Episodi

  • The Blue Willow Pattern: A Tale of Romance, Bone and Clay

    The Blue Willow Pattern: A Tale of Romance, Bone and Clay
    May 1 2026
    Suzanne takes Muriel on a journey to a faraway land, travelling into the hidden depths of a dinner plate. Its famous pattern – trees, a pagoda, a bridge, a boat, a fence – tells a version of Romeo and Juliet's story set in Imperial China. The plate was first made in England in the 18th century, but the story and its memorable characters – an eminent mandarin, his beautiful daughter, an ardent young man, a resourceful maid – were retrofitted to the plate as part of a story of cross-cultural admiration, imitation and adaptation that unfolded in Staffordshire in the 1780s. But how did Josiah Spode rewrite the pottery rule book? And how has the allure of Blue Willow lasted to this day?

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    55 min
  • The Laughing Cow: The Quintessential French Cheese

    The Laughing Cow: The Quintessential French Cheese
    Apr 24 2026
    In France, a country with a multiplicity of cheeses, only one achieves national unity: the humble Vache qui rit – or Laughing Cow. But what are the origins of this product? Invented in the wake of the Great War as a trailblazing 'fromage moderne', it shares a terroir with the more prestigious Comté, which is also one of its ingredients. Paradoxically, Muriel suggests, this processed melted cheese – part Proustian madeleine and part gateway to gastronomy – is an expression of the French passion for le fromage. And Suzanne also receives something she didn't know she needed: a moo box!

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    1 ora e 2 min
  • The Monarch of the Glen: The Surprisingly Passionate Tale of Landseer's Emblematic Masterpiece

    The Monarch of the Glen: The Surprisingly Passionate Tale of Landseer's Emblematic Masterpiece
    Apr 17 2026
    An imposing stag stands in a dramatic landscape, in a famous painting hanging in pride of place in the National Scottish Gallery. But what are we really looking at, asks Suzanne. An accomplished oil painting by a Victorian master? A great icon for Scotland? Is is the painting a case of cultural appropriation and the encapsulation of 'Balmorality'? Does it matter if Landseer lost his head to the romance of Scotland? And who was he, and why did he paint the famous stag? It's a rollicking tale of tormented artistic temperament and the peregrinations of a painting, featuring the early days of marketing and mass reproduction, a very French case of cherchez la femme, a delicious recipe for potatoes and the foreshadowing of action painting – with tea.

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    45 min
  • The French Garden: Making Nature Artificial, Mathematical and Political!

    The French Garden: Making Nature Artificial, Mathematical and Political!
    Apr 10 2026
    What makes a garden distinctly French? A geometrical layout, straight lines of regular topiary and not a hair out of place! How, Muriel asks, did the jardin à la française develop as an expression of French thought and sensibility? Together, one man, royal gardener André Le Nôtre, and his king, Louis XIV the monarch absolute, turbo-charged an ornamental tradition imported from Italy to create Versailles, with its heliocentric design and extraordinary display of mastery of man over nature. Wonderful artistry or neurotic obsession with power? Certainly, French gardens speak intensely of political ideas as well as aesthetics. Suzanne wonders where all Gallic insouciance has gone. Jean-Jacques Rousseau guest-stars.

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    1 ora
  • Labrador Retrievers: Did the British Invent the Perfect Dog?

    Labrador Retrievers: Did the British Invent the Perfect Dog?
    Apr 3 2026
    There are over a million Labradors in the UK, but where did this sturdy marvel of bright countenance and sweet temper originate? Is it really possible to invent a dog? Yes, says Suzanne, though she concedes that the seed of the Labrador breed came from the now extinct Newfoundland St. John's water dog, with his double layer of fur and his webbed feet. Gasp at the breeding achievements of top sportsmen Colonel Peter Hawker and successive Earls of Malmesbury and Dukes of Buccleuch! Thrill at a whole cast of illustrious dogs who either that had their portrait painted or received awards for bravery! Also featured: a British canine scandal, a Nancy Mitford connection and a nail-biting game of 'Guess the Dictator!'

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    1 ora e 1 min
  • The Flâneur: Why The French Walk More Slowly Than The British

    The Flâneur: Why The French Walk More Slowly Than The British
    Mar 27 2026
    Monocles and canes at the ready! Muriel traces the 19th-century origins of a familiar and somewhat raffish figure of Frenchness. Part boulevardier, part dandy, part poet, the flâneur is a leisurely observer of the urban landscape. But where did he come from? What is his legacy? And can there be such a thing as a British flâneur?

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    56 min
  • Daffodils: The Poetic Icon that Means Booming Business for Britain

    Daffodils: The Poetic Icon that Means Booming Business for Britain
    Mar 20 2026
    Suzanne explores the British adoration of the yellow, trumpet-like, optimistic daffodil, the harbinger of spring. The evocative words of William and Dorothy Wordsworth, poetry and prose, bracket this episode, in which we discover that daffodils are also about economics. The UK cultivates 90% of the global daffodil supply. The numbers are staggering: hundreds of millions of flowers are grown annually and must all be harvested by hand. But how? We also meet a bunch of Victorian daffodil obsessives, from Scottish enthusiast Peter Barr, whose quest for seeds took him, astride a donkey, all over the Pyrenees, where he was mistaken for a bandit; Reverend George Herbert Engleheart, clergyman and father of the modern daffodil; and Quaker plantswoman Sarah Backhouse – aka 'The Genius' – who turned daffodils pink!

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    44 min
  • The Café Waiter: Working-class hero? Towering Figure of Haughty Frenchness?

    The Café Waiter: Working-class hero? Towering Figure of Haughty Frenchness?
    Mar 13 2026
    Café waiters are omnipresent in French life and in French culture as a sort of regiment – serried ranks of men in their black-and-white uniform with tremendous esprit de corps. But who are they really, Muriel asks, and how did they become such stock figures of Frenchness, and even objects of study for French philosophy? What makes a good café waiter? Is it to do with natural ability, physical fitness, French reserve, or the joys of performance? What is the etiquette of interacting with a café waiter? And what are the rules of the traditional café waiters race?

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    53 min