The Heart of England
- Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ ONE episode summary
Starting in Manchester, David Dimbleby heads off to explore
England's heartland, the Midlands, in this episode of Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ ONE's A Picture
of Britain series.
Μύ
On his quest to celebrate the beauty and diversity of this
area of Britain, and the artists it has inspired, David takes in the
Peak District, Shropshire, the Black Country, Wolverhampton, the Cotswolds,
the Malverns and plenty more on the way.
Μύ
The journey begins in Manchester, once the first city of the Industrial
Revolution in Britain: a place of darkness, child-labour, poverty and
disease.
Μύ
Today all that has been swept away but, when the cotton industry was
still going strong, the painter L.S. Lowry captured
scenes which most artists turned their backs on: the smoking chimneys
and terraced housing of Britain's industrial landscape. Lowry's pictures
today offer a window onto a vanished world.
Μύ
From here, David's next stop is the Peak District of Derbyshire and
the beginning of the story of landscape art and industry.
Μύ
In the 18th century, Derbyshire valleys echoed with the sound
of the iron forges lining the banks of fast-flowing rivers. London-based
artists didn't think the Derbyshire scenery worth painting, let alone
its industry.
Μύ
Μύ
All that changed in the second half of the eighteenth century when
a Derby-based painter called Joseph Wright saw that
scenes of industry could be just as thrilling as any mountain view.
Μύ
David then drives the old coach route between Derbyshire and Shropshire
to see one of the great industrial sights of the 18th century:
the cast-iron bridge at Coalbrookdale and the paintings it inspired.
Μύ
Industry rapidly transformed the landscape of Britain in the first
decades of the 19th century, and no industry more so than the
railways. The artist J. C. Bourne made railway construction
his subject, but it was JMW Turner who captured the
then utterly novel sensation of travelling at speed in Rain, Steam and
Speed.
Μύ
David Dimbleby travels on to the Black Country: "Britain's Wild West
at the start of the 19th century." 20,000 ironsmiths worked
between Dudley and Wolverhampton.
Μύ
JMW Turner - whose eye was drawn to the drama of the scene - captured
the forges at work beneath Dudley Castle, but Charles Dickens,
who travelled through the Black Country a few years later, and was more
attuned to the human consequences, was appalled. He used his impressions
in his novel The Old Curiosity Shop.
Μύ
Wolverhampton is next and David discovers how, in the mid-19th
century, local manufacturer Sidney Cartwright spent
much of his hard-earned cash on paintings.
Μύ
But Cartwright didn't favour scenes of industry - he saw enough of
that every day; what he liked were sentimental scenes of rural life.
A great many Victorians came to share his taste.
Μύ
David Dimbleby now journeys south, out of the Black Country and into
the Cotswolds.
Μύ
William Morris enlisted this landscape in his war
against Victorian progress-at-any-cost. In his novel News From Nowhere
he pictured his Britain of the future.
Μύ
There was a great anxiety at
the end of the 19th century that the way of life of the countryside
- which many artists and writers imagined to be the best of Britain
- was under threat from the modern world.
Μύ
The photographer Benjamin Stone captured folk customs
in and around Stratford-upon-Avon at much the same time as a young composer,
George Butterworth, was travelling through the same
landscape taking down folk songs and dances.
Μύ
Last stop is the Malverns, the 20 peaks that rise up out of the Worcestershire
plain. This landscape is forever associated with the name of Edward
Elgar, Britain's first great composer of romantic music.
Printable version