46:15

discovering this this almost medieval spain which many ways reminded me of home because

46:20

it was all horse traffic in spain horses and mules i was leaving a village which was a

46:26

horse's mules and chaps sitting around and gossiping at night

46:32

and that sort of community which i'd left still existed

46:37

so it was a natural thing to do i think but it was equally natural

46:44

i went to about 40 countries while i was away i went to the middle east into africa

46:54

and to mexico but i knew that i'd have to come back

46:59

here as a young man as a child i used to think that all the world was like this

47:07

you know this is the world and born the eyes open and you

47:14

you immediately register what you see and i registered this unique

47:22

uniquely beautiful valley and district and i thought well this is this is like

47:28

everything's like and i didn't realize until i'd gone to all these other countries that nothing is like this

47:35

when i came back i thought no i don't want to go again i don't want to move again i'm here i'm rooting for the back

47:43

the graveyard is opposite the wall pack

47:49

i have been fortunate to survive this long and to survive very

47:56

a very difficult sort of crises abroad but i've gone back and now i know it's all wrapped up i

48:03

drink in the pub when i go across the road or i'm taking across the road in a box

48:09

and put in the church here and this is it's this company he's

48:14

a part again i'm i'm i'm wrapped up in this pod which is my home i think

48:21

halfway up i found a place in the church which is

48:26

near enough to the church to be aware of on the spiritual sense to be aware

48:34

of and to be conscious of

48:39

matters sunday morning but also to be within reach of on a

48:48

temporal way or just on saturday nights in the woolpack

48:55

and the alternating between the temple and the spiritual is the way i wish to spend what eternity

49:02

is left to me

49:08

humor again they always always humor at the end of anything he's talked about and that's that's his gravestone that's

49:14

that he is buried um overlooking overlooking the wool pack in the in the churchyard in um in um in slide

49:22

as you can see he he span the century almost he was born in 1914 uh the family moved to slav from scroud

49:30

in 1917 and um he died in 1997. and he spent uh the last sort of 40 years moving

49:38

between slaad and a place of flat in west london anyway that's the um that's the end of

49:44

the the interviews we did with him we packaged it up and made a film that went out and was repeated on channel

49:50

four

uh yes welcome to my attempt to explain how the humors work in a very short

0:06

space of time because frankly i could waffle on about this for ages um but

0:11

it's really really important for understanding the history of medicine for a long long time and actually some little aspects of it

0:18

are things that some of the older ones amongst you will probably remember um and

0:25

it's only one of the things that's going on in medieval times i don't have time to tell you all about

0:30

how surgery is developing for instance or about the fact that all of this has a

0:35

religious underpinning that everybody at the time would say that you know

0:41

any disease ultimately comes from god and any cure is ultimately going to be dependent on whether god wants you to be

0:46

cured or not so there's a whole lot of stuff there as well but the basic thing of it is from the 13th

0:53

to the 16th century pretty much everyone you asked about why

0:58

are you well or ill or lots of other things about you as well actually will say well it's all down to the balance of your humors

1:06

um before that in medieval early medieval it's a right mishmash of bits

1:11

of humors and bits of paganism and bits of christianity and bits of just what happens to make sense and works at the time and then in the

1:18

12th century a whole load of classical texts are rediscovered and

1:23

texts that have been advanced by the arabs of that time come in

1:28

and everything suddenly is all about the humans so what are the four humans

1:35

we've got blood black bile yellow bile also sometimes called collar

1:42

collar and phlegm sorry joke just interrupt for a little second are you going to share your slides

1:49

yeah yeah yeah all right i feel like the slide coming in without a little bit of

1:54

explanation first the first glide will be a bit overpowering i'll be dipping in and out between me

2:01

and slides over over the course of what we do i've got them up and i'm ready we're fine i'll shut up

2:07

fine um and what you have to imagine is the way i try to explain this to kids is imagine you're on a great big

2:17

disc with a point in the middle like a turntable i was going to tell kids it's a turntable a faintest idea what you're talking

2:23

about but like a seesaw that runs in all directions and towards the edges of it

2:31

you can tip it in the direction of each of those four humors and if you tip it too far in the

2:37

direction of any of those four humors then you're going to start getting ill and if you are tipped way too far in any

2:43

of those directions that will kill you but you start somewhere near the middle

2:49

everybody starts somewhere near the middle at a nice balanced healthy point now exactly where that point is varies

2:56

depending on who you are a lot of characteristics are set at birth and others kind of change as you go

3:02

through life so we'll we'll start with the first slide there and hopefully it'll make slightly

3:08

more sense having seen that there we go so some of those

3:13

things that sorry i'm increasing my zoom thing on the other side

3:19

some of these things that you start off with you will start off with

3:28

being hotter and moisture as a general principle i should

3:34

say actually this one first probably makes more sense that each of the humors phlegm blood

3:41

yellow bile black bile is associated with a pair of what are called qualities

3:46

cold and moist cold and dry warm and dry warm and moist and those are characteristics that

3:53

change with you that you start off with a particular pattern of them and then they develop through your life so young people tend

4:00

to be hotter and drier men also tend to be hotter so instead of everybody starting out in

4:07

the exact middle point of that if you are young you will be a little bit further this way

4:13

and as you get older you will drift further in this direction the point that

4:18

is your sort of natural point to be at if that makes sense

4:23

because these things come in fours and because this is based on the ancient greek method of doing this they tend to

4:29

associate it with basically anything else that comes in a set of four so they will associate it

4:34

with the seasons this is an original one on the other side they will associate it with planets

4:40

and associated with anything they can think of times of day anything that comes in a

4:46

set of four they will start to say that those are the times that are associated with particular humors and

4:54

so if we go back to that one you can see that there are four distinct personality types

5:02

which are what they think you will be like if the natural position of your balance of humors

5:07

is a little bit tipped towards one of those four directions to start with which is

5:14

fine because that is what's natural for you unless you have all of them at the same time if you are

5:19

prone to being too phlegmatic because you are female and because you

5:25

are old and because you have a particular personality and because it's winter and because a particular star sign is in the air

5:31

those things do start to sort of mount up and it makes it dangerous for you that you might tip too far in that

5:37

direction if you like but everybody has some starting point that is

5:42

a little tip towards one of these and as a a point of interest you might like to

5:48

look at those and consider which of those your personality would be

5:53

more likely to to be considered to fit into they've been a bit negative about these two on this i think that you know there

5:59

are positive things to say if you're um if you're choleric for instance these are largely quite negative

6:05

characteristics you're also likely to be very friendly and sociable for instance and the um the mel and colic there

6:13

uh yeah you're also there are positive aspects to that as well you are likely

6:19

to be quite steady um you are likely to be

6:24

uh sort of serious and cautious um so yes have a consideration as to which

6:30

of those you would be and then you have to add to that are you male female young old and see how that adds to it

6:39

and you start getting an idea that your initial humor is in one of these directions this can

6:45

be seen they would say in how you look as well those colors are sort of associated with the colors

6:51

of people so if you are ready cheeked or if you have red hair you are likely to be more towards the

6:58

sanguine which is the blood side of things if you are a little sort

7:03

of yellow of complexion a little jaundiced looking you're thought to be a little more towards the choleric side of

7:09

things and so on um the actual humors that they think are involved that

7:16

the particular liquids that we are all compose prized with this balance of liquids blood is obvious

7:22

um black bile is quite hard to put your finger on because it very rarely actually kind of comes out of the person

7:29

but it's sort of associated with the gallbladder and the liver and that neck of the woods

7:34

phlegm is pretty much any clear or white bodily fluid

7:41

but primarily brain matter and what we would call phlegm now snot

7:46

[Music] and you could see the logic there that they would say that in winter

7:53

in cold and damp conditions you are likely to develop extra phlegm

7:59

um which sort of we know now you don't actually necessarily get more colds in winter but i think that's only a fairly

8:05

recent discovery we certainly think that if we go out in the cold and damp we might end up with too much uh cold and damp in our systems

8:13

and that will give us a cold which will make us very flammy so some aspects of it have continued on

8:22

the correct point for you is called the your complexion and that complexion is set

8:27

at the moment of conception and then after that it's affected by everything around you everything that ever happens

8:33

to you after that um go back to there for a second

8:39

um so for instance a ethiopian would have a natural balance

8:45

point that's hotter than someone who comes from the far north and therefore when they go into a

8:51

different place from that natural point they're more likely to struggle and suffer because of it

8:57

um of course it's a little more complicated than that when it comes to

9:02

actual um what is going on when you are ill

9:07

because that's you know you stay quite close to this middle point and we'll as we'll see in a moment you you could sort of be tipped in

9:14

different directions from that point by almost anything in your life um but it's not as simple as just being

9:22

at a point on this this disc because there aren't you know there are too many diseases for that to account for all of them

9:28

um so the particular humors as they go around your body they could have blockages or buildups in

9:35

places they shouldn't be um each part of your body should have a slightly different balance

9:41

so for instance the heart is obviously thought to be hot whereas the brain is thought to be cold

9:46

relatively speaking and as each of those things flows around it can it can get trapped

9:52

so for instance um there was a lad in the 15th century who he and his siblings were all ill and one

10:00

one of them died so they had a rare autopsy to try to work out why this ladder died in order to save

10:06

his siblings and the physician did all of this and then

10:12

explained that he did not have enough phlegm near his liver and he had a retention of obnoxious

10:19

fumes which had caused all his heat to withdraw to his inner parts so he's got too much heat on the inside

10:26

and too much cold on the outside so it's it's not just a sort of two

10:31

numbers thing but it's all about how much of those humors you have and whether

10:36

they're in the right place or not and of course you would figure these

10:41

things out by a number of methods how do you tell what somebody's balance of humors is

10:46

well you'd start by thinking about what they should be for that person you know look at that person's complexion are

10:52

they young healthy older male female um

11:00

what would you expect that person to be look at their facial complexion but you

11:06

obviously have to consider the symptoms but it's a little more complicated than that because it's all

11:11

kind of has to go through that frame of reference of the balance of your humors a headache if you went to a doctor and

11:16

said they had head you had a headache that's utterly useless because a headache could be caused by too much blood or too

11:22

much black oil or too much yellow bile or too much phlegm they have to go beyond that in figuring it out you have to look at other

11:28

symptoms that come with it and other signs that your body is showing as to whether

11:33

you know what the balance of your humors is and whether any are blocked somewhere so for some of this is quite obvious

11:39

they would say you know do you have a fever in which case you clearly have too much of the hot humors are you sweating

11:48

if you had humors trapped under the skin you might have a lump and then they would obviously look at the color

11:53

and the temperature of the lump to try and establish what humour was getting stuck in there

12:01

one easy way though for them is they thought that the body will try and get rid of whatever it has too much of

12:09

so if you've got too much yellow bile you're going to be sick because the body

12:14

is trying to get rid of that yellow bile and that comes out as vomit

12:21

so physicians would recommend recording everything that's coming that's going into your body but also very importantly everything is

12:27

coming out of your body and they could examine that to a certain extent they would do it with blood

12:33

they would count you know how often are you sneezing because sneezing is a sign that your brain is trying to get rid of some excess

12:39

phlegm and in fact um they would say that humans sneeze more than any other animal

12:45

does simply because our brains are bigger and moister and so some of that extra moisture we

12:52

have to keep sneezing it out or we build up too much too much uh moisture in our heads

12:57

so people who sneeze a lot it's a buildup of excess moisture in your head

13:04

the commonest way of doing this though is to look at your urine urine inspection is a very very common

13:12

thing for them and uh it would involve one of these this little jar this is called a

13:19

uh mantula or a jordan jordan flask um and

13:26

being a jordan relates to originally to bloodletting involving or rather to

13:32

stopping the flow of blood being something that surgeons would do and stopping the flow of water being

13:38

what happens at the river jordan when john the baptist baptized jesus um so they associate

13:45

jordan with the stopping of blood and the stopping of blood with surgeons and surgeons with these it's a little

13:50

um convoluted but there you go so that that's your typical shape for a urine flask and

13:57

this is thought to be the best diagnostic trick that they have and it probably is

14:04

because you know you can detect a lot of things by your urine particularly if you are looking at it to

14:10

the great and ridiculous detail that they were it's very popular because it it can be

14:17

done remotely it's painless compared to other tests uh it's discrete so women can stay

14:23

modest there's no risk to the patient it can be done at range people would send their urine off for

14:29

analysis you would on market days you would see

14:35

um servants lined up outside the traveling physician um

14:41

with their masters urine just to check out their state of affairs and they would be

14:46

looking for a lot of different qualities of that urine a lot of them would have access to this

14:52

kind of thing um the urine chart urine wheel um and there are modern versions of this

15:00

you know a lot of these things are quite reasonable things to be checking out for obviously they draw different

15:06

conclusions as is to what is wrong with you but they do sort of correctly interpret

15:11

that there are different things going on here particularly so for instance if there is blood in your urine they would say you clearly have too much

15:17

blood in your system that's why it's coming out in this way and we can tell that because it is

15:23

this particular color the the flask that i showed you has

15:29

different specific regions which they would say would correspond to the health of different body parts after everything

15:35

settled out in there so if it's got a different top or if there's sediment at the bottom that could tell you different things

15:42

about different parts of your body there's all sorts of technical terms involved it's staggering what they thought you

15:48

could tell about somebody by looking just at their urine

15:54

obviously we could do it now but we've got much more sophisticated tests than they do so for instance in the 13th century

16:01

there's a book called the secretus millierum

16:06

which says for instance that the urine of virgins is clear and lucid sometimes white

16:12

sometimes sparkling this is something you can detect just by looking at the urine

16:18

staggering idea isn't it and they would look at color consistency

16:24

particulates smell and they would indeed potentially taste it um bearing in mind that uh the the

16:32

tongue the sense of taste is the most sensitive form of detection chemical detection

16:38

equipment that we have undoubtedly you can detect something like diabetes and you can probably

16:43

detect lots of other things if you know what you're actually what you're aiming for so

16:51

it becomes so much a symbol of a doctor that it becomes very commonplace that if you want to show a picture of

16:58

a doctor then you just put one of those in the hand and everybody knows what you're dealing with and

17:04

yet people would would send urine samples gentry generally live out of town so

17:10

they send people to do it so for instance 1480 agnes stoner

17:16

has quote sent her water unto master derwith to understand his conceit and how he deemeth by her water whether

17:22

or not she be in the way of mending she's been ill she wants to know whether she's getting better and the way to do

17:28

that is to send off her urine for analysis servants might even be taking a new one

17:34

in daily the other thing that is happening on that picture of course is another very important method of diagnosis that they

17:42

have which is the taking of the pulse of course they don't have accurate time

17:48

measurements in the way we do although i imagine they'd get quite good at just um recognizing different times because

17:55

they've experienced a lot of them um but because of that it's not so much about

18:00

um the the speed of your pulse as the strength and the rhythm and they

18:07

have names for things like that um which are things like

18:13

um is is your pulse gazelling or worming or ant like or sore like

18:20

or like a mouse tail unfortunately we don't know exactly what's meant by all of these but

18:25

uh galen has a list of 50 something different options for the rhythm and uh pattern of your

18:31

pulse another oh and by the way they um i

18:38

found an account this week that i just thought was brilliant about somebody back in the the 14th century using taking somebody's

18:45

pulse as a lie detector test as to whether whether this woman's having an affair or not um

18:51

just casually asks about this gentleman while holding her wrist and her her pulse beats faster and

18:57

hotter clearly there's an affair going on so it's the world's first lie detector test

19:03

as well as everything else oh there's another one oh i got two of

19:08

those another way that they could tell what was likely to be going on with your

19:15

system was to look at your star chart and look at the current position of the heavens

19:21

they did very much think that the position of the stars influenced people's humors and this is quite a new

19:28

idea the church didn't approve of it for some while they thought it was sort of dangerously close to

19:34

magic but by the 13th century they have accepted that there's

19:39

something called natural astrology which can be used to consider the course of diseases

19:45

and is different from things like divination from astrology which they still don't approve of um

19:52

so each of the planets and each of the houses of the zodiac was thought to have a role in your health

19:58

it would help set your complexion when you were born where

20:03

you started out and it would have day-to-day effects so for instance um

20:08

if if you were born when saturn which is considered to be a murk and malicious planet

20:13

uh is in the ascendant especially if it's in the sixth house at the time that would mean you were more likely to

20:19

be melancholic unclean and have skin problems

20:24

if you get really really really melancholy you're in danger of becoming a leper

20:30

plus as you can see from this picture each body part is associated with a particular star

20:36

sign and this is supposed to influence which bits of you are most likely to get ill as well as more generally

20:43

influencing the balance of your humors we would still think of you talk about water signs or air signs

20:49

and so on well a water sign if we go back to there a water sign is going to

20:56

correspond with being more phlegmatic to start with so that's another thing that influences

21:03

where you start but also it's going to affect individual body parts so again if you take a moment

21:09

and just have a look to work out which bit of your body is supposed to be

21:14

struggling and if i had a smaller group i'd get a show of hands as to how many of you think that this is an accurate reflection of

21:21

uh of your particular set of illnesses most of them are quite obvious and that's that's a crab and that's a

21:27

scorpion if that's needed for you but yes have a look at that and think

21:34

yeah that's that's fair or not and there'll be enough of you to think oh that's fair

21:39

for to sort of understand why they would have thought that this was all completely justified

21:46

to keep track of all of these facts and figures keep track of things like the phases of the moon and the best

21:52

bloodletting points and all of these diagrams and one of those and so on

21:57

they would have something called a a girdle book but i prefer its other name

22:03

which is that it's a bat book it's the most beautiful little thing and something like 60 of them have survived

22:10

and they they hang off your girdle and that you can see sort of concertina folded paper like that

22:16

um and they're called back books this is why i love them they're called back books because they

22:21

hang upside down from your waist and they're no use until you unfold their little wings

22:26

the concertina pages of them um so yeah a lot of surgeons or physicians

22:33

would particularly ones who weren't so well trained that they could just do the maths themselves if you went to university and you're a proper physician

22:39

you could probably do the math yourself but everybody else would rely on the tables in something

22:45

like that so the reason why

22:52

you don't stay in your perfect balance point all the time of course

23:00

is that you are influenced by everything else in the outside world and they categorize

23:08

those outside world things into six categories because imagine you again you're standing in the middle or what's the middle for you of this

23:14

tipping thing and you can gradually move in any direction depending on what then happens to you in life as you

23:20

get older it will very slowly move you in one direction for instance but there's a lot of other things that have an impact but everything has an impact they divide

23:27

it six ways um the ambient air now ambient air can just mean on the

23:34

simplest level um why they think more people get colds in winter it's cold and wet out there

23:40

why people think that um marshes are associated with fevers in fact it's because of malaria but they

23:46

think that it's the air coming up from the vapors coming up from the marsh

23:53

ambient air has its own sort of extra level to it which is called miasma or corrupt air

24:00

and this is usually identified by its bad smell and this comes about because they have worked out as is sort of

24:07

i think inbuilt to us that if you hang around things that smell bad they might make you ill we know that

24:12

rotten meat might make you ill we know that hanging out in a sewer might make you ill

24:18

and they it's they have to find a way to marry that with a balance of humor's concept and what they say is

24:24

that this corrupt air um once it's got into you and it'll get in

24:30

through your paws or through your breath will change the balance of your humors

24:35

more dramatically than other forms can and this is how they explain mass epidemics this is how why a load of

24:40

people get plagued at once it's because the air has been made corrupt

24:46

by the stars consolation constellation of the stars as it corrupted the air

24:52

then that corrupt air has gotten through everybody's paws and that's why everybody's ill at once

24:57

but it can also relate to localized courses uh sources um so this is

25:04

why they they will they know to you know try and keep the privy away from the house um

25:10

and they insist that no leper speaks to you unless they are downwind at the time so that there's no

25:16

risk of the breath of the leper getting near you um no face masks for these people apparently

25:22

um so yeah this miasma is a sort of extreme example of the ambient air

25:30

that's one of the non-naturals another one is your motion and your rest how much exercise and rest you're taking

25:36

and of what kind another one is your sleep pattern is every substance that you take into

25:44

your body another is every substance that comes out of your body makes sense

25:49

and the final one is the state of your soul and your emotions

25:54

anger we still think of as being a hot mood don't we and if you are and both

26:01

that it being hot outside might make you more likely to be angry but also that the anger generates

26:07

heat within yourself so again if you look at where heat comes in there

26:16

you can see that in summertime and it's attached to fire you might be more likely to suffer from

26:22

problems of yellow bile and everything

26:30

ties into this every one of those things just nudges your humors one way or the other

26:36

um and it can be in in a big way or it can be in a small way

26:42

but there is there is nothing you can do that doesn't make you hotter wetter colder or drier

26:48

by that measure and therefore influencing your humors so i'm going to take my halfway break

26:54

there i think time seems to be flying by um and then for the that sort of the

27:00

first half is what your humors are how you can tell what's wrong with them and then afterwards i'll look at how you can

27:08

uh in medieval times how you can uh improve them how you can push them in the right directions for you if that

27:14

makes sense thanks very much joe right we've got a few questions here so i shall fire away

27:20

um okay so maybe a question from mary please is this a bit like the chinese thoughts

27:27

based on heat and cold it's really interesting because there are parallels

27:33

because the chinese medicine also uses a system of hot wet cold and dry and for um well their elements are

27:40

slightly different but hot wet cold and dry are the same as far as we know these are pretty much independent ideas all of this stuff goes

27:47

back to um the likes of galen and hippocrates and aristotle

27:52

um kind of uh almost 2000 years ago and as far as we can tell there isn't

27:59

really enough contact between them and the chinese to explain so maybe this is just the sort of idea that

28:06

people um looking at the outside world will come up with the ideas of these things being opposite

28:11

and elements being being what they are so it's surprisingly similar but we're not sure why i guess it's the short

28:17

answer okay um and just a little comment from from anne king she's saying all this is

28:23

very helpful for understanding shakespeare that's true yes there are lots of mentions in shakespeare of

28:29

people being of a a choleric temper or that sort of thing and chaucer as well chaucer with quite a

28:36

few of his characters in the introductions to those characters he will define whether they are melancholic or

28:42

sanguine or whatever because for people back then shakespeare's time as well that would absolutely be shorthand for what

28:49

sort of person they were um yeah okay right let's see what else we have got um

28:58

now and this is from nori nolan she's saying um could a modern medic deduce what

29:05

the young man that you were talking about actually died from i don't think enough information was

29:12

left in that particular case as far as i know sadly all right i i would guess it's

29:17

you know you'd probably say it's something to do with his liver at that point but you couldn't uh possibly if his liver doesn't have

29:23

enough phlegm i don't know what that would translate to in the modern world narrow it down to

29:29

a few possibilities but you couldn't be certain okay um and a question from

29:35

carol vincent uh and this is related to our current predicament um covered symptoms include

29:43

headaches dry cough high temperature loss of taste and smell what do you think they would have

29:48

deduced from that okay well high temperature immediately

29:53

takes you into one half of the of the pattern doesn't it it's got to either be to do with your blood or your yellow bile

30:00

um i i think although sickness isn't a feature really is it um is fever a feature yes so i think

30:08

probably you'd be mostly looking at too much blood maybe at too much blood and too much yellow bile

30:14

um and of course we'll find out exactly what you should do about that in in a few minutes but yeah but the great

30:20

thing about the human system is that they would be absolutely fine with a new disease coming along

30:26

you can see this when syphilis starts coming in in the about 1500 um new disease new set of

30:33

symptoms nobody quite seen this pattern of symptoms before a whole load of um the academics of the

30:39

day argue about what particular set of humoral uh effects would cause that

30:46

is this just a variant of something we've seen before is this something completely new how can it be something

30:51

completely new because it's all just got to be in your humors really and in the end yeah they settle for it being a particular variant of a

30:59

feverish condition that they already know about or think they know about they fit everything into this pattern

31:05

because it's so versatile and i imagine they would be able to do exactly the same thing with with covered

31:12

okay thank you um and another question from debbie rose and sort of using this

31:19

um was it possible to diagnose pregnancy from urine at that time um i've never seen it

31:29

described as such but i'd be very surprised if they couldn't just in terms of hormones

31:34

we all know that uh you know a gentle smells different from a woman's loo

31:40

um and and that's because of hormones isn't it so it would not surprise me at all to

31:45

learn that there would be some people sufficiently well trained to be able to detect um from the urine

31:51

um or you could always go back to uh variants on the old folk remedies that involve peeing on different kinds of

31:57

grain and seeing if they sprout or not even the egyptians knew about that one um and that that one carried on through

32:04

that uh you um found it is that the

32:10

urine of pregnant ladies encourages the sprouting of grain in the pure urine of not pregnant ladies um

32:17

dampens the sprouting of grain so it is actually the case that you can get something like a 75 to 80 accuracy

32:24

uh pregnancy test by doing this um and that was still known about us as folk remedy in

32:30

some areas um but they didn't have a definite way of doing it um and there were a lot of very odd but

32:36

a lot of very very odd ideas about um the differences between men and women and such anyway so

32:43

it's a bit of a dark answer right okay right i think we should probably move on

32:48

and we'll we'll take some more questions at the end so sure yeah

32:54

so yeah if if all of these different things can make you ill everything that happens to you you

33:00

know you have too many too many hot bars you're in danger of ending up just a little bit too hot and wet particularly if you already have

33:08

characteristics that take you in that direction naturally doesn't take much to tip you over

33:14

um the good thing about that is that logically everything you do can

33:19

also help make you healthy again you just have to do it right and one of the wonderful things about

33:25

the human system is that it actually um incorporates everything in a way that um

33:34

is very holistic it's not just about taking a pill whatever is wrong with you controlling

33:40

your diet and your exercise in your sleep and your mood is thought to have a beneficial effect

33:45

if you do them in the opposite direction to whatever you're suffering from um

33:52

most people wouldn't go to a practitioner or they might there might be somebody local um there will be you know people in the

33:58

village that know a bit about this stuff um again it's one of those areas i just don't have time to really

34:05

go into um but um most people did understand the basics of

34:10

this system just what the humors were and what um what went cold dry and could

34:17

self-diagnose and self-treat accordingly so anything that may that can make you

34:23

ill can also be part of a treatment it's what just affects you and this of course means that two people

34:29

with identical wounds or identical symptoms might need to be treated differently depending on

34:34

where the natural balance for that person was to start with

34:39

every food for instance can be categorized as being hot or dry or cold or wet

34:45

to the first second or third degree so for instance lettuce is cold and moist to the third

34:51

degree chamomile is hot and dry to the third degree and it could be quite subtle so for

34:58

instance wine could be slightly different in its balance of how you know how hot and dry and cold

35:05

what it was depending on what soil it had come from meat would partly depend on what animal

35:10

it was but also whether it was a male or female animal and what method you'd cooked it by which

35:15

just sort of makes sense because you know some forms of cooking leave your meat drier than others don't they um so the best thing

35:23

you could do is to not get ill in the first place and that means very holistic emphasis on a

35:30

great set of you know good habits for life and the guide to healthy living the

35:35

regimen sanitatis is a very popular literary genre at the time

35:42

there's one from salerno which gets uh turned into a verse version and it starts off use three

35:49

physicians still first doctor quiet dr merryman and dr diet so calmness

35:56

good humor and the right food and i think these are things that were kind of lost

36:02

in when we kind of made it all about the science and made it all about the drugs and so on it's easy then to forget

36:08

that simple things like getting enough sleep um can make a huge difference to your success

36:15

in health so there are these general guides but then you could also if you could afford it go to

36:20

a physician for a personalized version of this a concilium which could be a few lines or pages and

36:27

pages long which would tell you you know how much you should bathe what kind of

36:32

comb you should brush your hair with how much sex you should have how much exercise you should have um

36:38

you know what time of day is the most efficient yeah if it's time for you to pray

36:43

everything can be in there um and a really great detail so

36:49

one lady uh lady lyle who is um suffering from a phantom pregnancy uh

36:54

apparently because she'd eaten too much gross and slimish humors in her um unmoderated eating habits

37:03

is told you shall not eat of cold meat as powdered beef that is cold or cold veal

37:08

you shall not eat of gross meats beef venison nor of mutton but seldom and little you

37:13

shall not eat any raw fruit nor raw herbs whatsoever they be and all manner of pastry is contrary

37:19

for you as tarts pies cakes and other pastries disappointing if you're ill and they

37:25

won't even let you have a cake um the safest foods are for invalids

37:31

are thought to be slightly warm and moist which is where people are and so whatever's wrong with you that

37:37

shouldn't make it any worse and things that fall in that category include egg yolks

37:43

chicken almonds and sugar maybe hazelnuts and barley and that's

37:49

why those are the ingredients in what is called a blemonge say blanc munch white food because all of those

37:55

things are pale so you make your sick dish out of white food and what you've made is a

38:02

blank mulch which is a blemonge next time you have a blamong consider

38:07

that it should contain chicken and be eaten if you're unwell um

38:13

they quite highly recommend bathing at least initially they go off the idea of bathing after

38:18

plague comes around because of the realization of the idea that uh the bathing might allow the plague

38:25

miasma in through your pores because bathing will open your pores up but

38:31

bathing is another thing they decide you know hot wet cold dry is bathing going to be a good thing or not

38:37

um but the idea that in most cases a physician is going to recommend moderate regular habits good

38:44

sleep avoiding stress and anger and relaxing as much as you can

38:49

i think it's really interesting that that was around that long ago um so

38:57

you could also take drugs herbs for the most part they're called

39:02

simples individual drugs and the virtues of a lot of plants are very widely known

39:08

even if the quantities aren't and even if it might be hard to get hold of some of them one of the ways that

39:16

you knew what was good for you for different things might be the idea of the doctrine of signatures

39:22

which is the idea that god has put all plants on earth for a reason

39:27

and the plant itself will often tell you what that reason is so for instance lungwort has leaves that

39:32

are shaped like lungs therefore it's good for lung complaints uh blood root has a red juice and is

39:38

therefore good for blood complaints and so on i write that looks like a little bright star

39:44

um there's no reason why that should work but you know sometimes it does and then that clearly

39:49

uh justifies the idea there are verse poems about the virtues of all the different plants that you could learn by

39:56

heart even if you have no book learning so for instance um gold

40:01

marigold is bitter in savor fair and yellow is his flower gold flower is good to see and it makes

40:07

your sight bright and clean wisely to look on his flowers drawing out the head wicked humors

40:14

so you'd learn all the verses of something like that and then that would be your in your

40:20

family medical guide in effect you can of course mix your different

40:25

drugs um the particular well-known mix is called cereal and cereal is a

40:33

it's good for anything pretty much it's a general health tonic and particularly good against poisons

40:38

and other things like that and each apothecary would have their own sort of variant version of it

40:45

generally it's quite expensive quite complicated it's got resins and herbs also honey and usually some sort of

40:52

dried critter like a dried snake or a dried toad or something like that in it to counteract the poison and that

41:00

word ceriac is the origin of the word treacle treacles are originally medicinal um and

41:08

they are these sort of mix of ingredients and only after a while does the sugar or honey that's often in them to

41:13

make them more palatable become the key ingredient of a treacle as well as plant

41:20

ingredients there's also plenty of chance for animal ingredients um the doctrine of signatures applies again so

41:26

whatever an animal is particularly um known for

41:32

then perhaps that could that could help um so i'm just going to show you we've got that's

41:37

that's an apothecaries shop of the time and that's a couple of pages from early one one hand done and one an early

41:45

printed herbert herbal uh with the different what the different things are good for

41:50

um but yeah for instance if you've got a bad back wear a donkey skin donkeys have really

41:58

really strong backs and some of the virtue of that donkey skin might pass into you similarly if you have

42:04

a failing eyesight you might perhaps want to kill a magpie turn it into ash and sprinkle it on your

42:11

dinner because then the the quality of good eyesight

42:17

the magpie possesses might somehow get into you um you do have to worry about the people

42:22

whose job is to collect some of these ingredients you know drinking cow urine and putting your feet inside an ox belly

42:28

some of them are less ridiculous than they sound um quite a few things recommend worm stew

42:33

you might originally think oh goodness worm stew that's that's not good at all but of course a lot of peasants

42:39

don't get a lot of meat in their diet it might be that the protein in worms would be good for you um there's a recommendation of using

42:47

scarlet curtains for small pox now you might think well that's never going to help at all

42:53

but and i always thought it was just a psychological thing when you're at a room with red curtains everyone's the

42:59

same shade of red so you don't feel weird in comparison to other people maybe that helps you psychologically

43:05

apparently it's recently been proved that infrared light helps reduce smallpox scarring

43:12

so genuinely you will get less scars if you spend your time in the room with red curtains

43:18

and all of these things are turned into teas and tinctures and plasters and powders often by an apostrophe or just by you or

43:26

your people in the village definitely not by the physicians erasmus notes that

43:32

physicians don't generally recognize the lettuce in their own salad they're so rubbish

43:39

and you you prescribe according to how rich you are so for the same thing you might

43:44

import really expensive this brand new thing called rhubarb or you might just go and get some briony

43:50

root from the hedgerow down the road they'll have basically the same effect on you

43:55

but instead of that kind of subtle altering your lifestyle to get the balance of your humors right

44:01

the other thing you can do of course is to think what does this person got too much of let's get it out of them and that's the

44:08

simple way so purgatives and enemas and stuff like that

44:13

purgatives are very popular and and laxatives and all of those things are very popular because whatever comes out you must be

44:20

what you've got too much of so let's just get rid of it and also as a preventative just to stop

44:27

a build-up of something that you don't need um so i said at the beginning some of

44:32

you may even remember some of this the very last remnant of the humeral system that survived

44:38

long after all of the theoretical bases of it had been proved to be rubbish was the idea of

44:44

your weekly castor oil or weekly cenopod your weekly flush out um that's a

44:52

humoral thing um that that absolutely is that you know whatever you've got too much of let's

44:57

shift it um what we didn't we don't do now and haven't done for quite a long time

45:03

thankfully is using the family anti-money pill if you could afford it you buy a little lump of anti-money that yeah big pea

45:09

sized uh antimony is a metal and you swallow it whole

45:14

and it is very very um not good for the system so the system tries to get rid of

45:20

it as fast as it possibly can so you can imagine the effect of that going on it's gonna come out pretty

45:26

quickly but because it's metal when it comes out you can find it wash it off and reuse it um

45:34

or give it an apparently you some families had a family antony pill that

45:40

could be passed down the generations because they're not that cheap to start with so you're going to pass down that

45:45

antenna pill later generations they worked out that you could have an antimony cup soak wine in it and drink the wine and

45:51

get the same effect um and then a few generations after that they go back to using the pill again

45:57

it's really odd uh but yeah that's a thing if somebody offers you an antimony pill just say no

46:03

um so yes you can have all of those things getting out of your system in that way but the big

46:09

thing of course is getting things out of your system by bloodletting this could be because you have too much blood

46:15

or it could be because you have too much of something else which is floating around in your blood

46:20

either way it's going to work there you go there is a person being bloodlet and quite often people do

46:27

this uh as a um what's the word i'm looking for as a preventative just

46:33

because it's good for you a lot of people would have told you that having your blood let once every six weeks would just be good for your health get

46:39

rid of anything you don't need um and it's thought to be helpful for almost everything it's good for your

46:44

brain it's good for your strength it's good for your digestion it's good for your voice

46:50

it helps you sleep it's good for your mood everything can be improved apparently by a good bit of blood they do realize

46:58

that you can't do it on people who are too young or too old um they do realize that you have to

47:03

do it with clean tools and the person has to know where they are taking blood from uh that it shouldn't

47:08

be used on children or pregnant women they think it's to do with the moon so you shouldn't ever do it uh when the moon is full for instance

47:16

because it's too much blood out of you um but they generally think it is a good

47:22

thing so we'll end with the different methods by which that was the case and firstly as on that picture there we have

47:29

if i put it there we have the lamp the fleem or lancer um so you put ligature around the arm

47:35

and then tap that tap that in like that on and that's supposed to leave a yeah

47:41

a better cut a cleaner cut than just cutting in with a knife um we could

47:47

use the cupping vessel ah um they still get used in chinese

47:54

remedies but um that you heat them up and then the physics creates a suction

48:00

um but if you do it and you also put lots of little cuts on yourself first and do that and do the suction then it will suck up

48:06

the blood as well um probably more sterile probably the most painful of the options

48:12

available or of course i need to introduce you to my little friend in here if i can get him to

48:18

i say him are entirely without gender are you going to come out and play where

48:23

are you it was in there a few minutes ago give him a prod no

48:28

where are you i'll say he was in there a few minutes ago so yeah have you gone little i shall um

48:35

while i'm looking for the real one tell you what i'm looking for oh that's not meant to do well i'm looking for the real one i'll show you a

48:43

picture of one [Music]

48:55

that's an individual one i'm trying to find a real one and be the video of me giving blood to one which i have got

49:03

opened somewhere there we go there we go well i'm looking for the real one you can have a watch of that

49:09

where are you on the side of the loop

49:22

[Music] are you seeing this the still one at the moment

49:28

okay um you may have to stop sharing on that and then be sure

49:33

yeah i wonder if he's hiding unless that's the things that the boss perhaps that come towards my fingers but don't

49:39

actually bite them no stop sheridan

49:44

sorry i the one thing i hadn't tried was actually doing this this video bit if i could oh

49:51

so now he's swimming around for me but now i don't want him to be swimming stop sharing that and

50:01

see if we can get you see him yep so that's my friend larry

50:10

and he is a real medicinal leech um you can get them from the same

50:16

company that provides them for the nhs because they are still used by the nhs this particular one

50:24

hasn't ever taken blood from me but as i say there is another one that has

50:31

i was going to be able to show you three but two of the others did a runner last week um and only only one of them stayed

50:37

behind i dread to think whether they're kind of dead behind the footage somewhere or whether they've just been eaten by the

50:43

cat um what the battle would be between as a cat and they're trying to bring up

50:52

oh [Music]

50:59

no that's not giving me the option oh well never mind um i'd show you my lovely little little scar marks on my hand on my arm as well

51:06

i've still got i allowed two to bite me a few years ago and i still have two little triangular scars on my

51:12

arm yeah leeches are

51:17

actually less common for standard bloodletting they're more used if blood has built up in a particular place

51:22

which is what we use it for um in the modern world as well and for reattachment surgery and things like

51:28

that um you would not want the job of being a leech collector there were women generally older women

51:35

who couldn't do other work anymore would wander out into the right sort of shallow martian water

51:40

and would um continue to view it and would just

51:47

jiggle their legs around and wait until a bunch of these guys had have you gone now

51:54

he's gone back to hide at the bottom again no there he is um and

52:01

wait until a whole load of things had attached themselves onto him onto their legs and then come out the

52:06

water again and then i love the way they swim isn't it pretty

52:14

and that would be what they did for a living from selling leeches like that so yes

0:00

hello everyone uh thank you for uh welcome your wonderful welcome uh fiona and my

0:06

name is alice naylor and in 2020 i completed my masters in the

0:11

history of design in material culture at the v a and the rca

0:16

to clarify material culture is not studying the history of textiles although that is an important factor to

0:23

consider because we can understand a tremendous amount about global economies and how skills

0:30

and knowledge are circulated via textiles design historians are interested in understanding the materiality of

0:37

everyday life and what the design and consumption of ordinary objects can tell us about our history

0:43

our communities and our consumption practices i had access to the v a's extensive

0:49

archives and the expertise of the curators there and in fact i did play a great deal of attention to the fashion

0:55

and textile collections as fiona explained i have a particular interest in design changes in contemporary

1:02

fashion that explore the evolution of the functional to the fashionable and the

1:07

elevation of the everyday to the elevated one of the key themes of my masters was

1:12

to question what we as design historians would consider a design change by this i mean how changes around

1:20

us inform the way that objects evolve through consumption practices social and political changes this talk

1:27

is based on research that i undertook in 2019 and i chose the boiler suit because i suggest

1:34

it has undergone a fundamental change most markedly in the period running from the 1940s to

1:40

the 1980s the boiler suit is a unisex garment that has been categorized variously as a

1:46

coverall overall jumpsuit or siren suit and is generally described as a

1:52

one-piece protective garment worn for heavy manual work evolutions in the fabric and

1:58

fastenings not withstanding the design is little changed since its inception but the meaning and

2:04

use has significantly altered it has evolved and been adapted by designers and wearers

2:10

since the early part of the 20th century to incorporate fluctuations in

2:17

working practices and social structures the development of new fabrics and changing tastes in fashion

2:23

and popular culture why and how did it transition from a non-gendered item of apparel worn

2:30

mostly by the industrial proletariat to a high fashion sometimes sexually charged garment

2:37

embraced by people from across the cultural social and fashion spectrum i want to

2:43

talk about how this fantastically versatile ice cream of clothing whether it has in fact evolved from

2:49

functional too fashionable or it has been those things all along i want to reflect on what

2:55

cultural and social transformations may have played a part in shifting how

3:00

we might regard the boiler suit it made sense to situate it within the category of occupational uniforms

3:07

as a useful starting point for exploring its design modifications and how we might perceive the grouping

3:14

of this item of clothing as a uniform for work and another type of uniform

3:19

for play it has evolved into a garment with multiple purposes and personalities historians have

3:26

written extensively on uniforms and my research has revealed that despite the subject matter providing

3:32

rich material in which to investigate class structure the gender division of labour conformity

3:39

and transgression the boiler suit has escaped the same scrutiny as for example

3:44

military garb or school uniforms historian jennifer crake asserts there

3:50

is a constant play between the intended symbolism of uniforms sameness unity regulation

3:58

hierarchy status and roles and the informal calls codes of wearing and denoting uniforms

4:05

subversion individual interpretation and difference i wanted to question why

4:12

in the canon of writings and observations on uniform the boiler suit has been somewhat

4:17

neglected and i would argue that it is yet to be fully scrutinized as a standalone item

4:24

by historians of fashion design and social commentary my reflection my research reflects my

4:31

assertion that this garment warrants a deeper exploration as part of what we might consider a

4:36

uniform sorry i'm just trying to change my next

La Tuta (the one-piece), 1920, Firenze

4:42

slide right i want to because i begin with a discussion on a one piece

4:47

that i suggest is an important marker in early iterations of the boiler suit it is certainly you it has certainly

4:54

been used in factories as protective clothing since the earliest path of the 20th century but in the 1920s artistic movements

5:01

ranging from italian futurism to russian constructivism were surveying new forms of clothing for

5:07

a modern world and this garment typified new ways in which workwear was being codified

5:14

a series of eight fashion manifestos were written by the futurists the artistic and social movement that

5:20

originated in italy between 1914 and 1933 and they were at the forefront of

5:26

prophesizing how the development of clothing using modern fabrics and simple shapes might enable the most

5:33

fascinating conquests of modern life their manifestos blurred the lines between art and industry

5:40

and whether with their declarations of clothing as both a symbol and vehicle of the new features

5:46

democracy they are a helpful starting point in uncovering how political and artistic

5:51

movements were promoting the new and discarding the old via the medium of fashion so i want to

5:58

introduce you to the tuta a one piece for men and boys conceived by artist ernesto tayat

6:05

who went on to become a member of the futurists he could see the tutor in 1920 and

6:10

proposed it as a uniform of modernity progression and activity not defined by

6:16

class or singled out as clothing for workers but for an informed consumer

6:21

who wanted to be liberated from the conformity of conventional dress as part of the futurist manifesto which

6:28

rejected the past and championed youth speed and technological achievements

6:33

historians have noted the purpose of futurist dressed was to act upon the environment to stun

6:40

to upset to annoy and ultimately to liberate bourgeois society

6:45

from its stuffy sartorial and social conventions

It is a one-piece garment with minimum stitching

6:52

it is a one-piece garment with minimum stitching the design was published in the italian

6:57

newspaper la nazioni on june 17 1920 the design of the

7:03

women's version was published on the 2nd of july in the same year the editorial published

7:09

alongside the passion pattern extols its virtues it is a one-piece garment with

7:14

minimum stitching that closed the whole body with just seven buttons and a simple

7:21

belt you are ready to go there was economy in the amount of fabric used consisting of four and a

7:27

half meters that could be cut with not even a sliver left over overall it saved energy

7:35

thanks to the sense of wellness and the full freedom of movement it ensured to those who wore it it would

7:42

have cost around 30 to 40 lira for the material which at the time was astonishingly good

7:47

value the futurist fashion manifesto were addressed to men men and women

7:52

respectively tayat's initial designs for the one-piece universal suit

7:57

proposed for the florentine intelligence appears to be aimed at men because as

8:02

you can see by the images here the female version of the tutor was a dress not a trials a suit none of the

8:10

manifesto suggested that the women wear trousers however the female fashion manifesto

8:15

published in 1920 was suggesting possibilities and transformations with an entire section

8:21

on daring stating in women we can idealize the most

8:27

fascinating conquests of modern life this manifesto and the ones that

8:32

followed were an instruction to the adventurer and the revolutionary although the female version

8:38

did not neglect playing into the all too familiar anxiety of the loss of femininity and reassured

8:46

the reader that there is no need to fear that in doing so the female silhouette will lose its

8:52

capricious and provocative grace the concerns around women adopting unconventional dress codes are

8:59

echoed in the discomfort voiced in the media by later iterations of the one piece

9:05

and surprisingly right up until the 1960s women continued to be pilloried for

9:10

presenting versions of the female silhouette in the one piece that did not conform to societal norms

Clothing for 'workers'

9:19

so the clothing for workers the concept of the tutor was not just confined

9:24

to european artistic movements it was progressed by creative thinkers outside of europe

9:29

who expanded on the idea of a multi-purpose uniform for the masses in 1922 the russian

9:36

artist and constructivist co-founder alexander brochenko in collaboration

9:42

with his wife varvara stepanova created production clothing and envisioned its

9:47

use by men and women in both industrial and white collar environments

9:53

production clothing presented options for the designer or artist as a worker because part of the constructive

9:59

it is manifesto defined art making as a form of professional expertise

10:05

like any other and not in particular as a spiritual calling

10:10

rochenko designed production clothing to align himself with the value of the workers in the

10:16

factory unlike the tuta which was positioned as a garment for the kind of a worker

10:21

who in reality was more likely to be a well-informed consumer who wanted to be liberated from the

10:27

conformity of conventional dress and was not working on a production line

10:33

in the case of both tayat and rochenko and stepanova there is a connect disconnect to the

10:39

fact that these well-educated literate artists were promotion promoting occupational workwear that was

10:46

likely to be out of the financial reach of the very workers that they were creating the clothing for

10:53

emily braun suggests that the futurists were undoubtedly anticipating much of the modern fashion phenom

11:00

phenomenon and by adapting to post-war economies realities and shifting class identities

11:07

they were promulgating good design available to all this raises the question of what we

11:13

regard as available to all the tutor design was open to all that

11:18

could afford the fabric but ultimately it was not taken up widely however democratic

11:23

the proposition appeared we might compare it to the offerings by designers such as margaret howe

11:29

who creates plain high-priced garments that may well have been adopted by tayat's audience did this the

11:36

description of these garments as you can see in the image here work relaxed fit surely

11:43

take their inspiration from their forebears and retail at around 325 pounds who

11:50

are these workers both tayat and rochenko's garments were assigned

11:56

different roles and meanings by the individuals who birthed them but there are parallels in their

12:02

narrative that extol comfort practicality and mostly gender-free positioning as part of their

12:09

agenda the clothing manifestos the men and women embodied the fervent speed

12:15

and technological achievements of the modern world and these are themes that resonate throughout the periods i'm covering as

12:22

we trace the history of this uniform ease of wearing convenience and freedom

12:28

are themes that reoccur the positioning of the one piece as workers clothing is a constant in

12:34

discourses of clothes for the job which we see more explicitly in the ensuing decades

12:41

the boiler suits brief positioning as revolutionary clothing for a new era was on hold

12:47

and in world war ii it was protecting workers in a factory not architects at the drawing board

12:55

the idea of the heroic and the new as embodied by clothing did not stop

America 1939, Vogue US

13:02

with the italian and russian intelligentsia in the early 1920s and a more fashion-led approach

13:09

framed to appeal to middle-class consumers was proposed by us vogue who were of course in the business of

13:16

publishing fashion manifestos in 1939 usfo published a nine-point

13:22

treaties proposed by the american industrial designer donald deskey entitled

13:27

radically new dress system for future women he galvanized eight fellow industrial

13:33

designers to construct an emancipatory approach to clothing for women and men

13:38

furniture designer gilbert rhodes one piece for the man of the next century

13:43

urges the banishing of buttons pockets collars and ties which has echoes and tires

13:50

just seven buttons and a simple belt you are ready to go some two decades earlier rode declared

13:58

his solo suit as the greatest time saver of the 21st century and references synthetic yarns and wires

14:05

that run through the suit to alter its color depending on the mood of the wearer

14:11

his revolutionary idea was manifested in the outfit you can see in the slide here that posits a high fashion version of

14:17

jumpsuits and spacesuits that are eerily similar to those sported by the high-speed adventurers of the

14:24

coming decades industrial designer raymond loeby who had a brief career as a fashion

14:30

illustrator before he moved on to industrial design claimed accurately as it turns out that

14:36

it is reasonable to assume that new types of fabrics will be developed which will greatly

14:41

affect the designs of clothing in other words fabrics will be air conditioned stitching will probably be

14:46

replaced by some cementing or medical middle class or molding process by positioning

14:54

fashionable clothing as a solution to the changing lifestyles of the middle classes

14:59

albeit one that would be rudely interrupted by world war ii designers were envisioning how

15:05

fashion and function could co-exist here i want to focus on the adoption of

The 1940S: A New Way of Looking

15:11

the boiler suit by female workers in the middle years of world war ii in 1941 compulsory construct

15:19

conscription of single women was introduced which brought about significant changes in working practices

15:25

and subsequently the clothing worn to undertake the heavy manual labor traditionally performed by men the

15:32

adoption of this occupational work wear by women has not gone unnoticed by fashion historians with craig suggesting that it

15:39

was not until world war ii that significant numbers of men women did wear trousers

15:44

and boiler suits when they were employed as mechanics in hard physical jobs by 1943 one in three factory workers was

15:52

female and they were building planes tanks and guns needed for the war whereas formerly women working in the

15:58

heavy industries would have undertaken lighter work dressed in the more commonly ascribed markers of femininity

16:04

such as skirts and aprons practical safety considerations entailed the overall protection of the

16:11

boiler suit the changes in labor practices opened up a new space where women were not only

16:17

taking on jobs for the boys but wearing the clothes too that is not to say that the adoption

16:24

of these protective garments did not escape scrutiny from social commentators such as journalists who were paying attention to

16:31

the ways in which women's clothing might be overturning accepted symbols of notion womanhood they were

16:37

not just scrutinized in newspapers and women's magazines attention was paid exclusively to the ways in which women

16:44

might retain their femininity in wartime propaganda such as even

16:49

overalls women at work in the second world war written by belgium politician

16:55

arthur walters britain's minister for labour during world war ii this publication was issued by the

17:01

ministry of information in 1942 it was created to highlight the achievements of women as part of the war

17:08

effort and champions in part women's abilities to undertake the jobs of men whilst at the same time positioning as a

17:14

revolution he initially portrays as disquietening and not a little patch noising

17:21

their knowledge of machinery was previously limited no doubt to a bicycle or a sewing machine and

17:27

women have invaded every sphere there is hardly any kind of work left

17:32

where they have not succeeded in taking the place of men he concedes it would be a grave mistake

17:39

to believe that women will willingly and spontaneously disappear from the field of production

17:45

on commerce in which they have been compelled to take place within this valorizing call to women's

17:52

contributions their physical appearance and its relations to notions of femininity is much remarked upon they wear exactly

18:00

the same uniform as their men comrades but they have not lost none of the allure of their sex

18:06

fashion historian valerie steele echoes this by stating that even when women wore trousers and

18:12

performed men's work it was not uncommon for them to wear feminine hairstyles

18:17

elaborate makeup and fancy underwear the image here portrays women hard at

18:22

work sporting sturdy boilers boots with the women on the right wearing headscarves

18:28

these images are in black and white but i'm in no doubt that they are wearing red lipstick this new way of looking

18:35

and being was part of the seismic changes brought about by world war ii and these shifts in work practices

18:41

contributed to the blurring of spaces where clothing was not so rigorous rigorously ascribed to the masculine

18:48

or the feminine and women could perform other ways of being the boiler suit may have served to

18:54

suggest gender parity between men and women although not status the foreman would

18:59

have worn a two-piece suit thus maintaining the traditional gender hierarchy

19:05

of men's clothing historian diana crane asserts that a shift in clothing norms

19:10

was pioneered in secluded public spaces associated with leisure and among working-class women in the workplace

19:17

she identifies this change taking place towards the end of the first world war but arguably these shifts were occurring in

19:24

world war ii women's uniforms and world war ii aside much has been written

19:30

about utility clothing the rationing scheme by the british government in 1941 to make the production of

19:36

civilian clothing more economical and christiane dior's hyper feminized new look

19:42

would make its indelible mark in 1947. in its initial function of protective

19:47

clothing the boiler suit is only loosely positioned as a gendered garment and i suggest that the time period in

19:54

which women were undertaking men's jobs was so transitory there was little commentary around the social and

20:00

cultural changes of women wearing protective clothing to undertake men's work craig suggests that during

20:07

the war the relationship between women and uniforms took center stage but her comments are directly attributed

20:13

to women who wore military garb constricted into the armed forces such as lorenz and the women's royal army

20:19

corps and despite the adoption of the military uniform being commented upon extensively less

20:26

attention has been paid to occupational clothing outside of these organizations

The 'Siren Suit' and the leisure classes

20:32

i referred earlier to my interest in the elevation of the everyday to the elevated and we can see a manifestation

20:38

of this with the boiler suit during world war ii it did not just protect the bodies of the industrial workers

20:46

undertaking heavy labor there was a period when it created the figures of the fashionable and leisured upper classes fine fabrics

20:53

and good tailoring elevated the boiler suit into a must-have item for wealthy people who wanted to

20:59

look good in a blackout the siren suit made a fleeting appearance and i suspect it would not

21:05

have been born in a musician's factory the prime minister winston churchill had his made up by

21:11

taylor's turnbull massa in velvet and pinstripe and french designer jean pattu

21:16

designed a version in red wool it was not just the uk that the

Europe 1939, Vogue's Eye View

21:22

glamorous one piece was featured in vogue's paris editions they were

21:27

proposing the one piece not as a radical item of clothing worn by female factory workers but as a

21:33

chic necessity would to wear with your desk mark death your gas mask

21:38

italian designer elsa scapirelli has created a version that ensured any woman who entered the air raid shelter

21:45

would do so in style it is not hard to surmise that after the war people wanted to wear

21:50

clothes that had nothing to do with protection and everything to do with joy and glamour women were expected to return

21:58

to the domestic sphere sphere and dior's groundbreaking new look entranced females the world over so it

22:05

is not surprising that the boiler suit retained its identity as workwear until the demarcation of work identity

22:12

and gender parity was blurring in the ensuing years um fiona i'm 20 minutes in do you um

22:20

would you like me to take questions now yes we've got a few that have come in alice said i don't know do you want to

22:25

switch your camera on so that everybody can see you yes uh let me escape my um

22:32

escape my screen and go back to zoom and start my camera

22:40

hey there you are right now we've got a first question in from

22:45

linda silkhild and actually i i i can't i've lost the context of of what the

22:51

at what point the question was asked and but linda was asking how much would that be at the time in uk currency so she's

22:58

obviously referring to oh to the lira you know um i i you know i tried to look that up but

23:04

it is it's a very common thing to try and do and it's really really hard to find an accurate

23:11

representation i s i i'm i i i guess i think it was probably sort of around

23:17

10 or 15 pounds but that is a bit of a wild guess just in terms of the value of the lira

23:22

and the kind of money that the people would have been spending on closing the 1920s i'm sorry i can't be more accurate i

23:28

mean if you wanted me to find out i could always email you back another time but it is a it's a hard one yeah okay thank you and

23:35

and then we've got um another question from paul minahan which is is there a relationship between the

23:42

boiler suit and the bib and breast suit yes in that um it's um

23:49

i mean yes no the bit the ribbon brace if you think about it you know you're putting your kind of bibs over the over

23:55

the sort of top and i deliberately didn't go down that row because i don't really see that

24:02

as a one piece because it's not covering the whole body um you would wear things underneath and

24:09

you wear shirts and jumpers so there's sort of flexibility on the interpretation there

24:14

but my my version of this coverall is definitely something that comes up to the neck has a zip up the middle

24:21

or buttons and that you step into without the bib and braces sure okay thank you um another question

24:30

from christine townley who's asking will covet lead to a change in what we

24:36

wear for work and play in the future sorry i missed you just cut out the first bit for you

24:43

do you think covid will lead to change in what we wear for work and play in the

24:49

future i i think it will be make a big impact because people have had months of wearing very different things

24:57

to be at home and i would be i don't think it will show quite yet

25:02

but i think within the next year um the fashion um catwalks will be i mean

25:09

already now the predictions for uh autumn winter 2021

25:14

um is is much much more casual than it would have been say a year ago yes i think it will make an impact

25:20

yeah well all we see is adverts for loungewear at the moment they call it different names to make it

25:27

sound a bit different um but it's still you know it's still like your gym jams really isn't it

25:33

right we've got a comment here from louise knight actually which is quite a i suppose an obvious thing to to pick up

25:39

on and she's saying and the one piece nature of boiler suits is by definition perhaps less suitable for women for

25:46

obvious reasons using the bathroom that kind of thing and absolutely yeah and what she's saying is

25:53

um you know unlike for example two-piece scrubs that are used in hospitals um which which i guess are

26:00

more suitable as unisex garments i don't know if you have any thoughts around that yes i mean

26:06

she's absolutely right because i mean i can i think one of the great things about doing this research is that it is an item of clothing i wear

26:12

myself a lot um and the fundamental um flaws in the design for women are

26:19

manifest every time you you need to go you need to go to the bathroom um there there is no easy way

26:26

around it um but um i think that it it what is interesting is that the the

26:33

design flaws of clothing has never stopped women or men wearing what they want to wear

26:38

because how you look and how you present yourself i think will always trump

26:44

how convenient it is to wear it which is why people wear shoes that hurt or clothes that are too tight because

26:50

you want to look good sure okay thank you um and one another

26:55

question from alison heymans and she's asking did winston churchill's famous boiler suits make it popular for

27:01

both sexes well it was quite it was quite as it

27:07

didn't it wasn't adopted um i think because it was very masculine i mean you can see in the

27:12

image here but it's it's quite sort of with all the sort of buttons and things on it and and you know as a definitely my

27:19

in my research it just it it had a fluttering moment but i just

27:25

don't think people wanted to wear things that reminded them of of work and labor and i mean to

27:31

certain extent kind of fear and protection which is why those quite extreme fashions after world war two

27:38

were taken up so so broadly um so i think if it was taken up by any

27:44

anyone at all undoubtedly and undoubtedly it was it just didn't have mass appeal

27:50

after a certain point lovely okay we'll take one more question just now and then shall we we carry on and then

27:56

we can take more questions at the end fantastic so a question from um

28:02

now let me try and find it yes um did the boiler suit start the trend for

28:08

onesies i think it has its roots there most certainly

28:14

um but no doubt at all um i think from it's you know most most

28:21

clothing trickles down to be worn in a different way this is kind of trickled up and down and

28:26

sideways um but i'm not in any doubt the onesie has it has its roots there in terms of

28:33

stepping in comfort leisure ease of wearing sort of a one with yourself these are

28:39

all themes that have just resonated through all of the years that it has been around yes

28:45

okay excellent right okay um i think we'll move on now and for the rest of the the presentation

28:51

the rest of the lecture and then we'll take some more questions at the end so well i'm turning myself off now and i will i will continue

28:57

speaking um right let me go back to my um slideshow

29:06

so um so if if world war ii saw the wild scale

1950s: Working class heroes and heroines, Vogue US

29:12

wide scale use of the boiler suit as a functional gender-neutral uniform brought about by the changes in men and women's labor

29:19

practices i suggest that the ways in which fashion and taste were being disseminated via print media

29:25

are factors to consider in understanding how the wearing of the boiler suit was perceived

29:31

and how it might have been altered through the lens of fashion whilst the functionality and look of

29:36

protective clothing as sported by women was remarked upon as part of the wartime

29:42

propaganda like even overalls i want to reflect on how the changes in clothes for the job might have be

29:50

been perceived via the symbolic presentation of work changes to ways in which fashion

29:56

and taste are reflected through a media lens in a range of print and film imagery are factors to consider and they

30:03

play a part in how our tastes are influenced and formed the border suit is often

30:08

referenced to suggest not just the everyday functional uniform of the worker

30:14

but activity and heroism fashion photographer irving penn's 1951

30:20

small trade series which first appeared in french american and english editions of vogue magazine

30:27

throughout that year valorized working men and women by presenting them in their everyday uniforms shot and lit

30:35

as if they were wearing couture depending on the way it was presented does the positioning of

30:41

workwear in the context of fashion play a part in reflecting a design change

30:46

i think it does these spreads which championed working men by presenting them in their everyday

30:54

work clothes present the boiler suit as worn by a firefighter a dustman

30:59

and street cleaners constructed as humble humble and simple but worthy of

31:04

inclusion in the pages of a fashion magazine the range of imagery in which work work was

31:10

overtly staged suggests that it could be framed as both functional and fashionable and patriotic in the u.s

31:18

edition of july the 1st 1951 the spreads are titled america

31:23

inc a fourth of july celebration the gallery of the unarmed forces 60 men

31:30

in their working gear i included the women in their skirts and aprons from uk though partly because unlike the

31:37

us version women are featured and because in all three publications there are no images of

31:43

women wearing trousers or boiler suits but this presentation of working garments

31:49

via the medium of vogue has allowed me to reflect what fashion cues designers may have

31:55

taken from this publication and considered that it may well have been the beginning of the social

32:00

construct of workers clothes being appropriated by fashion taste makers

32:07

throughout the 1950s and 1960s discourses on clothing were fluctuating

32:13

and it was becoming a way of embodying a new lifestyle for work and leisure the lines of which were

Artists and Makers

32:20

becoming less rigorously defined and opening up the intersections around clothes for the job

32:26

the iterations of the one piece designed as lifestyle garments by tayat and rajenko

32:33

appear to be highly preciate prescient and were fulfilling the predictions made 40 years earlier

32:39

artist jackson pollock and barbara hepworth wore these uniforms not to protect them from grease and dirt

32:45

on the factory floor but oil paint and dust from the activity of making

32:51

art pollock and hepworth were wearing boiler suits but they are not in a factory and we can observe that this version of

32:57

the boiler suit was worn by both men and women without any overt floating of sartorial conventions

33:04

artists and craftsmen were fulfilling the prophecy made for production clothing some 20 years

33:09

earlier that the making of art was a form of professional expertise and as such clothing should be designed

33:16

for this purpose the border suit as occupational clothing for craftsmen

33:22

is an unexplored category that sits confusingly in the uniforms for work

33:27

and habitus clothing there is a case to be made for exploring in more depth pierre bordeaux's observations in

33:34

his 1970 publication distinction on the blue overall for

33:40

craftsmen and women because we understand their clothing is distinctive

33:45

and its meanings are tied into how we might perceive the labor skills of making art bourgio

33:52

points out the opposition between the suit the prerogative of the senior executive

33:57

and the blue overall the distinctive mark of the farmer and industrial worker

34:03

and he declares that it is virtually unknown in other groups except industrial workers

34:09

and craftsmen suggest and it suggests he was not observing the broader fashion transformations taking place

34:16

at the time in the 1960s fashion designers were

1960s: The Modern Adventurer

34:21

continuing to challenge the fashion hierarchy of clothing for work clothing

34:27

of clothing for work and clothing for leisure in particular for men with the suit no longer forming

34:33

the bases of the wardrobe the boiler suit with its uncluttered streamlined silhouette

34:38

and connotations of the advanced and the radical was being transformed into a high fashion garment

34:44

the fascination with the space age the imaginative way in which new fibers were being utilized in lightweight

34:50

casual clothing and the distinction between fashion for leather fashion for leisure and fashion for the

34:56

workplace was blurring the lines for occupational work where roman laurie's 1939 predictions were

35:04

accurate when he suggested that stitching would be replaced by molding a suit with

35:09

no visible fastenings made from fabric that did not crease or stain was an intriguing symbol suggests

35:16

to suggest that clothing did not function just as a means of conquering imaginary worlds but an alternative way

35:22

to embody new masculinities design historian suzanna hanley suggests that

35:28

the best way to belong to the future was to look as if you were dressed for it and the la times in 1969 declared the

35:36

man in the space suit this fall need not be an astronaut he might just be your banker or your broker

35:42

this one in formal style spoke to an alternative way of dressing and reflected the ways in which men and

35:49

women were positioning themselves visually in the working and domestic sphere this fashion line

35:54

for men designed by the late pierre cada tip voice that typifies the joy i

36:01

suggest was emerging in men's clothing positing the notion that there were garments available in which you could

36:06

perform leisure activities the boiler suit was part of the constructing of a visual identity

36:12

for the modern adventurer and addressing the opportunities for more fluid forms of self-expression

36:17

offered by the separation of ideologies around gendered clothing

36:23

television shows that formed such a crucial part of popular culture in the 1960s

36:28

were introducing audiences to these ideas the avengers first aired in 1964

36:34

and was reflecting profound changes taking place with women if not quite taking the lead at least being

36:40

positioned as equals to their male counterparts their clothing reflected these changes

36:45

active independent and irreverent here is the late diner rig in a photo shoot from 1967 which

36:52

declares here's that avenger girl diana rigg in the grooviest jumpsuit on your tv screen

36:59

called the emma peeler after the character she plays it comes in eight colors and is made of a stretch fabric called

37:05

crimpling adventurers could be women too

37:10

diana crane reflects that clothes are a major tool in the construction of identity

New masculinities

37:16

offering a wide choice for the expression of lifestyles or subcultural identities

37:22

films were presenting and redefining overt visual clues that proposed different ways of

37:27

performing masculinity and as we can see in this image of sean connery's infamous blue toweling attire

37:33

from dr no it demonstrates the ways in which the one piece was bending the rules

37:38

around heteronormative dress conventions and who better to parade the breaking of these norms

37:44

than the epitome of modern masculinity 007 the italian job was portraying

37:50

criminals as snappy dressers note tony beckley's immaculate blue shirt turned back cuffs and chunky

37:57

jewelry worn with tremendous aplomb underneath his blue overalls

38:03

the 1970s and 80s was a time when the boiler suit as a fashion garment was demonstrating

1970s: Performers and rebels

38:09

the continuing evolution of gender-neutral clothing and his adoption arguably reflected the

38:15

shifts in what craig refers to as the post-1960s reassertion of male fashion and male

38:22

bodies the border suit was being adopted by artists such as mick jagger in the subcultures of music and

38:28

performance presenting more fluid ideologies on how manhood was perceived a man did

38:34

not have to be masculine to be a sex symbol these boiler suits challenge the normative view of heterosexual dress and

38:42

are almost hyper feminized with climbing fabrics dazzling embellishments

38:47

and revealing cuts historian joe paroletti who has written extensively on

38:52

gender fluidity of styles suggested that what was changing during this era was not masculinity in isolation

38:59

but masculinity as it related to the feminine which was also in a state of rapid

39:04

change and american women's fashions in the 1960s and 70s and today were the battlefield for two

39:12

competing visions of the feminine susie quattro's adoption of the jumpsuit as her working uniform

39:19

is an excellent example of the feminine susie quattro's

39:25

adoption of the jumpsuit is her working uniform is an excellent example of a female performer defying dress

39:31

conventions and presenting the duality of society's perception of

39:36

the feminine

Gender fluidity and the unisex Jumpsuit

39:41

jumpsuits formed a new a part of the new casual style which spoke of an alternative way of dressing and

39:47

reflected a shift in the ways in which men and women were positioning themselves visually in the working and

39:52

domestic sphere it was not just performers who were adopting the jumpsuits to assert their identity

39:59

it was trickling down into the mainstream both in high-end fashion magazines such as vogue

40:04

and advertisements aimed at the mass market the disco style as seen in vogue has the man front

40:10

and center of the image stating that when you're dancing you want leggy racy narrow clothes to

40:16

the right this advertising campaign is an example of an array of adverts for jumpsuits by

40:21

us clothing company the fifth season which portray men staring boldly into

40:26

the camera subverting the conventions of the male female gays you can see a unisex version of the

40:32

jumpsuit here being worn with great elan by a male and female couple with a rather queasy byline

40:40

reading he likes his clothes smooth sexy comfortable masculine powerletty

40:46

writing on advertisement advertisements for universe clothing has a year of theory that the underlying message seems to be

40:53

strictly heteronormative it's okay to wear unisex clothing because the model is a bona fide a

41:00

straight guy by the late 1980s the boiler suit was

Studio 54: 1977-1979

41:05

hitting the dance floor and at this point it was more commonly been referred to as a jumpsuit which

41:10

suggests that it was more play about playful than heavy industry you can see by these images that this

41:16

may well be the tipping point where every technological development in fabric fluctuations of sexual and social

41:22

identity the revolutions brought about by social and cultural changes were crystallized in this garment it

41:29

symbolizes the freedom of expression suggested by the futurists the new ways of looking that emerged in

41:34

the 1940s clothing for heroes and revolutionaries that emerged via 1950s post-war optimism and embraced the

41:42

opening up of new ideologies around sexual and cultural politics and new technologies from the 1960s

41:48

onwards it is a garment that can exist in multiple worlds

The Rational Dress Society: a new Tuta?

41:54

this article from the paris review demonstrates that the readings of the boiler suit as laid out here have come almost full circle the

42:01

rational dress society a collective committed to what the group calls counter fashion

42:06

a critique of fashion and capitalism through political dress they never have to choose a new outfit

42:11

or bend the vagaries of fashion because they've already picked the one they'll wear forever and it happens to be a boiler suit i

42:18

suggest that the evidence i have laid out here demonstrates that the boiler suit moved from functional to fashionable

42:24

most markedly during the timelines laid out here i spoke earlier about my interest in the

42:30

ever elevation of the everyday to the elevated and i have not had the chance to cover the iterations of jumpsuits we

42:37

might see in the catwalk today that sell thousands of pounds that is not an outcome

42:42

that our designers in the 1920s would have predicted by utilizing multiple definitions and

42:48

viewpoints i have been able to define the extensive ways in which this garment is presented

42:53

a uniform a symbol of work and play and a crime and a transgressive statement the boiler suit has been

43:01

deployed in imagery across fashion journals wartime propaganda visceral reputations

43:06

representations of work womanhood and notions of masculinity and has helped me to understand the

43:12

symbolism that has been ascribed to the boiler suit during the time periods covered in this

43:18

paper as a design historian i believe this garment is truly a symbol

43:24

of the design changes in clothing and how they reflect the world around us thank you

English (auto-generated)

0:00

thank you fiona and thank you for that introduction and um thank you everyone for being here

0:05

it's great to see so many people for um the wa last lecture of the year i

0:11

guess so um and it's nice to be able to bring something of christmas to you in this

0:16

very strange year i'm sharing my screen and hope that everyone can see

0:24

there we go and what i'm going to do is to tell you the christmas story

0:31

through the art of the centuries so we're going to look at ways in which lots of different artists over about

0:37

1800 years have depicted the christmas story for us so what do you think of when you think

0:43

christmas what's your image how do you see it you see this do you see a child's

0:49

nativity play because in many ways the nativity play the order of events

0:56

is the way we think of christmas we think of the angel announcing the birth to mary of them

1:02

journeying to bethlehem on the donkey we think of the birth of the shepherds coming the wise men coming

1:08

and then maybe the escape to egypt afterwards and so on because that's a conflation of the

1:14

different gospel stories rather than the single story but that's the sort of story i'm going to stick to and notice then the

1:21

background of this child's nativity play are the ox and the ass and they feature

1:29

in almost every image of christmas that i'm going to show you so what do we think of when we think of

1:36

christmas well some francis in many ways is responsible for our views of christmas

1:42

because francis told his brothers when they were preaching about the gospel

1:47

to give living tableau to show us nativities to show us all stories in the gospels he said once

1:54

he said go and spread the gospel only use words if you have to

2:00

and that is a much more effective way of telling the story than the sorts of words that we use and

2:06

so is art so what's the range of what what are we going to look at well here's a fourth century sarcophagus

2:14

in milan and here's the baby jesus in the center in a manger

2:19

with the only other characters in this being the ox and the ass they're adoring they're worshiping

2:24

they're observing it's interesting to look at that freeze along the bottom

2:29

but it's alternating roses and swastikas and you may know that the swastika

2:35

originally was an indian symbol of peace and reconciliation and wholeness

2:41

it was misappropriated as we know here's the book of kells from about 800

2:48

this is the opening page of the gospel of matthew and here we see sitting on his mother's knee a curly red-haired baby jesus

2:57

an interesting depiction of the mother and child this is insane dennis church in paris

3:04

stained glass window about 12th century and this is part of the story

3:10

of the wise men and the shepherds we see on the left the shepherds and the

3:17

angel announcing the arrival of the baby we see in the center the wise men and we see on the right

3:23

well there's the baby jesus being presented in the temple and here this is in the v a in london

3:30

this is a tapestry telling the life of the virgin and you read it from left to right

3:36

just like a cartoon strip we see on the left of the angel announcing to

3:42

mary we see mary and elizabeth the mother of john the baptist embracing each other

3:48

we see in the center the actual birth near the ox and the ass we see then the angel announcing to the

3:55

shepherds and on the right the wise men so we got almost a modern strip cartoon there

4:01

from the middle of the 14th century something similar happening in this

4:06

french ivory triptych because here we see in the center the

4:12

mother and child and we see the various um scenes around her we see

4:18

top left we see the annunciation we see man elizabeth we get the bottom left we see the three

4:24

kings arriving so we've got the whole story in what's got a small piece this is maybe at 20

4:30

inches high and it folds so it's transportable you take it around with you set it up

4:37

for an altar and set it up for devotions and prayers light a candle in front of us

4:43

this is in pisa cathedral this is pisano this is his carving of the nativity look

4:50

at this in a little bit more detail later but a number of things to notice my favorite bit is bottom

4:56

left and there is a very grumpy looking joseph

5:01

it's a crowded picture because what pisano has tried to do is put everything in one scene so top

5:08

left we got the enunciation the angel of mary the baby being born in the center below

5:14

that we've got the baby being bathed by the look of it held by mary and the midwife

5:20

we've got the shepherds on the right and as i said grumpy joseph bottom left

5:27

this is peter bruegel the elder the census of bethlehem this is why in the gospels

5:34

mary and joseph and the baby go to bethlehem it's to be counted and the census of

5:40

course is about taxation more than anything else how much money can the romans get out of people

5:47

here's rembrandt in 1632 typical rembrandt we've got dark edges to this

5:53

painting and the light in the center which is coming from the newborn baby is is lighting up the whole of this

6:00

painting for us and i just love this this is a ukrainian

6:06

icon from the late 17th century look at the way the lead shepherd is raising his hat

6:13

to the family and the second shepherd who doesn't have a hat is tipping them a greeting the ox at the

6:20

bottom is a bit cross-eyed and i think the ass who's observing the baby looks

6:26

exceedingly grumpy this is andre de la robia the the della

6:33

robia family found a method in florence in the 15th century of glazing

6:40

terracotta and went into business in a big way producing lots of different

6:46

terracotta images which sold around europe and this one ended up in portsmouth cathedral which is which is a long story

6:55

so where does the story begin well when we look at the gospels they

7:00

all begin in a different place mark doesn't have the birth stories at all

7:06

in mark it begins with the baptism of jesus age about 30.

7:11

in john it begins before creation in the beginning was the word and the

7:17

word was with god that's the final reading you'll hear if you're listening to nine lessons and

7:23

carols from king's college cambridge on christmas eve in matthew it begins with david

7:30

jesus is the new king david so we have a genealogy and then in luke we begin with the

7:37

annunciation by the angel gabriel they all begin in different places because they're all making slightly

7:44

different points about what's going to happen they're all giving us different interpretations

7:50

different spins on this story but i'm going to stick for

7:55

now to the order as told in the school nativity play i'm going to begin with the annunciation

8:02

i'm going to talk about simone martini about this amazing piece

8:08

there we go which is currently in the ufc in florence but which was painted for a side chapel

8:15

in siena cathedral and in this annunciation there are a number of features

8:21

which we're going to see in several annunciation scenes which i'm going to show you

8:26

um firstly the angels on the left mary's on the right what is mary's body language telling us

8:34

because in many of these paintings her body language is different is she shrinking away from the angel's

8:41

message in this one the angel's presenting her with an olive branch and between

8:46

mary and the angel there is a lily the lily the medieval symbol of mary and

8:53

her purity and in pretty much every enunciation painting you see

8:58

you'll see the lily in the sixth month the angel gabriel was sent by god to a town in galilee called

9:05

nazareth to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was joseph of the house of david

9:11

and the virgin's name was mary that's the bare story that these artists

9:17

are interpreting is a 12th century icon again gabriel on

9:23

the left mary on the right in that little half globe above we see god himself observing the scene

9:31

watching over what's happening directing it from above as it were and the angel with his hand raised in

9:38

greeting in blessing

9:44

here's another icon early 14th century this time a byzantine icon i'm here

9:50

the angel looks as if he's just landing doesn't he just touching down to earth as it were

9:55

and look above mary you can see that ray of light which is coming from the heavens the ray

10:03

of light which is impregnating her at this moment

10:08

it's not coincidence that in the renaissance pretty much all the artists did major

10:14

commissions major paintings on the annunciation because they saw the annunciation as an

10:21

icon of the renaissance itself this is about a new beginning

10:26

this is about the moment when god comes to change his creation and the renaissance period is very

10:33

conscious of itself as a new beginning a fresh start for creation so it's not

10:38

surprising that they they adopt this story as a story about the renaissance itself

10:46

so here is for our angelico this is perhaps my favorite painting in all the world

10:52

for our angelico there we go played up was commissioned to paint the 40 or so

10:58

cells in the san marco convent in florence and he painted

11:04

on each of the cell walls fresco a scene from the life of christ and if

11:11

you go up from the from the refectory up the steps to the dormitories you open the doors and you find this in

11:18

front of you this is maybe eight feet across and six feet high

11:23

and it's a sort of enunciation not just of the angel to mary but it's an enunciation by far angelico

11:31

of what the renaissance is all about he's just pre-renaissance but he's kicking it in

11:37

and in each of the cells there's a painting so each of the monks lives with a scene

11:44

from the life of christ just look at the quality on that angel's wing

11:50

the careful detailing of the feathers the colours of the feathers look at the

11:55

detailing on the angel's robe the way for angelica's captured the falling nature of the folds of the

12:01

robe and here's mary not shrinking away

12:06

as she did in the martini but leaning towards the angel her crossed hands across her breast

12:14

mirroring the way the angels crossed his hands as he approaches her

12:20

this is about the same time and in florence as well by filippo lippi but it's very different

12:28

because this is a domestic domestic interior you've got god top left there watching

12:36

over everything you've got just below god i think it's a servant girl

12:42

coming in to eavesdrop on what's going on you've got the fairly typical early

12:49

renaissance motif of a garden outside a window or a door because that

12:56

gives a sense of depth and of perspective to what we're seeing

13:01

you've got mary she's just stood up from her prayers as if she's surprised by the angel

13:08

the angel on his knees before her and the angel bearing quite a large lily

13:14

to give to the woman who is about to bear the son of god

13:21

his peregino um we're getting a bit later now we're towards the end of the 15th century

13:27

and god features again he's in that roundel above the painting holding in his left

13:35

hand a globe symbolizing the earth and with his right hand sending down the blessing got the

13:43

kneeling angel again presenting the lily mary a little uncertain in this one not

13:48

me not sure but i love the dove of diving in at

13:54

speed um zapping down on mary to show us that this is the moment of conception this is the

14:01

moment she becomes the bearer of god's son

14:06

and popping north to the northern renaissance is jan van ike i thought i'd blow it up

14:12

i haven't and he set it in a cathedral we're getting lots of different settings we're

14:17

getting a domestic setting we're getting the edge of a garden a portico we're

14:25

getting here a cathedral with the angel dressed interesting in clerical robes the angel

14:33

is wearing a very elaborately embroidered cope

14:38

and mary hands a part in acceptance surprise me just see that little dove

14:46

above her to the left again diving down on those rays of light

14:51

about to impregnate her and still in the north is roger van der

14:58

veden in a very domestic setting this time you get an impression of what a very

15:04

well to do household might have been in the netherlands in about 1500. look at the quality of

15:12

that wooden settle on the left and that chest next to the bed so you've got a nice

15:18

snug four poster bed she's at her prayers and the angel arrives and lots of

15:24

details that you can take your time over looking at like on the on the shelf of the mantelpiece there

15:29

seems to be a bottle of oil and a couple of onions why she gives me her bedroom i'm not sure

15:36

and i mentioned de la robier earlier and this is a fairly typical de la robbie piece

15:41

and what's unusual about this everything we've seen so far has the angel on the left and mary on

15:49

the right here there the other way around god top right instead of top left

15:55

the dove um hovering there rather than diving down on her

16:01

the lilies in the center um i wonder if this is because de la robie was working with a mold as

16:09

he did sometimes and what he was doing here was carving the mold

16:14

the way around it would normally be and then when it takes the impression it comes out as a mirror image it comes

16:20

out the other way around it's almost the only image i've ever seen with them the other way around

16:26

angel on the right and mary on the left here's leonardo da vinci this is

16:33

interesting because it's set outside and one of the

16:38

interpretations that's happening in some of these annunciation pictures

16:43

is that mary's obedience when she accepts the commission to be the mother of god's

16:50

son he's a reversal of eve's disobedience

16:55

in the opening chapters of genesis so what we're seeing here the artists

17:01

and theologians are telling us is a reversal when humanity went wrong

17:07

in the garden of eden now humanity is being put right by the obedience of mary

17:13

as he accepts the call and fast forwarding a couple of hundred

17:19

years or more um i spelt dante wrong dante gabriel rossetti from 1875 we've got a very typical

17:27

pre-raphaelite mary here with long auburn hair um and unusually she's just

17:34

been woken from sleep by the look of it because that's her bed you see the pillow behind her and the

17:40

angel here is presenting the lily the lily being a symbol of her commission

17:48

and that's what they look like in christmas cards

17:53

because christmas cards are of course the art that most of us will see many

18:00

many times over the next few weeks some of them

18:05

are a distillation of what the artists have said about christmas over the centuries

18:10

some of them that one bottom right is actually a reproduction of a french 15th century

18:17

book of hours so we have to get them to bethlehem

18:25

and the donkey always is a fairly prominent character in the school nativity play this is from

18:32

notre dame whether this was destroyed in the recent fire i don't know if this one still

18:38

survives or not um there's joseph leading

18:43

with their picnic slung over his shoulder mary on the donkey and hey look they they're taking the ox

18:49

with them it looks as if the ox is still in the picture even though we suppose he was in the stable

18:59

um i briefly showed you this one earlier this is really interesting because as is typical with peter bruegel

19:07

the main characters in the scene are sometimes difficult to find

19:14

a decree went out that all the empire should be enrolled in order to be taxed so off joseph goes

19:20

to his hometown of bethlehem with mary very pregnant on the donkey

19:27

there she is at the bottom just to the right of the center you can see a girl on a donkey if you

19:34

blow it up even more there's joseph on the left wearing what looks like a sombrero

19:40

there's mary on the donkey they've taken the ox along again she's so wrapped up that you can't tell

19:47

this is a pregnant girl it's interesting that he sets it all within

19:53

a typical netherlandish winter scene

19:59

if you go to bethlehem now there's some really interesting images there

20:04

because banksy has been to bethlehem more than once um here is a banksy

20:12

terrorist flinging not a hand grenade not a petrol bomb but a bunch of flowers

20:21

and here's a banksy here's the dove bearing an olive branch and the dove

20:27

is having to wear a flak jacket because bethlehem although in many ways is a

20:33

symbol of peace and quietness the little town of bethlehem

20:39

still we see the lie nevertheless at the moment is and has been for many

20:44

years a center of a conflict and here are two little cherubs almost

20:51

drawn by raphael himself pulling apart the wall that divides the

20:58

two halves of bethlehem so christmas art is not just about

21:03

the old stuff and the pretty stuff it's also about how do we comment on

21:10

what's happening now now we see other examples of christmas art that actually tell us something about

21:16

the nature of christmas in our world today not just about

21:22

a bit of history a bit of romance and that's how bethlehem looks on some

21:28

of our christmas cards lots of different images of it eastern

21:33

images western images current current middle eastern images and so on if you look at the top

21:40

right there we see three kings arriving and little mary and joseph and the

21:46

donkey in the stable bottom right

21:51

so they're there and she gives birth wraps him in buns of cloth and lays him

21:56

in manger because there was no place for them in the inn and the innkeeper is of course

22:02

a really important figure in the school nativity play and it's not unknown for the sympathetic

22:09

innkeeper to say when they ask for a bed yes of course the room do come in

22:14

then destroying the whole point of the story but nevertheless let's stay with the

22:20

story here's a painting on board from bohemia

22:25

about 1350. mary has just given birth to a very large

22:32

muscular baby the stable is a sort of gazebo rickety

22:38

gazebo and down below we've got joseph and the midwife i'm clearly

22:45

pouring hot water and gathering towels because that's what you do for a birth isn't you need lots of hot water and

22:51

towels we've got a shepherd to the right and some sheep and it looks like a goat

22:58

on top of those rocks and then bottom right who's that character

23:04

well he is the donor of the local church he's holding the church up as an

23:10

offering to mary and the child and so the painters put the donor here

23:16

in the picture to show us his generosity is gerard david from about 15 10.

23:25

um ox in the ass having a really good look at this tiny naked baby

23:30

and david doing what is quite typical of giving us a scene outside the building because that scene

23:38

there with the two shepherds peering in and the flock of sheep in the distance

23:44

is giving us a sense of perspective and depth to the picture mary and joseph

23:51

looking very devotional and top left a whole battalion of angels flying in

23:57

to oversee what's going on and to observe

24:02

and here's palasquievo in the 15th century a couple of nice little angels top left

24:08

and a shepherd appearing top right if we look behind mary to the left there

24:14

are a couple of fruiting trees and this might well be a reminder of what i said a little earlier

24:22

what was it caused the fall of humanity in the opening chapters of genesis it

24:27

was eating the illicit fruit well if this is the illicit fruit here

24:33

on these trees then mary's obedience that we saw in the annunciation story

24:39

is actually causing the redemption salvation of humanity

24:45

and here in a theme which i often spot joseph looks exhausted poor old joseph

24:52

has fallen asleep after all birth is a very tough um

24:57

tough thing for us men so joseph a number of them having been exhausted has fallen asleep

25:05

and here's the holy family on christmas cards all sorts of different

25:12

depictions of what they might have looked like how we imagine them looking

25:20

and so we get to the visitors the adoration of the magi the wise men

25:27

the magicians the astronomers or astrologers this one's in the vatican museum

25:35

it's on a fourth century sarcophagus and we can see the star above mary and

25:41

jesus being pointed out by the lead um wise man or king

25:47

we can see jesus accepting the first gift we can see three wonderful comic camels

25:53

there accompanying each of the three wise men and notice they're dressed in togas so

26:01

we're still well within the roman dispensation

26:07

a little bit later in ravenna this is a mosaic a byzantine star mosaic and here the

26:15

three wise men are dressed in typical persian clothing of the time

26:21

those caps and cloaks and leggings and they're each carrying their gifts as

26:27

they approach the newborn king to present them

26:34

here's jotto jotto often gives us some really interesting insights to what's going on

26:39

notice that giotto interprets the star as a comet which we see there flying

26:45

above the stable the stable for him is clearly outside on

26:51

a piece of rock i doubt he's ever seen a camel if you look at the

26:56

camels on the left a little bit elongated and strange looking

27:01

and as when the queen is presented with a bouquet of flowers

27:06

by someone in the crowd she hands it to a lady waiting on her left

27:12

so the baby jesus and or mary have handed to the attendant angel

27:18

extreme right in our picture the first of the gifts the gift of gold

27:23

as the wise man kneels now notice these wise men don't yet seem to be kings they're not

27:31

dressed um with crowns or in raw robes they're dressed more in clinical robes

27:37

and certainly that one at the back is much more like a priest or a monk and he's like a king so how do they get

27:45

to be kings here's jan gosset in 1510

27:52

we've blown that one up because there's some interesting things in this firstly notice that the whole thing is

27:58

set in a ruined town and as time goes on in the 15th

28:03

16th centuries more and more these scenes are in ruins

28:09

they're in ruins because they're making quite important points the point is that the world into which

28:16

jesus is born is a world which is going to pot it's a

28:21

world which is falling to bits if he's come to redeem it it needs

28:26

redeeming so how do you depict that artistically you show a world which is in ruins

28:34

another theme that's developing here is that the three wise men or kings as they're now beginning to

28:40

look like are thought to represent the whole of humanity as humanity comes to jesus

28:48

so they represent in some paintings the three continents there were then

28:54

three of africa asia and europe so sometimes we get three wise men one

29:02

looking africa one looking asian one looking european sometimes they're thought to represent

29:07

the three ages of man you get a young one middle one and an old one

29:14

and also what's happening now is that renaissance artists

29:19

see this theme as a way of showing off their skill you can paint rich robes you paint

29:26

jewels you can paint people you can throw in a dog or a camel or two

29:32

you paint as many angels as you like so here the artist is almost saying look

29:38

how clever i am look how much i can get into this painting and at the same time preserve the

29:44

theological integrity of what i'm trying to say

29:51

this is sandro in about 1505 maybe a bit earlier

29:56

and on the right that figure staring out at us is botticelli himself

30:03

and what's he saying what do you think of all this what's going on here because the three

30:09

wise men here are three members of the medici family

30:14

the ruling family of florence and all their entourage are their relatives their servants and

30:22

their friends so there are lots of portraits in here showing us

30:27

the florentine hierarchy as it were at the end of the 15th beginning of the 16th century

30:34

and quite what botticelli thinks of it i'll make up your own mind again he's shown it in ruins and there

30:42

at the top behind mary poor old joseph was nodded off again

30:47

and somebody asked me recently by the way why joseph is almost always shown as quite a lot older than mary

30:55

and it's it's to get around a problem in mark's gospel the problem in mark's gospel is that

31:02

someone says to jesus your mother and your brothers and sisters are here

31:07

the medieval church thought that mary was a perpetual virgin she never had intercourse even after the

31:14

birth of jesus so how does he get brothers and sisters well he gets them because

31:20

the reasoning goes joseph was married before and widowed so joseph brought to the

31:28

game with him some brothers and sisters half brothers and sisters of jesus so that's

31:35

why in almost every depiction we get joseph schoens quite a bit older than mary

31:41

his rembrandt 1632 with the light emanating out from the

31:47

center the light of the world into all the dark corners around it

31:54

and here's bern jones um late pre-raphaelite in the v a museum

32:01

in tapestry form typical pre-raphaelite motif of all these wonderful flowers and

32:08

vegetation which are woven in this tapestry and often the pre-raphaelites observed this

32:14

from life and so would sketch it and then go home and design it into a tapestry

32:20

and we've got again we've got quite an old joseph on the left haven't we with a small baby

32:25

and in the three wise men that central one looks very much like his escape from a

32:31

berne jones arthurian legend to me because bern jones did lots of pictures

32:37

of the arthurian legends and here they are in stained glass this

32:42

is andrew's cathedral in sydney um and again this is this is strip

32:47

cartoon style on the left we have them observing the star or a comet again

32:54

then we have them arriving in jerusalem then we have them consulting with herod about where the new king is to be born

33:00

and then we see them arriving and opening their gifts for the newborn child

33:07

and where are they now well cologne cathedral claims it has them

33:12

it's got them in this vast casket holding the remains of the three wise men

33:18

um just just to worry about why the three wise men because one of the things the gospel writers are

33:24

saying in the visitors is who this person is and how we relate

33:31

to him at this birth the wise men whatever else they are are foreigners

33:37

they come from another culture from another religion and from a place a long way away and yet

33:44

they are among the first to visit and bring gifts and pay homage

33:50

and matthew is saying in that that the worship of jesus and those who

33:56

come to jesus is not limited it's not limited to jewish people

34:02

not these christian people it's something which is open to the whole of humanity

34:07

and in a sense those three kings or three wise men represent us as they approach the baby

34:13

jesus as do these guys there's a typical middle eastern shepherd

34:22

and in the bible shepherds are really important king david was a shepherd he was found when keeping

34:27

the sheep the best known psalm is the lord is my shepherd an analogy of god himself jesus

34:35

describes himself as the good shepherd in john chapter 10. so when we come across shepherds in the story

34:41

they ring all sorts of bells for us here's giotto again a very odd

34:49

perspective in this mary and jesus resting on a on a rock

34:54

ledge really um a cohort of angels above announcing the birth of the shepherds

35:00

joseph has dropped off again can't help returning to it but he keeps dropping off

35:06

and here's the pisano i looked at earlier rather than being cartoon strip form

35:13

pisano puts everything into a single scene the annunciation on the left the birth

35:19

the shepherds the washing that's going on underneath and and this pisano and similar works that

35:27

he did are almost kick-starting the first stirrings of the renaissance

35:33

because this is in relief this stands out there's depth to this

35:39

and artists who painted were beginning to ask themselves

35:44

how do i show on a flat surface a wall or a canvas the sort of depth

35:51

and perspective that you have in real life or you can get into carving and wrestling with that problem is

35:58

something that begins the the whole journey of the renaissance which is another story

36:05

here's andrea mantegna with the two shepherds in this case

36:12

being the two donors of the painting there are a pair of brothers living in siena we've got the the trees behind mary

36:20

again symbolizing the fruit which is the the cause of or plays a part in

36:25

disobedience but mantegna is looking forward because look behind the shepherds above them

36:32

we've got a long and winding road depicting the path which jesus's life is

36:38

to take up to that hill in the distance and we've got a bare tree there

36:45

which looks suspiciously like a cross on which the crucifixion takes place with olive branches and so on growing

36:53

out of the tips of it so mantania is saying as as many artists do that

37:00

the christmas story is not just about a beginning it's about something which is stretching

37:06

off for the next 30 years or so and so they drop hints into these paintings

37:12

of the future that jesus is to encounter

37:17

is carlea crevelli in about 1480 the shepherds being led by the angel

37:23

actually takes them into the stable here and points to the baby joseph again has

37:28

dropped off by like behind joseph that character is walking along the path

37:35

with i think a dead rabbit over his shoulder so has been to catch his lunch or his

37:40

supper and in the background kirilly has given us um a typical view of what a medieval town

37:46

might have looked like at the time back to the northern renaissance is hugo

37:53

van der gose and these two prophets are opening the curtains for us

38:01

they're revealing the scene they're drawing back the curtains and look on stage behind the curtains

38:08

here is the nativity story and there's a little baby lying naked in the manger and the two shepherds on the left i'm

38:15

stumbling into the scene almost falling over themselves in enthusiasm and in their hurry to get

38:22

there giorgione in 1510

38:28

again it's been set on a rock face in a cave there are some traditions

38:34

that the stable if indeed it was a stable was set in a cave

38:40

and i loved this lorenzo lotto for about 1534 um the the two shepherds are again the

38:49

two donors of the painting are included in it but look at the bay the baby is reaching

38:55

up to the lamb that's it in close-up what's he doing there

39:01

he's taking hold of his destiny because the lamb of god the one who is

39:07

to be sacrificed is a very powerful image of jesus and here he's welcoming

39:14

the lamb he's welcoming the sacrifice that he himself is to become

39:21

this caravaggio this is one of the few paintings i've come across in which mary seriously looks as if

39:27

she's just given birth the poor girl is actually exhausted isn't she she's whacked

39:34

whereas in most of them she looked like a royal princess freshly made up

39:40

and there for the public to photograph is caravaggio blown up a bit

39:45

typical caravaggio use of dark and light here the way he's spotlighting some bits

39:52

putting other bits into the dark bottom left the basket looks like it's

39:58

got some of that picnic in it but also maybe some of um joseph's carpentry tools are in there

40:07

matthias storm who's a follower of caravaggio really i'm painting a very carabaggio-like

40:14

scene in which we are very close into the action

40:19

unlike some of these pictures which are full length or is a distance here we're right up close we're involved in

40:26

what's happening here and this is by storm as well you're getting even closer and look at the way this baby is

40:32

lighting up the whole of the scene all these characters it's almost as if i am on

40:38

this side of the table on this side of the manger i'm included in this as i am here by the

40:44

same artist the shepherd is about tension between

40:49

the settled and the nomadic it's the cain and abel story shepherds were religiously unobservant

40:56

they were on the edge of society they might even be non-jewish so why do

41:01

shepherds visit shepherds are religiously unclean in the culture they can't get a synagogue at the right

41:08

time they can't wash at the right time they can't observe the food laws properly

41:14

so we've got these two stories who arrives to the baby jesus the wise men foreigners a different

41:21

religion from far away the shepherds the ones are on the edge

41:27

those who are perhaps not as religiously observant as they should be

41:32

but but and it's ambiguous david was a shepherd in psalm 23 the lord is my shepherd

41:40

and there there are christmas cards and then a few images of afterwards the

41:46

mother and child his chimabue in 1270 surrounded by these angels

41:52

his painting of mary already crowned queen of heaven on her throne

41:58

and this wonderful one by conrad von sirst with mary in bed with the baby and the

42:03

ox and the ass there and joseph on his knee is blowing the fire to make the porridge

42:12

and there's andre that de la robbie this one's in portsmouth cathedral mary and baby a couple of little cherubs

42:19

guarding them bellini from 1509 and quite a big baby

42:26

again with curly red hair in this one and this madonna of the carnation by leonardo da vinci

42:36

one of leonardo's most famous madonnas and the carnation blood red symbolizing the fate

42:44

that that awaits this child then they go they escape the persecution

42:51

that is about to become because herod following the visit of the wise men

42:57

attempts to kill all the baby boys so they go to egypt

43:03

and the innocent children are massacred this is a horrific painting by bruegel

43:10

why would you buy this um look bottom bottom left just left of the center of the bottom a man

43:16

on his knees pleading with the soldiers just above that a woman with her dead

43:22

baby on her lap a picture of soldiers and dragging

43:27

babies away from their mothers and that large group of soldiers at the back

43:32

marching into the town and then of course the the art that we all see

43:39

is the images of the christmas cards here's the first commercial christmas card

43:46

1843 what interests me about this if you look top left and right

43:52

you've got the family in the center enjoying themselves but you've also got images of charity

43:57

top left you've got some poor people being fed top right a poor girl being given some

44:03

winter clothing and it's as if here the dickensian

44:08

christmas of being charitable of helping the homeless and the poor

44:13

is beginning to take root in society the robin the robin interestingly a

44:21

symbol because of his red breast of the passion and of the blood there he is

44:28

i'm joke robbins inevitably and of course it all happens in winter

44:34

well at least it does on our christmas cards even if you're australian it probably

44:40

happens in the winter as well although it's high summer out there and i just wonder

44:45

whether all these images of winter on our christmas cards are a bit like narnia where

44:52

the land is ruled by the white witch the one who brings winter and cold

44:59

and the thor is coming because of the lion aslan who's returning and in our christmas

45:07

because of the baby jesus who is being born and we can't do without him at christmas

45:13

can we at santa of course it's nicholas and here he is

45:18

it's in catherine's monastery in sinai 13th century

45:24

and there he is a current

0:00

for those of you who are joining for the first time uh and uh linda for example linda is asking

0:06

uh will we be able to watch the whole film um so well yes you can so

0:12

we've deliberately chosen for this series um three films citizen kane and bringing up baby were the first

0:18

two uh suspicion is the third one um uh you may uh have recognized the link

0:25

between all three of them which is that they're all rko pictures and that's not a coincidence because the bbc

0:32

have clearly just got access to a whole load of rko films which they've put up

0:38

on iplayer for the best part of a year i mean some of them have been up for a little while

0:45

excuse me but um most of them have still got you know nearly a year to run so you've

0:50

got a lot of time to catch up not just on the films we're talking about but some other really really good films

0:57

of the 30s and the 40s so go on to bbc iplayer and have a look

1:03

um but today we are doing suspicion so the way these sessions work is in this

1:11

case actually i'm going to go first so i'm going to speak for about 20 minutes on a particular theme uh we'll take some

1:18

questions and some comments from the chat and then i'll hand over to rob miller who's a media studies

1:24

consultant and knows much more about hitchcock than i do and he'll correct all my mistakes and

1:30

he'll tell you about some themes that i haven't covered um now when we've done the the last two

1:38

citizen kane and bringing up baby we have tried where possible to avoid giving

1:44

away the endings because we're aware that uh people may not necessarily have seen those films

1:51

and might not want us to spoil uh you know the the the outcomes uh now

1:56

with suspicion um two things here obviously

2:02

the ending is very important and so i don't want to spoil it too much for those of you who haven't seen it

2:08

but on the other hand it's a really interesting discussion point and it's quite difficult to get through

2:14

a whole hour talking about suspicion without talking about the ending so a

2:19

couple of things here if those of you who don't want to know the ending

2:24

could just type into the chat you know please don't give away the ending that

2:29

will give me an indication of you know how uh coy i need to be um and then in the sort

2:37

of tradition of kind of you know football focus or whatever we'll have a bit towards the end where we say

2:43

look away from the screen now if you don't want to know the results and then rob and i will talk a little

2:48

bit in more detail about the ending of the film and also the ending of the book um

2:54

towards towards the end of the lecture so so we've got some please don'ts already okay so

3:00

so rob health warning be as coy as we can for at least the first 45 minutes of the

3:06

session and then it'll be no holds barred towards the end and if you know if you want to drop out of that point

3:12

please please do um so let me get on with my bit of the presentation so first off

3:18

let me share my screen

3:25

[Music] there with me now um

3:33

can people see that slideshow rob can you see that yes i can sir thumb up excellence um

3:40

so the only thing i'm having trouble with now is i can't get to the bit where it lets me go to slideshow play from

3:46

starts there we go excellent good so um what i want to talk about for the first

3:52

sort of you know 15 minutes or so um is the idea so we we think of

3:58

hitchcock classic otter you know everybody he's probably the most famous film director there has probably ever

4:05

been so you know so if we think about uh directors in control of their movies

4:11

hitchcock is pretty much the first person you think of really and he has a very distinct visual style

4:17

so if you look at this still not from suspicion obviously from psycho you know you could pretty much uh you know show

4:24

that to anybody who's ever seen a film in the last 50 years and say you know take a guess at who that film is made by it and

4:31

they'd say you know blonde lighting uh you know suspense drama it's probably

4:38

hitchcock so you know he's he's very he's a very visual filmmaker

4:43

even his promotional shots um you know this is not actually from the film this is something

4:49

that's been mocked up to promote the film um and it still uses all the same

4:55

devices you think that looks like a hitchcock film you know so so he's a very visual director

5:02

which you know might seem a weird thing to say we are talking about film film is a visual medium but if you

5:09

think back to those of you who were with us last time around we were talking about howard hawks and we were talking about bringing

5:15

up baby and screwball comedy and you know howard hawks has a visual

5:20

style of course he does but he also relies really heavily on dialogue and scripts and you think

5:26

about bringing up baby you think about um ball of fire you think about uh

5:31

uh you know pretty his girl friday really wordy talky films where the

5:37

script is really really important um i mean another example woody allen

5:43

you know um okay woody allen's got a bit of a visual style but you wouldn't come to woody allen thinking

5:48

oh the scripts the words the jokes aren't important they're absolutely as important as the

5:55

uh as the visuals so so when i say that hitchcock is a visual film director actually it's not you know

6:01

quite as kind of obvious as it seems and um i always like a

6:06

counter factual so what happens when hitchcock doesn't rely on the visuals and relies instead on the script

6:13

um so hitchcock actually did make a screwball comedy it was called mr and mrs smith

6:19

and i think pretty much everybody agrees including hitchcock himself it's really not his best film um you

6:26

know it and it's quite telling that when truffaut interviewed hitchcock

6:33

there's a brilliant uh interview or series of interviews that francois truffaut the french director does with hitchcock

6:39

where he kind of systematically goes through all of these films and talks you through them um when when

6:46

truffaut asked him about this one hitchcock said i just followed the scripts of norman

6:52

krasner in other words he didn't really do very much other than film the scripts and film the

6:59

actors saying the script and the end result was quite frankly a bit flat and not his

7:05

most interesting film so so what i want to talk about today

7:11

uh is hitchcock's approach to adaptation hitchcock's uh attitude and and links

7:19

with his screenwriters because actually having said all of that intro about his very visual

7:26

film director it's really striking how much his script

7:31

and the process of writing those scripts was really really important to you so

7:38

so so before we go any further the first thing to sort of mention is that hitchcock

7:43

never took a screenwriting credit so again you know we talk about hotels talk about woody allen you know woody allen

7:48

writes all his own films hitchcock never took a script writing credit so and he almost wore that as a badge of

7:56

honor you know he actually sort of said you know i'm not not interested in in that side of it you know the idea of

8:01

actually writing things down but yet at the same time he he worked with

8:06

some really noticeable screenwriters and he almost always took his screenplays

8:12

uh his adaptations from novels from plays and from short stories in fact when i came to

8:19

this uh researched this i was really racking my brains to think about hitchcock films

8:25

certainly major hitchcock films um which are not adaptations there are

8:32

hardly any of them and so you think of uh this is where vlog's going to correct me i'm sure but

8:37

but actually even the ones you think oh you know rear window that's got to be an original screenplay

8:43

they're not they're all taken from short stories or from plays or whatever so so

8:50

he he is really interested and alert to literature literature and and the

8:56

written word so let's look a little bit at um you know how suspicion came about how

9:03

that was adapted and draw some sort of general conclusions from that about how hitchcock works more generally

9:12

so um so i think the first thing to to to bear in mind is that hitchcock is a

9:18

planner he absolutely plans meticulously everything that he wants to shoot

9:24

um so he always claimed for example that he never looked at the script

9:29

when he was actually in production you know he would spend a lot of time before any shooting started in great

9:36

detail but once he actually got on set he claimed he never looked at the scripts now you have to remember that hitchcock is a

9:43

great self-mythologizer so i don't actually believe that's literally true but but the sort of general consensus is

9:50

that hitchcock got really really very involved at that early planning stage and he would sit

9:56

down with his screenwriters and have long conversations with them even to the extent he would take them

10:03

out you know for dinner he'd say even there are even examples he takes some of them on holiday with him

10:08

just so he can have these long conversations about what's going to go into that eventual finished film

10:15

and um and then beyond that you know he's not above asking for you know rewrites and edits

10:22

uh there's a story of thornton wilder you know very well established playwright and screenwriter who wrote um

10:30

uh uh oh mental block rob help me out um joseph cotton film oh gosh yeah i'll google it now while

10:37

you're uh thank you um anyway um uh did he dump the scripts anyway at the

10:43

last minute said no yo complete rewrite for you you know a shadow of a doubt thank you there you go it comes with eventually

10:49

uh and so um you know he wasn't above taking some very experienced screenwriters and saying

10:55

yeah it's not quite what i was looking for starts again you know so he took a lot of interest in in those

11:00

scripts and um more to the point uh he took a lot of interest in

11:08

books in novels in plays and places where he could find you know hot

11:14

properties basically so this is obviously a jokey one where he's pretending to uh look at birds but um of course all

11:22

all studios used to routinely buy up the rights of particularly very popular

11:28

novels and and plays and and hitchcock was really alert to this as well you know he

11:34

would he would he would read a lot of popular fiction he would sort of squirrel that you know information way

11:41

and think okay yeah one day you know i might get around to to filming that of course he's working

11:47

within the studio system so he's he's he's still kind of at the mercy of what those

11:52

studios are prepared somebody can buy so you know again if you think of a

11:57

modern film writer the filmmaker like scorsese you know who might sit on a project for

12:02

decades at a time and you know he really wants to make silence and he waits for the right moment to get around to that

12:08

wasn't quite like that for hitchcock you know so suspicion for example came about because uh he was having lunch with an

12:16

executive at rko and uh i think the rko guy was pitching something else to him and he happened to

12:22

mention that they'd got the rights to this book and hitchcock had read the book years before and uh you know

12:28

something that he'd got in the back of his mind that's something that he would like to make and you know the penny dropped and the two things

12:34

came together i'll come back to that in a bit more detail in a minute but um so then you sort of think okay so

12:41

if hitchcock is alert to these properties what is it within them that that interests him and i would say there are

12:48

kind of two things really here so one is books that contain within them

12:55

visual set pieces so things you know particular scenes particular images

13:00

that hitchcock can come back to and elevate above the kind of words on the page into

13:07

something that's purely cinematic and i think the other thing that interests him is a kind of central

13:13

idea in the book usually just one thing one little sort of uh you know turning

13:20

point one pivotal thing you know uh what what if the wrong man

13:25

got convicted or the wrong man got pursued by the law you know what if somebody was in the wrong place at the

13:32

wrong time what if uh two strangers met and plotted a murder together you know just just

13:38

one little quirky idea that was enough to kind of build a whole story around and um

13:46

and again let's bring this back a bit so if that's what hitchcock is looking for in uh books and in plays

13:54

um it's interesting on those rare occasions when he does start from scratch so um he worked with a a

14:02

screenwriter called ernest lehmann this is in the sort of late 50s and um they were adapting i think it

14:08

was a hammond innis book or they were trying to and they were getting absolutely nowhere

14:13

and um hitchcock said you know what let's just leave this alone for a bit and let's just take some

14:18

time out and just hang out together and um and maybe try and you know construct something

14:24

from scratch and and lehman said we know what i'd like to do i'd like to write the ideal the absolute archetypal

14:32

hitchcock film because obviously by this stage you know hitchcock's style is really really

14:37

well known and um lehman and hitchcock sit down and they construct this whole film basically

14:44

around three ideas so the idea that they want to have a murder in the uh un headquarters

14:52

but they want to have a finale on mount rushmore and they'd read they both read this this

14:58

newspaper article about the creation of a fake secret agent so somebody who

15:04

had an identity uh that was made up in order to kind of act as a decoy uh in

15:11

espionage and of course that film then became north by north west um but interesting that you know again

15:17

those two elements they just started with okay we want to start here in the un we want to end here in mount rushmore

15:24

and in the middle we want this quirky thing about mistaken identity and so let's come back to suspicion

15:32

then because you'll find all of those things in suspicion um so um i'm going to skip ahead a bit

15:41

actually because yes chris can i just say that i think um there's a bit of feedback coming back from your

15:46

microphone i don't know if you've got your oh okay i can't hear that at my let me um

15:52

disguise people sort of saying that on the chat that it's a bit a little bit yeah okay i wonder what i can do though

15:57

because um uh obviously i can't mute myself because

16:04

then they'll be able to yeah no i just don't know whether you've got your notes close to the microphone and when you know maybe it's rustling

16:10

from my papers sorry i'll move them over here although it does mean i'm gonna have to look over here now so apologies

16:15

uh if that's the case um so uh let's let's go on a bit

16:23

from current side there you go can people see um cary grant on matt rushmore there and he's has the rustling stopped

16:31

fiona sounds good to me okay good i'll play one then so um

16:38

so i'm gonna come back to those in a minute so um uh yeah so the the the adaptation of

16:45

suspicion so it came uh soon after um hitchcock's work on uh

16:51

rebecca now part of the reason for putting this slide up is it's again quite interesting i think in as

16:57

much as you won't necessarily be able to see all the detail here but you know this is a kind of fairly

17:03

familiar layout for a poster you've got the title you've got the actors names and then you

17:08

know in quite big text you've got alfred hitchcock down here um and then you've got the producer's name

17:14

david selznick and here you've actually got the name of daphne du maurier because rebecca was adapted because it was an

17:21

incredibly popular book and daphne de mourier at that time was a very popular and well-known

17:27

author so let's go on to suspicion now here are two posters for suspicion

17:33

now again uh on this slide i'm not expecting you to be able to read absolutely all the detail but

17:38

um trust me when i say that the author of the book on which suspicion was based is

17:45

absolutely nowhere to be seen on either of these posters alfred hitchcock of course is right up

17:51

front the actors of course are right up front interestingly i noticed that you just noticed this myself actually

17:57

in very small print on this right hand one it even mentions the people who wrote the screenplay of suspicion

18:04

and but nowhere does it mention the actual author of the book on which it's based

18:09

um and part of that plays back to like i say hitchcock's idea that

18:14

you know once he has digested the original work it almost becomes of little importance

18:22

to him um now obviously he doesn't design those posters but but you know everybody's going in the same

18:28

direction everybody's thinking this is a hitchcock film it's not a daphne de maurier film or a

18:34

francis isles films i'll come on to and i thought this quote was quite interesting as well obviously again

18:39

talking later about the birds but i read it only once and very quickly at that so the idea that i just forget about the

18:46

book and i start to create cinema so let's look about that let's look at the book that created

18:52

the the thing that is suspicion so it's called before the fact and it's by francis isles now francis

18:58

isles uh is if you're a crime fan you probably still know francis isles he was

19:04

certainly very big in the 30s um he went under various other

19:09

um as this cover suggests he was the also the author of malice of forethought which is you know has been adapted

19:16

several times as well and this was a book that hitchcock read and admired and as i say

19:21

filed away as one that he would come back to and again largely because it has this kind of idea

19:28

of you know this central premise of the the beleaguered wife and and the

19:35

the possibility of murder let's just say that uh for now without giving any spoilers away

19:40

now as i say rko already owned actually the rights to this so there was a this uh you know coincidental lunch

19:46

where hitchcock said oh before the fact i like that can i can i get on board apparently before

19:52

hitchcock uh became involved and it became an a picture you know a big proper big budget picture

19:58

it was going to be a b movie uh with george sanders in it which i have to say as a george

20:04

sanders phone i kind of wish that that that version existed as well because that would be really really

20:10

interesting um but anyway hitchcock uh said well great that you've got it rko

20:16

actually already had a script ready to go um and hitchcock said

20:21

no no thanks i'll bring my own team in on this and so who was that team so joan

20:27

harrison now she'd already got a screenwriting credit on rebecca and she would go on to write foreign

20:34

correspondent as well now joan harrison's an interesting uh figure because she

20:39

kind and again this is very typical of hitchcock's kind of approach to

20:44

collaborators generally and writers in particular joan harrison as hitchcock tells it really started out

20:51

as kind of his secretary or you know in a kind of very supporting role which is very dismissive for

20:57

somebody who you know ended up getting academy award nominations for their writing

21:02

second person on the bill alma revel now those of you who don't know you may even

21:08

guess from this particular photo alma revel is mrs alfred hitchcock and she played an absolutely

21:14

key role not just on suspicion but many other films as well quite often uncredited where she had a

21:21

kind of editing role you know she she could help hitchcock take those books and take

21:27

those plays and distill them down into something that he could film so he had he had harrison and rebel but

21:34

then he also brought in somebody called samson raffleson now he was a very very experienced

21:40

hollywood screenwriter he'd worked with ernst lubich i think he was a scriptwriter on the original jazz

21:47

singer the 1927 first ever talking picture really really experienced

21:52

and again this is typical of hitchcock that he he has collaborators who help him kind of

21:58

distill this down to something manageable then he brings in a really sort of classy hollywood

22:04

writer who can turn it into a really good screenplay for him

22:09

and again through a process of kind of long discussions not the pair of them sitting over a

22:15

typewriter but rifleson sort of saying you know what kind of film do you want hitch then he'd go away

22:20

and write it apparently hitchcock would then pretty much kind of flick through the the the

22:25

script that had come back and just kind of in a few minutes give it back say yep trust you to know what you're doing this

22:31

is great you know and then he would take it on set and then he would turn it into a film and a rifle only ever worked with

22:37

hitchcock once which again is very typical of hitchcock he had some people that he collaborated with time

22:43

and time again but but very few scriptwriters who uh you know stayed with him three i mean

22:50

it was a long career but you know four four films was a good run if you were with hitchcock

22:56

so i i'm just aware of time because i want to hand over to rob in a minute so um what was the process of adaptation it

23:03

was in some respects quite typical so a couple of things happened um first of all uh you know things like

23:10

supporting characters were excised from the book you know there are kind of incidents

23:16

and characters in the book that you won't find in the film i mean that's fairly typical of any adaptation you you'll find that all the

23:22

way through but having said that having read before the fact now i think this is very much

23:28

a uh based on in other words you will find lots of

23:34

dialogue lots of characters lots of things that are in the original book which make it into the finished

23:40

film rather than let's say an inspired by you know where actually the finished

23:46

film bears no relation to the original source material you get that quite often

23:51

in films as well this is definitely a based on but um

23:56

i'm going to uh cut through now because i'm running out of time on this one but of course the the

24:02

real crunch in this is that the original book is really much darker and much harder and much more

24:09

psychologically uh challenging than the finished film

24:14

um it's really quite grim the original book actually i mean it's it's quite a hard read and

24:20

not just because it's a little bit outdated in its kind of you know sexual politics and other things like that you

24:26

know it really puts you in the mind of some really quite uh disturbed people which i don't think

24:32

you really get in the finished film by any stretch you know so it has more ambiguity

24:38

it's rob will come on to this in a minute it's very much from lena's point of view as well which uh again is an interesting

24:46

read across to the final film um and um

24:52

and the build up as well so again we're not giving too much away the ending of the book is alluded to

24:58

in the very first paragraph in fact even the very first line of the book so so it isn't

25:06

in that classic whodunit style it's actually uh we've already given us all the information where are you going to take

25:12

us next suspicion the film doesn't have that same kind of trajectory it it operates in a totally different

25:19

way and again francois truffaut i think is quite generous to the adaptation because he says uh well

25:27

look you know i know the film and the book have ended up in certainly different places but you know actually i don't quite like the

25:33

film says trufo because it's less dramatic than the book you know you've created something that feels

25:39

intrinsically different so this original book which truffaut had also read and also enjoyed um

25:46

i mean again let's come on to the discussion because does it i mean even if you haven't read the book you know does suspicion stand

25:53

up as a piece of melodrama i do wonder so so i'm just going to draw a few sort

26:00

of conclusions uh before i hand over to the questions and to rob so so so hitchcock would take uh

26:08

books novels plays and he would use them almost like a sculpture would regard a

26:13

block of stone you know it was a kind of interesting source material but what he really wanted to get to was

26:20

the hitchcock products you know so francis isles we can forget about him patricia highsmith she might get her

26:26

name on the poster but the final product isn't going to be her thing it's going to be hitchcock's

26:33

thing robert block the author of psycho you know he was around when psycho was

26:38

being made did hitchcock invite him to get involved in the film or to collaborate on screenplay no

26:44

he got in his own guy to do it instead so so the author is not the most important thing for hitchcock the most

26:50

important thing is where in that original source material can he find those things

26:56

that are absolutely archetypal him you know those those moments when uh you

27:02

know somebody can come up in a staircase somebody can come up a staircase in a sinister manner

27:08

or or this kind of central conceit of you know what's going through the wife's

27:14

mind uh you know what should we think about cary grant here looking much more sinister

27:20

than he normally does you know and those those initial ideas are there in the book and just enough for hitchcock to hook

27:27

you know an interesting film around um so let's leave it there uh i'm going to

27:34

stop sharing my screen so i can see uh all the things people have been saying on chat which i've not been able

27:39

to hopefully not just can you please stop rusting your paper will i follow you um

27:44

and let's let's have a quick look uh now just see um if there's any things we

27:51

want to pick up here so suspicion builds throughout the movie the strongest strongest near the end says philip that's an

27:58

interesting i mean that is kind of what you would expect from a suspense movie you would expect it to build up

28:04

gradually i mean despite what i said about the opening paragraph of the book once that shock of wow you've just told

28:12

me that is over actually the book itself is a very slow burn as well actually and you know very

28:18

little happens at first and then gradually more and more does um so that's interesting that's

28:24

interesting you find that it kind of builds up um uh grant's ambivalent performance

28:31

um are are you still suspicious of him despite the user well again we're too early for spoilers but

28:37

but you know rob will come on to this in a minute that the casting is is of course really interesting in

28:42

this isn't it because you've got cary grant who again at this stage in his career is already

28:48

you know mr smooth mr uh charming mr attractive how could he not be he's carrie grant

28:54

you know um and so casting him in this ambiguous role and again uh you know the the johnny

29:00

ogarth character in the book uh is also you know a kind of um you

29:06

know johnny uh kind of come lately kind of character you know he's he he's a

29:12

charming character although you know gets much grimmer much quicker i think in the book but so but

29:18

that's interesting um okay i can't see any other um

29:24

uh a few more up there no okay let's uh let's go on to uh

29:31

rob rob do you want to pick up any of those points that i just made and then go on to your well on the suspense part of it i think

29:38

whoever made that comment is absolutely spot on for me it's you know i love it because

29:43

it's cary grant and it's hitchcock but for me it's it's suspicion is quite unlike a lot of hitchcock films

29:49

it kind of exists on a on a level of tension throughout there's almost like this string of tension there's not these huge

29:57

sort of you know huge dramatic moments that that underpin for me a lot of hitchcock films

30:02

there's that sort of slow building attention almost like a wire of tension that exists as you say until about sort

30:09

of you know 10 or 15 minutes from the end um i appreciated your comments by the way um

30:14

talking about my favorite uh hitchcock film north by northwest and to understand the sort of storyline

30:21

of suspicion linking with that it weirdly made me think of my film studies tutor at

30:26

university bless him a guy called raymond durgnat who was a an authority on the french new wave on

30:32

truffaut and his colleagues at the coyote cinema and he always said that um the hitchcock

30:38

you know working in classical cinema you know the way the best way to understand hitchcock and that classic

30:44

three-act structure was really simple it was you know act one get your hero up

30:51

a tree act three throw rocks at him act three get him down again and i loved

30:57

your description of of the un set piece uh mistaken identity mount rushmore

31:03

you know that's a perfect way of analyzing i think a hitchcock film and i think suspicion can be can be analyzed in exactly the same way

31:11

and also i think your comment about um alma you know she was you know she was so underrated i think i've mentioned

31:17

this before and and her role in psycho was absolutely pivotal completely

31:23

pivotal and as you say you know she's almost overlooked because she was his misses i mean to be fair to

31:31

him i mean when he got his lifetime uh oscar he did say there were four people

31:37

who were really important in my life and basically all four of them were alma you know his wife

31:43

his screenwriter he did actually acknowledge that he was she was the screenwriter the mother of his daughter and uh

31:49

whatever the fourth category she fell into so he kind of came back good in the end but yeah really underrated

31:55

while you know to go from sort of like yeah she made me breakfast uh yes she was a really clever colleague

32:01

you know as you say it took him a while all right i want to do a bit linking with what chris was saying i'm going to

32:07

talk a little bit about the contextual background to the film um and then if i've got time a little bit an auto i'm not going to repeat the

32:13

stuff we did when we had the hitchcock session i want to link the alter stuff specifically

32:20

um to suspicion and then weave in characters and representation that's

32:25

kind of not a bad start the whole sort of you know you've talked about cary grant and uh you know he's the smoothie

32:32

you know surely surely he couldn't be uh cast as a murderer um i mean his his status at the time was

32:39

was quite significant in terms of the the roles he'd been in but i'm going to suggest you this film

32:45

you know he was flexible you know he was he was quite he showed a degree of flexibility

32:50

and adaptability and the whole joan fontaine thing you know every time i look at her you know you're

32:55

probably gonna pan me for this chris but i think girl next door you know she's kind of almost like the

33:00

the superstar that was the girl next door and even when she stepped up to to to get the award for for best oscar

33:08

performance with with i think gary cooper had won the best oscar that um was it

33:13

sergeant york that yeah sergeant york that year um she really comes across as the girl

33:18

next door and i'm amazed that that she was the only person in hitchcock films that actually won that performance

33:25

award obviously as you say there were lots of other awards um so that was really a start i wanted

33:31

to make sort of talking about cary grant and joan fontaine but i'm going to link you know your stuff was on scripts and and i'm

33:38

going to say if there was an award again no spoilers if there was an award for the most

33:43

far-fetched script that pushed th the the audience to the limit then suspicion would be up there you

33:50

know it'd be nominated for an academy award um and i'm gonna sort of you know talk about suspicion

33:56

and the willful suspension of disbelief you literally have to suspend your

34:01

disbelief you know it's not a science fiction film it's not a a horror film but it's an

34:07

astonishing script in many ways that that pushes you to the limit um similar to the lodger um the whole sort

34:13

of the silent film the lodger is he or isn't a killer is he or isn't a killer that that's

34:19

the sort of you know question that i think you mentioned it you talked about the whole sort of um

34:24

narrative enigma aspect the i think the phrase you used was the possibility of murder and the lodger

34:31

which was also a hitchcock film a silent film before has that possibility of murder

34:36

so you know we've got a film we've got a film about i'll be careful here how i say this

34:42

we've got a film about a a spinster who runs off with a charming playboy

34:47

who turns out to be a penniless chronic gambler a liar he lies like lying is his day job

34:54

he's completely dishonest to to make her think that he may or may not be

35:00

plotting to kill her um i'd like to give you a personal response my partner and i

35:06

watched this um in the run-up to this session i've seen the film obviously several times um it's really interesting a

35:12

contemporary point of view on on the on the plot lines and the narrative as it progresses

35:17

um i'm going to read more or less what she said um except i'm going to describe it in the third person um

35:24

i know some of you haven't seen it so i'm not giving anything away here by saying that that my partner was very angry at lena

35:31

that the joan fontaine character she was very angry at her for constantly forgiving johnny his many

35:38

many misdemeanors throughout the film and the booming negative messages this sent out the time

35:44

about the importance of marriage union no matter what you know it's almost like she she

35:50

absolutely has to get married and it doesn't matter that he's a gambler he's penniless

35:57

he chronically lies um there's something deeply wrong about him she just feels the pressure

36:02

to get married so we talked a lot about the institution of marriage uh quite a lot you know when we watch

36:09

this and you've got the sort of twist at the end and she also suggested that you know and again no spoilers

36:16

that surely hitchcock fans read what chris was saying about you know he's he's in many ways his

36:22

predictability is an auteur there's always going to be a twist but she didn't get it my partner watched it

36:28

for the first time and she didn't get the twist so i think that was interesting in terms of like

36:34

you know a primitive spectator coming to the film for the first time um if i may

36:41

um as chris did i want to just slow slow it down a bit and just show you a few images from the film and

36:48

just talk you through things like character representation a little

36:54

bit about sort of hitchcock and the alter just to get a feel for it again i stress

36:59

um with without giving away any spoilers so um i suspect

37:06

um i'm gonna have the same issue here with chris trying to find the uh maximizing my here we go um you have to

37:14

you have to grab it there we go so um i'll move through those posts as we've seen posted there we go this

37:19

year's okay so there's joan fontaine collecting the award with with gary cooper

37:24

um she wasn't a massive superstar for me but it was a an astonishing performance

37:31

it really was a tour de force performance um but she was pathetic as a character

37:36

she was absolutely an utterly pathetic um

37:41

she angered us in terms of i know this was back in the day but her absolute forgiveness of him

37:48

and everything he stood for and everything he did right until the end and and again you

37:54

know there will there will be no spoilers or perhaps there might be during the chat at the end um so we've got this delightful actress

38:01

in joan fontaine playing this completely weak pathetic character and i believe i've said before that my

38:08

personal opinion is um that an auteur trope of hitchcock is incredibly weak character

38:14

representation both male and female and for me johnny and lena are deeply pathetic characters

38:22

in terms of in terms of their in terms of their values and how they're they're more than happy to sort of put

38:28

their values aside uh to get what they want he wants money she wants love and security

38:36

all right so this is the the rather german expressionist poster uh for the lodger this is the sort of

38:41

film i talked about earlier the silent film that also asks um is he or is he not a killer

38:48

um i'm afraid i couldn't resist this um as i look at it again by complete

38:54

accident even the parallel lines are similar to our friend nosferatu

39:00

and the very sinister johnny mounting the stairs um with a glass of milk

39:07

that was illuminated by by hitchcock to make it look sinister um i've never seen carrie grant look

39:14

like that you know he i mean let's find this particular image i mean he he's sculpting doorways he in this film

39:21

he's sculpting doorways like nosferatu he played a character and his versatility as an actor for me

39:28

really came through from from the screwball comedy actor uh the romantic lead

39:34

to this very very sinister dark man who as chris rightfully has said if you

39:40

read the book it's very very very grim indeed but you know you've got moments where you think

39:46

goodness gracious me look how hitchcock is framing him um as very sinister you know skulking

39:51

doorways but also the love interest you know he's also the love interest you've got the

39:58

classic um excuse me you've got the classic sort of filter here over the lens i mean i was

40:04

watching um the quiller memorandum last night and even in the 60s the sort of you know the sort of filters they used

40:10

to put over key scenes you know that were deeply romantic and here

40:16

you have you have lena deeply in love with johnny um

40:22

here is a scene that that's one of my favorite scenes uh uh the the again no spoilers uh the general

40:29

um lena's overbearing father as a wedding gift uh donates these two antique chairs that

40:38

are worth loads of money johnny sits on them as the playboy he is

40:43

and then she comes home from work one day to find out that he sold them

40:48

uh this film i know it was briefly wretched mentioned earlier again there were similarities for me

40:55

um with the sort of brooding characters uh particularly played obviously uh in

41:01

rebecca so you've got the lodger you've got rebecca you've got these very similar films

41:07

and then you've got this and i'm going to show you this clip if we've got time we have very very shortly this is lena

41:15

first gazing upon upon johnny on the train reading a book

41:22

on child psychology wearing glasses and i'm gonna do that little bit on glasses in a minute

41:28

suggesting obviously the whole hitchcock glasses thing um i'm going to show you a still in a

41:34

minute if i've got time of madeleine carroll in 39 steps with her glasses on um when robert dona approaches her she

41:41

takes her glasses off um there's that sort of symbolism for me in hitchcock and glasses

41:48

that runs through suspicion she's very bookish she is uh intelligent she's probably

41:55

reading a book on child psychology because you know she's had this very overbearing upbringing and she's

42:00

probably trying to find out why she's the person she is then suddenly this beautiful man

42:06

rocks up in the train next to her or rather opposite there we go so there's madeline carroll i know it's

42:11

it's not a particularly good image but there's madeleine carroll um with glasses on

42:17

robert dona approaches her and suddenly um the glasses are removed and this has

42:24

been repeated throughout a lot of hitchcock films here we have igri bourbon in spellbound

42:31

um we have mitch in um vertigo with her glasses on uh we have

42:38

this particular film which i thought was fantastic strange on the train we have we have the

42:45

the girl who's obsessed with the macabre and the girl who's obsessed with sex and

42:51

in the middle we have the brilliant mrs wilson from rope who's kind of you know trying

42:56

to relive her very vivacious past um but the glassiest thing is very symbolic

43:02

and before we sort of go back to looking at alters i just want to show you a couple of quick slides again linking what we're

43:09

just about to talk about this is a scene from dinner where they're talking about an undetectable

43:15

poison there's a very concerned lena there's a very interested johnny in terms of the

43:22

conversation about poison and look at the metaphor here look look at how the the chicken is used as a metaphor

43:31

as they're talking about poison and they're talking about autopsies and they're talking about

43:36

the guy saying well you know i i did an autopsy recently on someone who died from poisoning

43:42

and it cuts to a close-up of him carving through a whole chicken so lots and lots of

43:47

symbolism here um i think i'll come back to me for a bit because i'm again uh like yourself chris

43:54

i'm a bit aware of the time so i'll rattle through a few alter tropes and if i have got time at the end

44:00

uh we'll leave five minutes for questions would that be all right about five minutes i think so can we do

44:07

a little bit more for questions rob so we've got some really good ones now oh great okay well what i'll do i'll

44:13

i'll sort of i'll go for about five minutes and then we'll just do a q a oh it's okay to run on a little bit if

44:19

we need to so don't worry about fantastic no you know if you haven't i've got a plane to catch

44:25

okay um right so auto tropes and suspicion and classic hitchcock

44:32

you've got to look at trains and tunnels um you have to look at the whole sort of trains and tunnels thing

44:37

you mentioned north by northwest earlier i mentioned strange on a train you know they meet on a train um dining

44:44

scenes you know we've talked a lot about dining scenes uh in we talked about the dining scene in

44:51

bringing up baby yes a howard hawks film but dining scenes are really important to hitchcock and

44:56

when you see the film if you haven't seen it have a look at the dining scene it's absolutely pivotal

45:02

in appreciating character narrative and again sort of reinforcing that level

45:08

of tension that for me maintains on a wire throughout the film

45:14

um i mentioned marriage earlier myself my partner sort of watched it and we talked about um you know how it how it maybe

45:22

represents the institution of marriage at the time and how you simply just have to get married

45:27

i nicked a quote um on that from a guy a bit of a sort of a bit of a interesting character himself

45:34

that the chris is probably very familiar with say the very least um they saw him rw r.w fassbinder sort of german playwright and

45:42

director um he looked at the film and he suggested it was a critique on the

45:48

institution of marriage and social class and he said um the most he called it the

45:54

most drastic film against the bourgeois institution of marriage i know now slightly over the top

46:02

but i have to say you know it's a for me and my partner and for many it's a real

46:08

critique you know on on marriage and social class

46:13

and how maybe people will kind of you know put all of their morality and values to one

46:20

side in order to get what they want which is what i said earlier johnny money and lena security and when it comes to

46:28

that you know there's a scene in the film again no spoilers there's a team in the film where obviously he's a playboy he hasn't got a

46:34

job um lena hilariously suggests that he might have to have to get a job because obviously you

46:42

know the money's running out and he replies if worse comes to worst i'll just have to borrow more money you

46:49

know this is a really vicious critique i think on sort of you know bourgeois

46:54

on the bourgeois playboy who's kind of you know who doesn't want to work he lives this completely hedonistic

47:01

lifestyle and if he needs money he'll either steal it he'll sell stuff to get it or he'll just

47:06

borrow some so again i think the whole idea of sort of you know weak characters for me runs through the

47:13

film now if i've got time i think i will um i'll kind of introduce this this clip

47:20

this is the this is the train meeting this is um where they first meet

47:25

and i think it's an important scene because you as an audience are introduced to characters um you're

47:33

introduced to um someone that for me becomes a very weak character

47:38

and who is manipulated by johnny but but johnny who is a very weak character

47:43

himself i think enough talking about it chris rob what i'm going to suggest is that

47:49

let's you also use this clip as the watershed so when we come back from this clip

47:56

all bets are off in terms of talking about the ending so if you really don't want to know the ending

48:01

this is the moment to tune out because a couple of the questions are about the ending and i think we do need to address

48:07

it all right so here it is this is an opening scene well one of the opening scenes from the film

48:28

so you take a sweet

48:37

thank you miss okay i'm afraid you're in the wrong compartment sir it's a first class

48:43

compartment yes brother i'm all right this is a third-party

48:50

so what sort of line is this selling third car stickers at first class prices i'm very sorry sir that will be uh

48:56

five and four points extra sir you haven't changed the five i have yes sir oh and then don't bother because i

49:02

haven't got one

49:10

yeah now do you suppose the line would settle for five and top and second

49:24

acquaintance but have you any change well i'm afraid

49:35

thank you very much there are five double take me and three happens five and problems

49:42

i was legal tender or boy legal tender

49:48

write to your mother

50:04

[Music]

50:15

okay um you know how how do i'll go a minute on this just quickly analyzing it will take some questions

50:21

how did they get how did she she he just asked a stranger on a train for money

50:27

why did she you know called the police or or or certainly chastity she went for her

50:32

purse and this is before she found out that he was you know she looked at the society pages and saw a picture and thought oh i might

50:39

be in here not only is that he's absolutely beautiful looks like he's well connected

50:44

you know she she presents as this initial prim and proper stereotype and he absolutely savagely manipulates

50:51

her with the strength of his personality you know she's this kind of bookish prudish woman

50:56

reading a book on psychology um and he clearly is you know a bit of a chancer and i i'm

51:04

stunned that she gives him money and the whole sort of stamp legal tender thing is fantastic you know apparently still to this day

51:11

you're not you're not obliged to accept stamps as money but you know retailers

51:18

can you can go into a shop with stamps and say look i've got no money but here's some stamps

51:24

and it's brilliant it's absolutely brilliant and he says oh it's legal tender oh man it's legal tender

51:29

and he just looks at him and walks away and and for me you know even what he says he's very

51:34

sort of hitchcock thinking about sort of you know notions of the mother in hitchcock films he says to him with the stamps write to

51:42

your mother which is absolutely brilliant and very hitchcock and then the infatuation starts you know she looks at the society

51:49

pages um and then she views him in very different ways because she thinks he's

51:56

connected so we've got two very weak characters that meet on a train and of course the narrative then then

52:03

develops from that moment thanks rob so yeah exactly

52:08

come for film studies uh go away with financial advice about how you can use our four-year-old stamps um

52:15

brilliant and that is such good like and one of those you know having started this lecture by saying you know dialogue isn't really of

52:22

interest to hitchcock he's much more interested in the visuals you know don't forget that you know he

52:27

still used some absolutely brilliant that that scene is not in the book i might add so you know that's been added

52:33

by one assumed samson rifleson and you know that wouldn't be out of place in the philadelphia story or something would it

52:40

i mean it's a brilliant brilliant scene now we've got a few minutes left and fiona and the audience if you don't mind let's

52:48

let's run over slightly uh if people don't was that right for you no you're not going to cut us off

52:53

um i wouldn't do that don't worry so let's let's tackle the end i'm going

52:59

to try and uh cover some of the other questions on the chat as well so more than one person quite rightly

53:06

has either said the ending is very weak the ending is a bit weird the ending is

53:12

out of place and a couple of people have asked directly did the studio interfere with

53:18

the ending um well the answer to that is yes very much so the studio did interfere

53:24

but one of the things that i found really interesting researching uh the screenplay um

53:31

is this this was always going to be an issue i think hitchcock and uh rayfelson spotted this problem

53:39

really early on in the adaptation they knew they had a book that was more progressive than

53:46

you know remember as well this is in the kind of height of hollywood kind of you know code uh you know sort of censorship

53:55

so they'd already started to self-censor in the in the drafting of the screenplay

54:01

they're already thinking where are the bits in this book that we just can't go to they're just too grim they're too complicated they're too

54:08

weird then carrie grant comes on board and that you know becomes an extra complication for them because he

54:15

is you know the hero of the day and and hitchcock wants to use him in this kind of ambiguous way but can they

54:22

go the full way and make him a murderer not so sure you know and so

54:29

so there are and where this has ended up is that you know i mean i can't you know i'm not i'm not

54:35

doing uh you know um research of this of my own i'm only going by what what we can find in the biographies

54:41

and the the critiques that are out there so it's kind of got lost a little bit now in the midst of time

54:46

in terms of how much did hitchcock and rifleson kind of narrow it down

54:53

versus how much did rko interfere and rko definitely did interfere so

54:59

hitchcock went to new york for two weeks doing something

55:04

else you know on a different project or something when he came back um he discovered and it was pointed out

55:12

to him that the the the powers that beer rko had taken his nearly finished film

55:19

and edited it down to such an extent that it actually only ran for 55 minutes

55:25

and they'd taken out all the bits where carrie grant could look as if he was a murderer so so not just

55:33

the ending but any kind of earlier hints where it looks like carrie grant might be going somewhere a bit dangerous

55:40

they'd all been cut out of the film now of course hitchcock was able to then wrestle it back he had

55:46

enough power as a director to reclaim his film and put quite a lot

55:52

of that stuff back in um but apparently they they certainly wrote and i think they even

55:58

filmed some alternative endings all lost somewhere i might be great if somebody found them in an attic i guess but

56:05

but there are apparently alternatives to the ending that we we now know as the ending of suspicion

56:12

and yeah you're right it's like a kind of handbrake turn no pun incendi because obviously they're in a car at the time

56:18

but it's like really is that how you want to finish the film i mean i find it massively disappointing i mean

56:24

truffaut as i said earlier on is generous of saying oh you've kind of invented this whole different film

56:30

and it's like yeah i think it's rob do you think it's a disappointing ending well i mean as you know i mean i i you

56:36

know there is a school of thought not nodding not the most popular school of thought that

56:41

hitchcock did actually uh you know want it to end that way you know in the same way that that

56:47

vertigo about sort of 10 or 15 minutes before the end of vertigo

56:52

he shows the audience the scene where gavin is pushing um madeleine off the bell tower and then

56:59

you see judy writing the letter to scotty that he never receives so he tells the audience that at the time

57:06

so he does it later i'm not saying he's got a track record for it i i think you're right chris i think you

57:12

have to say you know rko did get involved and they did um probably you know dictate up to a

57:20

point you know how the film ended but you know hitchcock wanted to make a film about

57:25

someone that had a female fantasy life you know he he he liked the idea of female fantasists

57:31

and i suppose you know whichever way you cut it you know he achieved that you know in whichever

57:37

whichever ending we talk about it was a film about a female fantasist yeah and that's a that that brings us to

57:44

another question on the chat because that idea of uh you know the psychology of lena i mean it's interesting

57:50

in the film it's even more interesting in the book and uh you know the the ending of the

57:56

book is is very strange and and the more you look at it the more

58:01

ambiguous because you start to question is it literal or not i mean i encourage you all to go out and read

58:07

before the fact by francis isles and um you know you could so so so the

58:13

question was um you know would we now look at the lena the joan fontaine character

58:19

and and basically in fact let's find the question because it's very well phrased but is it basically victim blaming i think that the question

58:26

has said so in other words you know what where should our sympathy sympathies lie

58:32

um are we being unfair when we say that lena is a weak character you know maybe actually

58:38

johnny is an abusive husband an abusive figure and actually you know that's where our our sympathies

58:45

should totally uh sit with with lena so you know so it does i mean like so suspicion is not

58:51

really a heavy film i don't think but it does at least touch on some really quite heavy and pertinent

58:59

uh themes now even around sexual politics and of course

59:05

one of the things we've not had time to do today and again i really kind of wish these sessions were like three hours long or something because

59:11

we've talked about other hitchcock films what we've done in the previous ones is we've managed to go outside

59:17

uh our main film and talk about others i would love to have talked about the two versions of gaslight

59:23

um so you know two other films with fascinating histories and fascinating

59:29

uh themes themselves but but you know there there's a play and a film that has even given now

59:36

uh you know a a phrase or a word a new meaning to our language the idea

59:42

of gaslighting somebody of you know sort of putting them in a state of mind where they start

59:47

to question uh you know their own sanity and i think suspicion is a bit like

59:52

gaslight in that sp respect you know you look at lena's uh mindset and you think you know what

59:59

how is johnny manipulating her in that kind of way i i think hitchcock you know wants us to

1:00:06

dislike her i think he wants us i think he actively wants us to think you know that that

1:00:11

she should you know that this is not an appropriate way to behave i know we've

1:00:16

talked about male and female representation before i mean i'd scribble down while you were talking some other films

1:00:22

where he does it again janet leaves marion crane in psycho does she really think she can get away with

1:00:28

stealing all that money um eva marie saints eve kendall um you know she said i chose to fall in

1:00:35

love one weekend uh kim novak's judy who thinks she can actually get away with

1:00:41

with playing madeleine you know i think you know i think you've got to look at hitchcock as a

1:00:46

as having an interesting view of women and maybe a not altogether positive view of

1:00:51

women that that for me comes through with the leaner representation yeah i think they're there there's

1:00:57

there's a big understatement to almost finish on isn't it there's that they're just two very quick things

1:01:02

because they're more kind of factual things rather than discussion things but they're in the chat let's just cover them off so um

1:01:09

i'm sorry i've lost the name now but somebody asked about some the music in suspicion apologies uh

1:01:16

whoever that was because there's a lot in the chat and i can't quite find it but um uh yeah i mean obviously hitchcock's

1:01:22

music and hitchcock's uh composers massively massively important um so much so that i

1:01:29

can't forget i can't remember who it is in suspicion is it is it waxman rob can you remember not bernard herman

1:01:36

is it it's too early for burn at home and he's busy working with um alfred with uh orson welles at this

1:01:41

point of course i'll tell you about teddy i think it's franz waxman but um i mean later on bernard herman becomes

1:01:49

kind of like hitchcock's go-to composers certainly for some of his bigger films at this stage he's probably working with

1:01:56

whoever the studio has available but you know don't forget it is blacksmith isn't it yeah so

1:02:02

uh you know studio composers at this time were you know serious business i mean people

1:02:08

who you know had some scores that stand up even if you don't watch them alongside the film

1:02:13

some really excellent pieces of music and again you know arguably the music and suspicion is one of the

1:02:20

stronger elements in the film and uh you know go away listen to the soundtrack uh if you

1:02:25

didn't enjoy the film and then one other thing that again you've already picked up on but but other people in the chat

1:02:31

are picking up as well that whole german expressionist thing and the idea of

1:02:37

particularly because this is actually this is interesting is it because this film is and rebecca as well to some

1:02:44

extent are generally seen as although they're hitchcock's first american films first hollywood films

1:02:51

they've still got very english settings and they feel almost like a continuation of you know

1:02:56

39 steps sabotage all those english films he made before and the way most of the film looks the

1:03:03

way most of suspicion looks is generally quite flat you know it's not a million miles away from the way

1:03:09

something like 39 steps looks for the most part until you get to that kind of sinister staircase

1:03:15

ending when like you say you get all of those expressionist shadows and i think you're right that's

1:03:21

really deliberate it has all that stuff around you know imprisonment and cages and

1:03:27

weird mindsets and probably is meant to make you think of nosferatu and and uh metropolitan always getting

1:03:34

metropolis in every week don't know because it's behind me um and uh yeah and i think it is it's

1:03:40

about changing the mindset of the audience from here's something that looks very genteel in english to something that

1:03:46

looks really a bit weird and sinister yeah yeah completely i absolutely agree with that

0:00

okay right good evening ladies and gentlemen thank you very much for having me back again fiona it's always a pleasure to come here and do this they

0:05

have to give me a second whilst my brain revs up to full speed so to begin with here is a short film

0:18

[Music]

0:36

there you go right all of those inventions all of those things that i showed in the

0:41

video including the dog the dalmatian dog which is part from tesla's part of the world were

0:46

all predicted for seen by nikola tesla and yet very few people know who nicola

0:52

tesla was have ever heard of him for a long time nikola tesla was

0:58

forgotten completely ignored overlooked dismissed as a crackpot as a charlatan

1:03

as a hoaxer until recently until recently there's been a major resurgence in interest

1:10

in tesla tesla is in fact everywhere the current war film that airs on it's on netflix at the moment watched it not so

1:16

long ago definitely worth watching it recounts the tale the story of the fight between thomas

1:23

edison and george westinghouse for the domination of the american power industry back in the 18 late 1800s nicholas holt

1:30

played tesla quite convincingly some interesting experiments on show david bowie the late pop star had a good

1:37

portraying like tesla in a film called the prestige by nicola christopher christopher nolan

1:43

tesla even turned up in an episode of doctor who beautiful piece of casting by the bbc here gorham business

1:49

is a croatian american actor in exactly the same way as tesla was croatian serbian american so tesla's everywhere at the

1:56

moment tesla is hot big news tesla motorcars named exactly after nicola tesla tesla is huge in comic

2:04

books he's seen as a popular hero he's a huge cult following especially amongst the steampunk fraternity

2:10

where he's regarded semi-god-like status for his inventions and the view of the world that he had

2:17

especially true on youtube where fantasy island as we like to call it is full

2:22

of weird and wacky ideas or purporting to be original tesla inventions

2:27

treat with caution so that's what we're going to do tonight we're going to look at the facts that we know about nikola tesla

2:34

we're going to look at his life the documentary proof that we've got was passed down to us by nicola himself

2:39

we're going to try and disregard some of the crackpot theories that have researched in recent years that just simply

2:46

disregard this reality the problem that we're up against when you start researching nikola tesla

2:51

is that certain websites insist that this image or that image is tesla when it clearly isn't certain websites

2:58

insist that this is nikola tesla as a swimming instructor it cannot be as far as what we're aware tesla was a

3:04

brilliant swimmer but he never worked as a swimming instructor likewise we can't be sure that this is tesla

3:10

we're not even sure if he owned a car or could drive we're not sure and this

3:15

photograph this photograph is put around on so many conspiracy theorists websites and they insist that nikola tesla was

3:21

working with albert einstein that they were both free medicine's intent on world domination and this is just simply not the case we

3:28

actually know who this person is john renshaw castle was a british radio engineer tesla marconi and they were on a tour

3:36

of the marconi rca radio station as late as 1912. so definitely not tesla definitely not

3:42

tesla so that's what we're doing tonight is we're trying to sort out the fact from the myth and some of it's quite fanciful and some

3:48

of it's quite strange tesla led a very interesting long life

3:54

how do we know so much about tesla towson tells us in quite considerable detail he left behind a very thin autobiography

4:01

but he also left behind a vast array of technical purpose that we can scrutinize and we look over

4:06

we can see the genius of the man at work here he gave a lot of speeches in front of august professional bodies

4:13

who were well able to tell whether he was talking rubbish or not and as far as we know tesla was talking

4:19

an awful lot of sense he was born 1856 the son of the local

4:25

priest belutin tesla and his mother dukkha tesla now the local priest

4:30

okay his mother was somebody special she gave she had a talent a knack for inventing

4:35

simple things around the house and she seems to have instilled in nicola a love of all things natural a love of

4:42

all things engineering and scientific it's a shame then his father wanted him to go into the priesthood

4:49

nicola tells us in his autobiography i was born during a lightning storm it was around midnight

4:54

between the wee hours of july 9th and july 10th 1856 and during this fierce lightning storm

5:00

and when mayor through my birth the midwife rung her hands and declared the lightning a bad woman

5:06

this child will be a child of darkness she said to which my mother dulca replied no he will be a child of the light thus

5:13

says tesla i was named nicola tesla meaning victory of the people he doesn't have an ego problem does he

5:18

no tesla's homeland was not particularly happy

5:24

his elder brother dan died age 12 after falling from a horse and it's possible nicola alludes to in

5:30

his autobiography that he may have caused the accident he may have spooked the animal

5:36

it had a profound influence on tesla's life certainly did tesla was destined for the priesthood

5:41

following his father's footsteps but he unfortunately contacted cholera in 1873 he was not expected to live he

5:47

was very very poorly on his deathbed inverted commerce

5:53

tesla pleads with his father to let him pursue an engineering degree his father agrees on the condition that

5:59

he recovers seems a strange arrangement but tesla made a miraculous recovery truly

6:04

miraculous recovery it's as if it was ordained so to speak tesla enrolls in the prestigious austrian polytechnic graphs

6:12

in graz and he does phenomenally well very very well he develops an incredible

6:18

work ethic perhaps trying to impress his father trying to impress his family that he was a

6:23

good student his tutors were so concerned about tesla's

6:28

overworking his habits of staying until the wee hours getting up very very early in the morning three four hours sleep and that was it

6:35

they were really concerned they wrote our families so he's gonna burn himself out and that's exactly what he did he burned himself out he dropped out

6:42

after the third year and he became a professional gambler he

6:47

lost all of the money that the family had owed him and loaned him to go to college

6:53

to support himself while he was away learning but unfortunately he lost all of it he lost all of it somehow

7:00

we don't know how he doesn't talk about how but he became a professional gambler and he disappeared dropped off the

7:05

family's radar for a couple of years and then he was able to win back most of that money and when he paid back his family

7:11

he seemed to have redeemed himself after several difficult years finding himself that's what tesla says