0:00:03 > 0:00:05Gothic.
0:00:05 > 0:00:08A single word for a beast with many heads...
0:00:10 > 0:00:12..and different faces.
0:00:12 > 0:00:13SCREAMING
0:00:15 > 0:00:19To the Georgians, Gothic meant Gothic Revival architecture,
0:00:19 > 0:00:23a medieval style of building brought back to life.
0:00:24 > 0:00:28But it was also the Gothic novel, a new literature of fantasy
0:00:28 > 0:00:33that gave voice to the real fears of an anxious age.
0:00:36 > 0:00:39And as the 19th century dawned, those fears deepened.
0:00:41 > 0:00:43Revolution, in science and industry,
0:00:43 > 0:00:48was destroying the old social order, and threatening moral oblivion.
0:00:50 > 0:00:54The British landscape was being transformed and urbanised.
0:00:56 > 0:00:58And Britain became a battleground
0:00:58 > 0:01:03where two opposing Gothic forces contended.
0:01:03 > 0:01:05On the bright side, the idealistic dreams
0:01:05 > 0:01:07of the Gothic Revival architects.
0:01:09 > 0:01:14On the dark side, the Gothic of horror and of nightmares.
0:01:20 > 0:01:24And as the modern world began to take shape, it would be that
0:01:24 > 0:01:29dark side of Gothic, which fed on anxiety and alienation,
0:01:29 > 0:01:33all the bad stuff, that really came into its own.
0:01:35 > 0:01:38The Victorian city was a divided place -
0:01:38 > 0:01:42new monuments and museums, slums and factories.
0:01:42 > 0:01:46And beneath it all, a honeycomb labyrinth of sewers,
0:01:46 > 0:01:50aptly subterranean image for the subconscious fears that
0:01:50 > 0:01:52haunted the Victorian mind.
0:01:52 > 0:01:55Was the Industrial Revolution turning people into mere cogs
0:01:55 > 0:01:57in a soulless machine?
0:01:57 > 0:02:01Was the new science putting out the light of faith?
0:02:01 > 0:02:04It's as if the entire British nation were going through
0:02:04 > 0:02:06a collective crisis of identity.
0:02:06 > 0:02:10And what's the best way to get to grips with all of this?
0:02:10 > 0:02:14I think it's by interpreting the many dreams of Gothic.
0:02:42 > 0:02:45We begin our story in the late 18th century,
0:02:45 > 0:02:48the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.
0:02:48 > 0:02:51Science and technology were about to reshape the world,
0:02:51 > 0:02:53but not quite yet.
0:02:55 > 0:02:58Scientists were mapping and labelling the earth
0:02:58 > 0:03:00and everything in it,
0:03:00 > 0:03:04unravelling the very nature of physical matter
0:03:04 > 0:03:06so they could harness its power.
0:03:09 > 0:03:11Joseph Wright of Derby was an artist who chronicled
0:03:11 > 0:03:13this moment of profound change.
0:03:15 > 0:03:18He's not often associated with the Gothic imagination.
0:03:19 > 0:03:22But his best work is infused with a thoroughly Gothic
0:03:22 > 0:03:27sense of wonder and terror at the new ascendancy of science.
0:03:27 > 0:03:32Never more so than in his Experiment On A Bird In An Air Pump,
0:03:32 > 0:03:33of 1768.
0:03:36 > 0:03:39At first sight you might say, what's Gothic about it?
0:03:39 > 0:03:46Its subject, after all, is science, an episode from the Enlightenment.
0:03:46 > 0:03:53A prosperous father of a family has invited into his home
0:03:53 > 0:03:59a scientist, and the scientist's job is to explain what happens to
0:03:59 > 0:04:02a living organism when it is deprived of oxygen.
0:04:02 > 0:04:05Hence the bird in the bell jar,
0:04:05 > 0:04:11hence the air pump with its handle, which he has been turning in order
0:04:11 > 0:04:16to withdraw the air from the jar so that the bird slowly suffocates.
0:04:18 > 0:04:22It's still just fluttering but its time is running out.
0:04:22 > 0:04:27The little girl looks up with fear and dismay in her eyes.
0:04:27 > 0:04:30Her slightly older sister can't bear to look at all,
0:04:30 > 0:04:33while the father comforts both of them,
0:04:33 > 0:04:37and directs them towards knowledge, acceptance, truth.
0:04:39 > 0:04:42And yet, and yet...
0:04:42 > 0:04:45is that really the subject of this painting?
0:04:45 > 0:04:51Look at the way in which Wright of Derby has rather cleverly,
0:04:51 > 0:04:56rather subtly, turned this into a haunted house,
0:04:56 > 0:05:02made this a scene from a kind of modern Gothic novel.
0:05:02 > 0:05:08The whole scene is lit spectrally with a sinister light.
0:05:13 > 0:05:16Does that really look like a man of reason?
0:05:16 > 0:05:21Or does that look like a magus, a charismatic,
0:05:21 > 0:05:25perhaps some strange form of modern priest who is aiming to
0:05:25 > 0:05:31bewitch us with some new fears, some new superstitions?
0:05:31 > 0:05:33What's going on in that jar?
0:05:33 > 0:05:39The bird resembles the dove of the Holy Spirit in ancient altarpieces.
0:05:39 > 0:05:42So, God is being killed by science?
0:05:44 > 0:05:48Is science benevolent, or is science the source of new fears,
0:05:48 > 0:05:51new terrors, a new sense of darkness?
0:05:51 > 0:05:54Those are the questions with which
0:05:54 > 0:05:58Gothic writers, painters, thinkers, architects, poets -
0:05:58 > 0:06:01those are the problems
0:06:01 > 0:06:04they would wrestle with over the next 100 years and more.
0:06:06 > 0:06:10The prolific Wright of Derby painted many subjects that explored
0:06:10 > 0:06:14the tension between old-world faith and mystery,
0:06:14 > 0:06:16and the new age of reason.
0:06:19 > 0:06:22First he gives us, beneath crumbling ruins
0:06:22 > 0:06:28reclaimed by the forces of nature, a skeleton, risen from the grave.
0:06:28 > 0:06:31It beckons an old man towards the fate that awaits us all.
0:06:35 > 0:06:37Then, in a gloomy lamplit cave,
0:06:37 > 0:06:41a natural philosopher ponders the meaning of life and death.
0:06:46 > 0:06:51But Wright was also the very first artist to paint a modern factory.
0:06:51 > 0:06:54A sinister, block-like presence in the moonlit countryside -
0:06:54 > 0:06:59all the more unnatural, because its lights are on.
0:06:59 > 0:07:02Modern industry has people working day AND night -
0:07:02 > 0:07:04that had never happened before.
0:07:04 > 0:07:06MACHINE RATTLES AND CLANKS
0:07:09 > 0:07:11As the 19th century clanked into life,
0:07:11 > 0:07:14the frontiers of science were advancing too.
0:07:16 > 0:07:20Pioneers of flight successfully crossed the English Channel.
0:07:22 > 0:07:27British inventors built the very first working steam locomotive.
0:07:28 > 0:07:30The mysteries of electricity,
0:07:30 > 0:07:34seen by some as the spark of life itself, were being unveiled.
0:07:36 > 0:07:39Many in Britain were made deeply uneasy by the relentless
0:07:39 > 0:07:41probing of science.
0:07:41 > 0:07:44But who would give voice to their fears?
0:07:48 > 0:07:51A Gothic writer, of course.
0:07:51 > 0:07:55A young woman we remember by her married name, Mary Shelley.
0:08:00 > 0:08:04Mary lived in the London parish of St Pancras,
0:08:04 > 0:08:06at the heart of the dynamic metropolis.
0:08:09 > 0:08:12Yet it was in the graveyard that she found solace,
0:08:12 > 0:08:16and the inspiration for one of the most terrifying
0:08:16 > 0:08:18of all Gothic creations -
0:08:18 > 0:08:20Frankenstein.
0:08:23 > 0:08:27Mary Shelley grew up surrounded by visionary idealists
0:08:27 > 0:08:31who dreamed of creating a better world, but she was not one of them.
0:08:31 > 0:08:35Her mother was Mary Wollstonecraft, pioneering feminist,
0:08:35 > 0:08:37who'd died giving birth to the young Mary,
0:08:37 > 0:08:39and was buried here.
0:08:39 > 0:08:44Her father was William Godwin, a freethinker, an anarchist,
0:08:44 > 0:08:46who gave Mary an extraordinary education,
0:08:46 > 0:08:50introducing her to scientists, philosophers, writers, thinkers.
0:08:50 > 0:08:52It was to this churchyard that Mary came
0:08:52 > 0:08:55when she was young to be quiet with her thoughts
0:08:55 > 0:09:00and to spend time with the mother that she'd never actually met.
0:09:00 > 0:09:04And it was here too that she and the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley
0:09:04 > 0:09:09declared their undying love for one another and decided to elope.
0:09:09 > 0:09:13She was 17, he was 22 and, inconveniently, married,
0:09:13 > 0:09:15but that didn't stop them.
0:09:15 > 0:09:17Shelley also was an idealist.
0:09:17 > 0:09:21But it was Mary's destiny to sound a great warning
0:09:21 > 0:09:23about what the future might hold.
0:09:23 > 0:09:28To write a novel about progress and the dangers that come with it
0:09:28 > 0:09:30that still sends a shiver up the spine today.
0:09:32 > 0:09:34THUNDER CRACKS
0:09:37 > 0:09:41One famously dark and stormy night in June 1816,
0:09:41 > 0:09:44the teenage Mary and her lover Shelley were
0:09:44 > 0:09:48guests of Lord Byron at his villa on the shore of Lake Geneva.
0:09:49 > 0:09:53They entertained each other by telling horror stories.
0:09:54 > 0:09:59Mary's tale told of a scientist hellbent on his quest - to build
0:09:59 > 0:10:06a creature, a man, from decaying body parts, and then to animate him.
0:10:10 > 0:10:14I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse
0:10:14 > 0:10:17a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet.
0:10:18 > 0:10:22I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open.
0:10:22 > 0:10:27It breathed hard and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs.
0:10:34 > 0:10:38Mary's story drew on several well-known experiments
0:10:38 > 0:10:42of the time, actual attempts to revive corpses,
0:10:42 > 0:10:46animal and human, using powerful electrical currents.
0:10:49 > 0:10:51Frankenstein might be a Gothic novel
0:10:51 > 0:10:55but its subject is a very modern dilemma.
0:10:55 > 0:10:57I think it's telling that people often refer to
0:10:57 > 0:11:01the monster as Frankenstein, but that isn't the case.
0:11:01 > 0:11:06Frankenstein is the monster's creator, the scientist.
0:11:06 > 0:11:10Although in Mary Shelley's view, perhaps he's the true monster,
0:11:10 > 0:11:13the real villain of the piece.
0:11:13 > 0:11:18Why? Because he's a scientific obsessive, a monomaniac.
0:11:18 > 0:11:22All he cares about is the realisation of his dream.
0:11:22 > 0:11:25But he doesn't think about the consequences.
0:11:30 > 0:11:33The moment he succeeds in bestowing the gift of life,
0:11:33 > 0:11:36Frankenstein rejects his creation.
0:11:38 > 0:11:42The unloved, deformed monster embarks on a killing spree
0:11:42 > 0:11:43of revenge.
0:11:45 > 0:11:48But he is not so much terrifying as tragic.
0:11:50 > 0:11:53He learns to speak and tells his maker,
0:11:53 > 0:11:59"I should have been your Adam, but I am instead the fallen angel.
0:11:59 > 0:12:01"Misery made me a fiend."
0:12:03 > 0:12:08I think the novel expresses a deep-seated, 19th-century terror
0:12:08 > 0:12:12of science that might run out of control.
0:12:12 > 0:12:15And I think that's why it's resonated throughout
0:12:15 > 0:12:17the 20th century and into the 21st century.
0:12:18 > 0:12:23Whether it's the human genome or the splitting of the atom, a great
0:12:23 > 0:12:29scientific discovery is only as great as the use that's made of it.
0:12:29 > 0:12:34And that use can contain as many nightmares as dreams.
0:12:34 > 0:12:39I think Mary Shelley's point was that the bare bones
0:12:39 > 0:12:42of scientific enquiry are not enough.
0:12:42 > 0:12:47They have to be animated by the spirit of moral responsibility.
0:12:49 > 0:12:52Another great fear was that modern science,
0:12:52 > 0:12:56for all its miraculous discoveries, was actually destroying
0:12:56 > 0:12:59the human capacity for wonder,
0:12:59 > 0:13:02mapping God out of the equation.
0:13:04 > 0:13:09Powerful lenses laid bare a microscopic world.
0:13:09 > 0:13:15Diagrams left little space for the spiritual dimension.
0:13:15 > 0:13:18In the same year that Frankenstein was published,
0:13:18 > 0:13:22the eccentric visionary William Blake created his own monster.
0:13:23 > 0:13:27Painted on a tiny panel, I think it's his way
0:13:27 > 0:13:31of restoring to the world something he believed science had taken away.
0:13:34 > 0:13:37According to Blake, art was the tree of life,
0:13:37 > 0:13:40science was the tree of death.
0:13:40 > 0:13:44And yet he was perfectly capable of being fascinated by
0:13:44 > 0:13:47the new information and the new imagery being provided
0:13:47 > 0:13:49by scientific discovery.
0:13:49 > 0:13:56And this picture, this wonderful, strange, intense, weird picture, was
0:13:56 > 0:14:01actually inspired by Blake's having seen
0:14:01 > 0:14:04a microscopic image of a flea.
0:14:05 > 0:14:10Blake called this picture The Ghost Of A Flea,
0:14:10 > 0:14:14and it is itself, while inspired by science, hardly scientific.
0:14:14 > 0:14:17It's the depiction of a man who'd been turned into a flea
0:14:17 > 0:14:23as a form of punishment for having a vicious, bloodthirsty nature.
0:14:24 > 0:14:27He's got a sting at the back,
0:14:27 > 0:14:30and he's got a bowl of blood in front.
0:14:30 > 0:14:33What I think is going on here is deadly serious, I think
0:14:33 > 0:14:37this is Blake using his Gothic imagination to take revenge on
0:14:37 > 0:14:39the scientific attitude.
0:14:39 > 0:14:42He's taken an image drawn from science, and he's re-enchanted it,
0:14:42 > 0:14:47made it mysterious, made it weird, made it Gothic.
0:14:47 > 0:14:50In fact, the image is just the sort of thing that you might see
0:14:50 > 0:14:54carved into the choir stall of a medieval church,
0:14:54 > 0:14:59or carved into the front of a church, perhaps as a gargoyle.
0:14:59 > 0:15:05So Blake has taken an image that's all about explanation, all about
0:15:05 > 0:15:13discourse, science, discovery, and he's made it mysterious and strange.
0:15:17 > 0:15:19As science scrutinised the world around us,
0:15:19 > 0:15:21it inevitably turned its unflinching gaze
0:15:21 > 0:15:26on the most intriguing subject of all - ourselves.
0:15:28 > 0:15:31Scientists began to question the very nature of identity -
0:15:31 > 0:15:33who are we?
0:15:33 > 0:15:36Is consciousness evidence of a soul,
0:15:36 > 0:15:40or simply the product of chemical reactions in the brain?
0:15:43 > 0:15:47Mesmerism seemed to offer clues to the nature of the mind.
0:15:48 > 0:15:52We recognise it now as an early form of hypnotism,
0:15:52 > 0:15:56but in the early 19th century, such powers of mind control
0:15:56 > 0:16:00independent of the body seemed much more sinister, more Gothic.
0:16:01 > 0:16:04They suggested invisible realms.
0:16:04 > 0:16:08Some claimed mesmerism allowed them to gaze into the future,
0:16:08 > 0:16:11or contact the dead. But nothing was proven.
0:16:14 > 0:16:18As science broadened the horizons of knowledge, so art followed.
0:16:20 > 0:16:24Romantic poets explored the nature of the mind in their work.
0:16:26 > 0:16:30Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Rime Of The Ancient Mariner
0:16:30 > 0:16:32took Gothic horror to the high seas,
0:16:32 > 0:16:35and to the depths of the human psyche.
0:16:36 > 0:16:40In the poem, the haunted journey of a doomed sailor becomes
0:16:40 > 0:16:43a metaphor for the searchings of a troubled mind.
0:16:46 > 0:16:51When the sailor recklessly kills an albatross, nature condemns him.
0:16:52 > 0:16:54He must roam the earth
0:16:54 > 0:16:58and suffer the psychological torments of guilt and alienation.
0:17:01 > 0:17:04But poets and scientists alike made a troubling discovery -
0:17:04 > 0:17:09the more they tried to pin down the essential nature of who we are,
0:17:09 > 0:17:13the more it seemed to evaporate like mist at sea.
0:17:15 > 0:17:18We appear in a constant state of change.
0:17:19 > 0:17:24Are we the product of our emotions? Our memories? Our will?
0:17:24 > 0:17:28How do we even know our reality is not simply an illusion?
0:17:31 > 0:17:35At least you knew where you were with the old Gothic ruined castles,
0:17:35 > 0:17:38haunted abbeys.
0:17:38 > 0:17:42But now the realisation suddenly dawned that perhaps the most
0:17:42 > 0:17:47terrifying Gothic haunted house of all might be the human mind,
0:17:47 > 0:17:51and the greatest terror was that of not knowing yourself.
0:17:55 > 0:17:58Many writers found inspiration
0:17:58 > 0:18:01through the products of science - namely drugs.
0:18:02 > 0:18:06Opiate-based medicines provoked chemical reactions in the brain
0:18:06 > 0:18:10that allowed the user to explore the darkest recesses of the mind.
0:18:14 > 0:18:17Poets like Coleridge, Keats, Wordsworth and Byron
0:18:17 > 0:18:19all experimented with opium.
0:18:20 > 0:18:22Even the fictional Dr Frankenstein
0:18:22 > 0:18:25took laudanum to drown out his guilt.
0:18:27 > 0:18:29But one writer went further.
0:18:29 > 0:18:31He revealed to the world exactly what happens
0:18:31 > 0:18:34when drugs open the door to the subconscious.
0:18:37 > 0:18:40Thomas de Quincey was 36 when he wrote
0:18:40 > 0:18:43The Confessions Of An English Opium Eater.
0:18:43 > 0:18:46It's almost a stream-of-consciousness account
0:18:46 > 0:18:47of his experiences with opium.
0:18:49 > 0:18:54The book is presented as a warning against the dangers of excess,
0:18:54 > 0:18:57yet throughout it runs a darkly Gothic fascination
0:18:57 > 0:19:00with the interior world it opens up.
0:19:03 > 0:19:06De Quincey was a deeply troubled man,
0:19:06 > 0:19:09traumatised, as he wrote in Confessions Of An Opium Eater,
0:19:09 > 0:19:13by the loss of many of those closest to him.
0:19:13 > 0:19:15And it seems to me that he
0:19:15 > 0:19:21used the drug as a way of fuelling his own escapist fantasies.
0:19:21 > 0:19:26As he describes it in the book, it's as if he took opium in order
0:19:26 > 0:19:33to turn his own mind into a kind of Gothic fantasy-producing machine.
0:19:33 > 0:19:37He would take the drug, close his eyes and go on a trip.
0:19:37 > 0:19:40And it's extraordinary when you read his book,
0:19:40 > 0:19:43how many of his trips are as if scripted
0:19:43 > 0:19:46by the Gothic novelists of the past.
0:19:46 > 0:19:51They are visions of debauchery and excess, trips to hell and back.
0:19:51 > 0:19:57And yet, for all its outlandishness, its weirdness, and its novelty,
0:19:57 > 0:20:01I think de Quincey's book was important because in it,
0:20:01 > 0:20:07he identified and confessed to being part of a new social phenomenon.
0:20:07 > 0:20:12Namely, escaping your unhappiness by turning to drugs.
0:20:19 > 0:20:22Whatever may be visually represented
0:20:22 > 0:20:25I did think of in the darkness, shaped into phantoms of the eye.
0:20:28 > 0:20:31I seemed to descend into chasms and sunless abysses, depths
0:20:31 > 0:20:35below depths from which it seemed hopeless that I could ever reascend.
0:20:37 > 0:20:39Buildings and landscapes and proportions
0:20:39 > 0:20:42so vast as the eye is not fit to receive.
0:20:45 > 0:20:50I sometimes seem to have lived for 70 or 100 years in one night,
0:20:50 > 0:20:52sometimes a millennium,
0:20:52 > 0:20:57or a duration far beyond the limits of any human experience.
0:21:03 > 0:21:08De Quincey's trips into inner space were both exploration and escape.
0:21:08 > 0:21:12Escape from a world that was moving at an ever more terrifying speed.
0:21:14 > 0:21:18Nothing epitomised the pace of change more than the locomotive.
0:21:21 > 0:21:24On its maiden journey, the first passenger train
0:21:24 > 0:21:26mowed down and killed a man.
0:21:27 > 0:21:31It was soon achieving speeds previously undreamt of.
0:21:31 > 0:21:35No human being had ever travelled this fast before,
0:21:35 > 0:21:37and the sense of awe that it induced
0:21:37 > 0:21:41was captured on canvas by England's greatest painter, Turner.
0:21:43 > 0:21:44Rain, Steam And Speed.
0:21:44 > 0:21:47It's such an astonishing picture,
0:21:47 > 0:21:53such an explosive essay in a new form of perception.
0:21:53 > 0:21:57It's so predictive of Impressionism, painted in 1844,
0:21:57 > 0:22:0330 years before Monet even dreamed of creating Impression: Sunrise.
0:22:04 > 0:22:08Yet, precisely for those reasons, I think
0:22:08 > 0:22:13this explosion of a canvas has been in a sense misunderstood,
0:22:13 > 0:22:17or rather its subject, its true subject, has been forgotten.
0:22:17 > 0:22:18What's it actually about?
0:22:18 > 0:22:22It's about a locomotive, it's about a steam train hurtling
0:22:22 > 0:22:26towards us out of the void, into a void.
0:22:27 > 0:22:30It's about this dark, clanking automaton,
0:22:30 > 0:22:34this creation of science that is running out of control.
0:22:34 > 0:22:40There's terror, and it lives at the heart of Victorian England.
0:22:40 > 0:22:41That's Gothic.
0:22:41 > 0:22:44That's Gothic right there.
0:22:49 > 0:22:52The train mercilessly ploughed its tracks
0:22:52 > 0:22:54deep into the British countryside.
0:22:56 > 0:22:58Factories and cities soon followed.
0:23:04 > 0:23:07In The March Of Bricks And Mortar,
0:23:07 > 0:23:10satirist George Cruikshank depicted the relentless
0:23:10 > 0:23:15forces of urbanisation as a demonic war waged by city on country.
0:23:19 > 0:23:22It's almost impossible now to appreciate what it must have
0:23:22 > 0:23:25felt like to live through such profound changes.
0:23:36 > 0:23:40Britain's transformation from a rural to an industrial economy
0:23:40 > 0:23:43was a real shock to the system.
0:23:43 > 0:23:45It happened very quickly.
0:23:45 > 0:23:47Within just a few decades,
0:23:47 > 0:23:52more people in Britain were living in cities than in the countryside.
0:23:52 > 0:23:55This was the first place on earth where that had ever happened.
0:23:55 > 0:23:57The environment was changed -
0:23:57 > 0:24:02huge clouds of smoke covered much of the landscape.
0:24:02 > 0:24:05The phrase "Industrial Revolution" doesn't really do justice to it.
0:24:05 > 0:24:08It was more of an industrial trauma.
0:24:12 > 0:24:16The traditional extended family network was undermined
0:24:16 > 0:24:19as people flocked to the cities in search of jobs.
0:24:21 > 0:24:23In northern factory towns like Bradford,
0:24:23 > 0:24:27nearly half the population came from somewhere else.
0:24:29 > 0:24:32The landscape of the future was urban,
0:24:32 > 0:24:36and its territory, a whole range of new anxieties.
0:24:43 > 0:24:47For many Victorians, the source of their worst fears was the city,
0:24:47 > 0:24:51associated with crime, grime, violence, poverty.
0:24:51 > 0:24:56And a new form of popular literature sprang into being
0:24:56 > 0:25:00which fed those fears and fed on those fears.
0:25:00 > 0:25:02It was aimed at a mass audience.
0:25:02 > 0:25:05It sensationalised urban horror, fictionalised it
0:25:05 > 0:25:09and added all kinds of weird supernatural elements.
0:25:09 > 0:25:13Characters like Varney The Vampire or Spring-Heel'd Jack.
0:25:14 > 0:25:17It was all done with a flourish and using the language
0:25:17 > 0:25:19and the imagery of...what else?
0:25:19 > 0:25:20Gothic.
0:25:23 > 0:25:26They began with the true crime stories of Newgate prisoners.
0:25:27 > 0:25:31Then came urban myths - reports of a cloaked man who attacked women,
0:25:31 > 0:25:34then flew off over the rooftops.
0:25:35 > 0:25:38He was given a name and a storyline -
0:25:38 > 0:25:41the dastardly Spring-Heel'd Jack.
0:25:41 > 0:25:45But Jack began using his superhuman powers to solve crimes,
0:25:45 > 0:25:48and turned into a Batman-style hero.
0:25:49 > 0:25:51The murderous barber Sweeney Todd
0:25:51 > 0:25:55was the most enduring creation of the Gothic comics.
0:25:56 > 0:25:59They were nicknamed penny dreadfuls,
0:25:59 > 0:26:02and they were popular because they tapped into working-class fears
0:26:02 > 0:26:03about the modern city.
0:26:06 > 0:26:09It was a place where people,
0:26:09 > 0:26:12mixed in their millions, no longer really knew each other.
0:26:15 > 0:26:17Where anyone could do anything
0:26:17 > 0:26:21and just disappear back into the city's maze of streets.
0:26:23 > 0:26:27One anxious critic of the penny dreadfuls wrote...
0:26:27 > 0:26:31Boys and girls reared in the cellars and garrets of large cities
0:26:31 > 0:26:35are reading a literature of animal passion and defiant lawlessness.
0:26:37 > 0:26:41Lives of bad people, crime, madness and suicide
0:26:41 > 0:26:45are powerful in preparing the young for convict life.
0:26:48 > 0:26:51In fact, the evidence suggests that penny dreadfuls
0:26:51 > 0:26:55worked like a pressure valve, easing urban anxieties.
0:26:55 > 0:26:57They also boosted adult literacy.
0:27:00 > 0:27:03Charles Dickens, the most popular writer of the age, would
0:27:03 > 0:27:06reinvent urban Gothic for the middle classes.
0:27:09 > 0:27:14There's more than a smattering of the supernatural in Dickens.
0:27:14 > 0:27:18Think of the ghosts haunting Scrooge in A Christmas Carol.
0:27:18 > 0:27:23But his Gothic isn't really about ghouls from beyond the grave.
0:27:23 > 0:27:27It's about the gloom of the industrial here and now.
0:27:29 > 0:27:32Dickens painted his most vivid picture of modern urban Gothic
0:27:32 > 0:27:34in Bleak House.
0:27:34 > 0:27:38It's an epic tale of aristocrats and paupers,
0:27:38 > 0:27:40country mansions and city squalor.
0:27:48 > 0:27:51Where is the dark Gothic heart of Dickens' novel?
0:27:51 > 0:27:54Well, it's certainly not the Bleak House of the title,
0:27:54 > 0:27:57which is actually quite a nice place.
0:27:57 > 0:28:03It's only gradually as you read the book that you realise that
0:28:03 > 0:28:10Dickens' great Gothic castle, full of terrors and nightmares,
0:28:10 > 0:28:13is actually London itself.
0:28:13 > 0:28:19He describes it as if it were a huge, labyrinthine,
0:28:19 > 0:28:21single, multi-celled structure.
0:28:21 > 0:28:25Instead of being twined with ivy like a Gothic ruin,
0:28:25 > 0:28:29it has fog creeping across every surface.
0:28:29 > 0:28:32It's a place full of darkness where you can barely
0:28:32 > 0:28:34see your hand in front of your face.
0:28:34 > 0:28:36It has its demons, the crooks
0:28:36 > 0:28:40and lawyers that suck the lifeblood from the city.
0:28:40 > 0:28:47It has its lost souls, the poor stuck in their terrible slums.
0:28:47 > 0:28:52I think Bleak House was Dickens' way of saying to his reading public,
0:28:52 > 0:28:55if you're looking for Gothic horror,
0:28:55 > 0:28:58you don't need to consult your imaginations.
0:28:58 > 0:29:02The sad truth is you're actually living in it.
0:29:10 > 0:29:13There was no welfare safety net in Dickens' London -
0:29:13 > 0:29:15if you fell, you fell on your own.
0:29:18 > 0:29:21That's why the terrible slum in Bleak House
0:29:21 > 0:29:24is so aptly known as Tom-All-Alone's.
0:29:29 > 0:29:33These ruined shelters have bred a crowd of foul existence that
0:29:33 > 0:29:37crawls in and out of gaps in walls and boards,
0:29:37 > 0:29:39and coils itself to sleep
0:29:39 > 0:29:45in maggot numbers, where the rain drips in and comes and goes,
0:29:45 > 0:29:49fetching and carrying fever and sowing more evil
0:29:49 > 0:29:50in its every footprint.
0:29:54 > 0:29:56Later in the novel, there's a ghoulish echo
0:29:56 > 0:29:58of penny dreadful tales,
0:29:58 > 0:30:01as two men who visit the rag and bottle merchant Krook
0:30:01 > 0:30:03discover he's gone up in smoke -
0:30:03 > 0:30:06a bizarre case of spontaneous human combustion.
0:30:08 > 0:30:12The cat is snarling at something on the ground before the fire.
0:30:12 > 0:30:15What is it? A charred log of wood? Or?
0:30:16 > 0:30:20Oh, horror! He IS here.
0:30:20 > 0:30:21Or all that is left of him.
0:30:28 > 0:30:30At the book's climax,
0:30:30 > 0:30:33the tragic Lady Dedlock lies down to die
0:30:33 > 0:30:37at the gates of a rat-infested pauper's graveyard.
0:30:39 > 0:30:43It was a dreadful spot, heaps of dishonoured graves and stones,
0:30:43 > 0:30:45hemmed in by filthy houses.
0:30:46 > 0:30:50On the step I saw, with a cry of pity and horror,
0:30:50 > 0:30:54a woman lying, cold and dead.
0:31:14 > 0:31:17The Victorians looked around at the new world
0:31:17 > 0:31:18they were creating -
0:31:18 > 0:31:23sprawling, grimy cities, smoke-belching factories -
0:31:23 > 0:31:25and felt distinctly uneasy.
0:31:30 > 0:31:33Just read their literature, look at their art.
0:31:34 > 0:31:36And you can feel their sense that
0:31:36 > 0:31:39society was coming apart at the seams.
0:31:39 > 0:31:41That disaster loomed.
0:31:43 > 0:31:44The critic John Ruskin
0:31:44 > 0:31:48spoke of the dark storm cloud of the 19th century.
0:31:48 > 0:31:50A warning that unless
0:31:50 > 0:31:55something was done, social and environmental catastrophe lay ahead.
0:31:57 > 0:32:00But one man's angst is another man's opportunity.
0:32:00 > 0:32:05And Victorian anxieties were cannily exploited by the artist John Martin.
0:32:05 > 0:32:09In 1851 he painted The Great Day of His Wrath.
0:32:11 > 0:32:14A work very much meant for mass consumption.
0:32:16 > 0:32:22It was a barnstorming depiction of the end of the world.
0:32:22 > 0:32:27It's very much the end of the modern Victorian industrial world.
0:32:27 > 0:32:33it looks like a terrible incident in a smelting furnace.
0:32:35 > 0:32:39Inspect it more closely and you see that what he's envisioning
0:32:39 > 0:32:43is, in fact, a city imploding,
0:32:43 > 0:32:47consuming itself in a ball of flame.
0:32:51 > 0:32:54It's a wonderfully theatrical,
0:32:54 > 0:32:58in fact, perhaps almost pantomime-like depiction
0:32:58 > 0:33:00of the end of the world.
0:33:06 > 0:33:09Literally, it's a Gothic painting.
0:33:09 > 0:33:13It returns art to that most Gothic or medieval of subjects,
0:33:13 > 0:33:16the Last Judgment, or Doom.
0:33:16 > 0:33:21But it's also a picture that seems to leap forward into the future.
0:33:21 > 0:33:24It was seen by eight million people.
0:33:24 > 0:33:28Martin toured it around the world. It was a smash-hit sensation,
0:33:28 > 0:33:30a painting that predicted
0:33:30 > 0:33:33the Hollywood blockbusters of the future.
0:33:35 > 0:33:38It was a huge popular success.
0:33:39 > 0:33:41Why was that?
0:33:41 > 0:33:45Well, I think it was partly because Martin had tapped in so directly,
0:33:45 > 0:33:50so viscerally to a genuine popular fear
0:33:50 > 0:33:54that everything in their frighteningly modern world
0:33:54 > 0:33:56was indeed about to go wrong.
0:33:59 > 0:34:01But he also allowed them to experience
0:34:01 > 0:34:06the worst that could happen, in the form of a work of art.
0:34:07 > 0:34:12They could look at it, thrill to the terror of it all,
0:34:12 > 0:34:17then reassure themselves that, well, it's only a nightmare.
0:34:22 > 0:34:25But if John Martin used the dark imagery of Gothic to predict
0:34:25 > 0:34:27the end of the world,
0:34:27 > 0:34:31there was also another, lighter Gothic.
0:34:31 > 0:34:34One which held out the promise of salvation from all this.
0:34:46 > 0:34:50Gothic's optimists were determined to ride to Britain's rescue.
0:34:50 > 0:34:52They had a vision.
0:34:52 > 0:34:55Go back to the past and we'll build a better future.
0:34:55 > 0:34:57And their message was popular.
0:34:58 > 0:35:00People longed for an earlier age,
0:35:00 > 0:35:03when everything had seemed more certain.
0:35:03 > 0:35:07The whole nation began play-acting at being medieval.
0:35:07 > 0:35:11Costume balls and banquets became all the rage.
0:35:12 > 0:35:17TANNOY: And representing the Red Team is Sir Jasper...
0:35:17 > 0:35:21Even Queen Victoria and Prince Albert donned 14th-century gear
0:35:21 > 0:35:28for a grand Plantagenet Ball held at Buckingham Palace in 1842.
0:35:28 > 0:35:30TANNOY: We are the knights of Royal England.
0:35:30 > 0:35:33But the new obsession with all things medieval
0:35:33 > 0:35:35appealed to people of every class.
0:35:37 > 0:35:42The Victorians loved Gothic colour, pageantry, chivalry, heraldry.
0:35:42 > 0:35:48They loved the idea of Gothic as a return to a spiritual world,
0:35:48 > 0:35:52a great contrast to the godlessness of their own cities and factories.
0:35:52 > 0:35:55The Victorian Gothic dream took many forms -
0:35:55 > 0:35:59architecture, literature, spectacle.
0:35:59 > 0:36:03But above all, it was a fantasy of escaping from the present
0:36:03 > 0:36:05and into an idealised past.
0:36:15 > 0:36:18It was a deeply conservative fantasy,
0:36:18 > 0:36:21fuelled by novels like Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe.
0:36:23 > 0:36:25A book that romanticised the medieval world
0:36:25 > 0:36:27of the jousting tournament.
0:36:31 > 0:36:34A rigidly hierarchical world, in which everyone
0:36:34 > 0:36:37knew their place and everyone knew how they ought to behave.
0:36:44 > 0:36:46The Victorians staged the first jousts
0:36:46 > 0:36:48seen in Britain for centuries.
0:36:54 > 0:36:59In 1839, staunch medievalist the Earl of Eglinton, a man with a
0:36:59 > 0:37:01quite remarkably square face,
0:37:01 > 0:37:05hosted a lavish tournament on his Scottish estate.
0:37:09 > 0:37:11100,000 flocked to see
0:37:11 > 0:37:13grown men dress up in medieval armour
0:37:13 > 0:37:15and tilt at each other on horseback.
0:37:19 > 0:37:21When the tournament actually got under way,
0:37:21 > 0:37:27the weather was so miserable, so wet, so appallingly Scottish -
0:37:27 > 0:37:29Eglinton would have killed for this sunshine -
0:37:29 > 0:37:34that the horses immediately sank up to their fetlocks in the mud.
0:37:34 > 0:37:37They soldiered on but the journalists had a field day.
0:37:37 > 0:37:41This was the knight with the umbrella, they jeered.
0:37:41 > 0:37:43But nonetheless,
0:37:43 > 0:37:46Eglinton's tournament did bring the Gothic Revival
0:37:46 > 0:37:50to the attention of a mass public as nothing else had done before.
0:37:50 > 0:37:55And it set a trend for historic re-enactments which survives to this day.
0:38:02 > 0:38:05All the Gothic fancy dress and tales of swashbuckling chivalry
0:38:05 > 0:38:09were evidence of the Victorians' escapist tendencies.
0:38:10 > 0:38:13It made them peculiarly receptive to the ideas of a man
0:38:13 > 0:38:16who wanted to plunge the whole nation back in time.
0:38:21 > 0:38:25The youngest and most valiant knight at Gothic's new round table,
0:38:25 > 0:38:28or should that be drawing board,
0:38:28 > 0:38:31was an architect named Augustus Pugin.
0:38:31 > 0:38:35Aged just 24, he published what would become one of the most
0:38:35 > 0:38:36influential books of the age.
0:38:40 > 0:38:43The British Library holds the original copy of a work that
0:38:43 > 0:38:46would reshape the Victorian world.
0:38:49 > 0:38:52Contrasts, an argument for the superiority of the Gothic style,
0:38:52 > 0:38:57is a none-too-subtle rant by a distinctly angry young man.
0:38:59 > 0:39:03This is a very rare and precious book.
0:39:03 > 0:39:06It's Pugin's own copy of Contrasts.
0:39:06 > 0:39:12And it's even had bound into it his own drawings.
0:39:12 > 0:39:18Now, Pugin sought to ram his argument down the throats of those
0:39:18 > 0:39:23reading his book with a series of deliberately very unfair contrasts
0:39:23 > 0:39:28between modern architecture, bad. Gothic architecture, good.
0:39:28 > 0:39:35But although Pugin's subject in this book is nominally architecture,
0:39:35 > 0:39:40I think his real subject is the modern city and its ills.
0:39:40 > 0:39:42That's what he's really trying to get at, that's what he's
0:39:42 > 0:39:47really trying to understand, that's what he's really trying to cure.
0:39:47 > 0:39:51On the one hand, Pugin presents us with a modern city.
0:39:51 > 0:39:58Factories, chimneys, gasworks, the workhouse,
0:39:58 > 0:40:00modern bridge.
0:40:00 > 0:40:04It's a soulless, barren, industrial,
0:40:04 > 0:40:09commercial, sprawling, vast, impersonal place.
0:40:09 > 0:40:13Against that he sets a medieval town
0:40:13 > 0:40:18where man goes about his daily business
0:40:18 > 0:40:21under the eye of God,
0:40:21 > 0:40:28guarded by these great towering church and cathedral spires.
0:40:28 > 0:40:33Everything is in order, everything is quiet, everything is tranquil.
0:40:33 > 0:40:39So godlessness contrasted with spirituality.
0:40:39 > 0:40:41There's something wonderfully naive about the book, of course,
0:40:41 > 0:40:44because in it Pugin is saying,
0:40:44 > 0:40:49if we build as they once did in the Middle Ages, then suddenly...
0:40:49 > 0:40:52everyone will believe in God,
0:40:52 > 0:40:56everyone will be cared for, looked after,
0:40:56 > 0:40:59and society will be made better.
0:41:00 > 0:41:03But, of course, life isn't quite as simple as that.
0:41:07 > 0:41:11He might have been a Utopian, but Pugin perfectly caught the mood
0:41:11 > 0:41:15of a Britain obsessed by fantasies of a glorious medieval past.
0:41:18 > 0:41:21This was a match made in heaven, and it would produce its greatest
0:41:21 > 0:41:24offspring from the flames of destruction.
0:41:27 > 0:41:29When the medieval Palace of Westminster
0:41:29 > 0:41:31burnt to the ground in 1834,
0:41:31 > 0:41:34it was decreed that the new Houses of Parliament
0:41:34 > 0:41:36should be built in the Gothic style.
0:41:38 > 0:41:41Not least because classical architecture was tainted
0:41:41 > 0:41:45by association with post-revolutionary republican France.
0:41:53 > 0:41:57So the government turned to Pugin to cover its new home
0:41:57 > 0:41:59with medieval detail.
0:42:03 > 0:42:05Both outside and in.
0:42:07 > 0:42:11Begun in 1838, just a year after Victoria came to the throne,
0:42:11 > 0:42:15it is the embodiment of a very British democracy.
0:42:15 > 0:42:19A New Jerusalem fusing ancient heritage with modern Empire.
0:42:23 > 0:42:26It's crammed with Pugin's spectacular designs.
0:42:27 > 0:42:31Ornate floor tiles. Elaborate window tracery.
0:42:33 > 0:42:35Graceful fan vault ceilings.
0:42:38 > 0:42:41But the greatest jewel in Pugin's crown
0:42:41 > 0:42:43is the chamber of the House of Lords.
0:42:45 > 0:42:48Now, admittedly a few things have changed in the chamber
0:42:48 > 0:42:51of the House of Lords since Pugin's time.
0:42:51 > 0:42:54There's this rather wonderful swarm of microphones
0:42:54 > 0:42:56to enable the Lords to be heard.
0:42:56 > 0:43:02But other than that, it's remained remarkably as it was created
0:43:02 > 0:43:09by Pugin, and wow, what a profusion, obsessive profusion of detail.
0:43:11 > 0:43:18The great gold gilt throne, these carved wooden animals.
0:43:18 > 0:43:22Where the Lords themselves sit are rather like choir stalls,
0:43:22 > 0:43:23it's as if Pugin wanted to turn
0:43:23 > 0:43:28this space of political debate into a kind of secular church.
0:43:28 > 0:43:33I think he expended so much blood, sweat and tears on this place
0:43:33 > 0:43:36because he felt it was a really important commission for him,
0:43:36 > 0:43:37a chance for him
0:43:37 > 0:43:43to stamp the Gothic on the proceedings of political life.
0:43:45 > 0:43:46GAVEL BANGS
0:43:49 > 0:43:53Pugin dreamed that this benevolent, conservative, feudal image
0:43:53 > 0:43:58of the past would stamp a moral vision on those who ran the country.
0:44:00 > 0:44:04For the politicians themselves, it represented something else.
0:44:04 > 0:44:08A kind of continuity, a soothing reassurance that Britain was
0:44:08 > 0:44:13immune to the political revolutions sweeping the continent.
0:44:13 > 0:44:15And perhaps that's its weakness.
0:44:19 > 0:44:24The problem with it as a space, I think, is that it breeds...
0:44:26 > 0:44:30..a kind of soporific indifference to the problems of the present.
0:44:30 > 0:44:37What he's created is a space in which it's wonderfully easy...
0:44:39 > 0:44:43..to forget about all of the problems of the present,
0:44:43 > 0:44:46all of the problems of the modern city,
0:44:46 > 0:44:48all of the problems of the poor,
0:44:48 > 0:44:52the problems that so engaged and enraged Pugin,
0:44:52 > 0:44:57and simply to lose yourself in the dream of a past.
0:44:58 > 0:45:03The natural response...is actually just to fall asleep.
0:45:11 > 0:45:12The Houses of Parliament
0:45:12 > 0:45:15are the buildings for which Pugin is best remembered.
0:45:18 > 0:45:22But to see the perfect expression of the gospel according to Pugin,
0:45:22 > 0:45:24you have to travel 150 miles north.
0:45:29 > 0:45:34To St Giles' Church, Staffordshire, which he completed in 1840.
0:45:43 > 0:45:46Never was he given more freedom to express his belief that the
0:45:46 > 0:45:50soul of Britain could be saved through bricks and mortar
0:45:50 > 0:45:51and rich decoration.
0:46:09 > 0:46:13It was very important to Pugin to carry the good Gothic fight
0:46:13 > 0:46:18into the heartlands of the Industrial Revolution.
0:46:18 > 0:46:25To bring light, colour, spirituality to those whose lives were
0:46:25 > 0:46:31being blighted by the soot and the grime of heavy industry.
0:46:31 > 0:46:35I think that's why he jumped at the chance to create this church here
0:46:35 > 0:46:38in Cheadle, not far from Stoke-on-Trent
0:46:38 > 0:46:40with its potteries,
0:46:40 > 0:46:43surrounded by mines and the slagheaps
0:46:43 > 0:46:46of the new mining industry.
0:46:46 > 0:46:51And I think there's something almost desperate about the riotous
0:46:51 > 0:46:57profusion of colour and design that Pugin flung at this church.
0:46:57 > 0:47:03It's as if he wanted to squeeze the entire tradition of ancient Christianity,
0:47:03 > 0:47:06at least in terms of art and design, into one building.
0:47:09 > 0:47:13The gilded lions seem to contain echoes of ancient Venice.
0:47:13 > 0:47:16Above there are these roundels of saints
0:47:16 > 0:47:19and prophets that echo the art of Byzantium.
0:47:19 > 0:47:22Stained glass windows.
0:47:22 > 0:47:25A baptismal font that seems to recall
0:47:25 > 0:47:28the objects of the ancient English Middle Ages.
0:47:28 > 0:47:34Everywhere colour, pattern, design, surfaces crawling with it.
0:47:39 > 0:47:42But for all its beauty, for all its splendour,
0:47:42 > 0:47:48there's something a bit too much about Pugin's church at Cheadle.
0:47:48 > 0:47:53This is Gothic architecture fed on opium.
0:47:53 > 0:47:55There's a touch of mania about it.
0:48:02 > 0:48:04Pugin stood for Gothic's bright side,
0:48:04 > 0:48:06but he met a very dark Gothic end.
0:48:10 > 0:48:14With astonishing, obsessive energy he built dozens of churches,
0:48:14 > 0:48:16convents, cathedrals and private houses.
0:48:18 > 0:48:22And he didn't just exhaust himself, he drove himself mad.
0:48:24 > 0:48:26By the age of 40, he was dead.
0:48:32 > 0:48:36Pugin's dream was a kind of mourning for a past that had gone for ever.
0:48:40 > 0:48:44Even his most heroic buildings have a haunting melancholy about them.
0:48:47 > 0:48:51Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that his Gothic visions seem
0:48:51 > 0:48:53so conflicted, so contradictory.
0:48:56 > 0:49:00After all, he lived in an age of contradictions.
0:49:04 > 0:49:08Embodied by none other than Queen Victoria herself.
0:49:08 > 0:49:11Imperial figurehead and grief-stricken widow.
0:49:14 > 0:49:19Queen Victoria ruled Britain at its moment of greatest global influence.
0:49:19 > 0:49:23She symbolised the empire on which the sun never set,
0:49:23 > 0:49:26an empire of apparently supreme self-confidence.
0:49:26 > 0:49:28Yet she was, in many ways,
0:49:28 > 0:49:32an aptly neurotic emblem for a neurotic age.
0:49:32 > 0:49:35The High Priestess of High Victorian Gothic
0:49:35 > 0:49:39was a woman so morbidly obsessed by death,
0:49:39 > 0:49:41she seemed positively bewitched by it.
0:49:43 > 0:49:46When the Queen's beloved consort, Prince Albert,
0:49:46 > 0:49:49died in 1861 at the age of just 42,
0:49:49 > 0:49:52she plunged into a period of mourning
0:49:52 > 0:49:55that would last for 40 years.
0:49:56 > 0:49:59Dressed permanently in black, the Widow of Windsor,
0:49:59 > 0:50:01as she became known,
0:50:01 > 0:50:05ritualised the memory of her dead husband to a pathological degree.
0:50:07 > 0:50:11She brought the royal family together to recreate group photos
0:50:11 > 0:50:18from happier times, only now Albert was replaced by a marble bust.
0:50:18 > 0:50:22She even had Albert's clothes laid out every day for decades,
0:50:22 > 0:50:23as if he were about to wear them.
0:50:26 > 0:50:29Most extravagant of all was the Queen's campaign to build
0:50:29 > 0:50:32a towering Gothic memorial to her deceased consort.
0:50:35 > 0:50:38Many in Britain thought it a waste of money.
0:50:39 > 0:50:43But after a ten-year battle, Queen Victoria finally got her way.
0:50:45 > 0:50:49This was the two faces of Gothic merged into one monument.
0:50:51 > 0:50:53If the Albert Memorial were a piece of music,
0:50:53 > 0:50:55you'd be hard-pressed to say
0:50:55 > 0:50:58whether it's a symphony or a requiem.
0:50:58 > 0:51:03On the one hand it's a triumphant celebration of British progress.
0:51:03 > 0:51:06At its four corners are embodied the continents
0:51:06 > 0:51:09to which the great British Empire has spread.
0:51:15 > 0:51:20Above them are figures celebrating manufacture, commerce.
0:51:20 > 0:51:23Indeed the whole structure of this monument was only made possible
0:51:23 > 0:51:27by advances in cast iron technology -
0:51:27 > 0:51:32the same technology that led to the creation of the first suspension bridges.
0:51:32 > 0:51:36And yet the whole monument also speaks the language of loss,
0:51:36 > 0:51:38of mourning, of bereavement.
0:51:40 > 0:51:43At its centre, the golden image
0:51:43 > 0:51:46of Queen Victoria's late beloved husband,
0:51:46 > 0:51:50and above, in the form of this great Gothic canopy,
0:51:50 > 0:51:53the dream of an England that has vanished,
0:51:53 > 0:51:56the England of the Middle Ages.
0:52:02 > 0:52:04I think this memorial speaks of a nation
0:52:04 > 0:52:09that wants to embrace the future but can't forget the past.
0:52:16 > 0:52:18The Albert Memorial
0:52:18 > 0:52:21marks the apex of the Gothic Revival movement.
0:52:23 > 0:52:26The nation had so utterly embraced medieval architecture
0:52:26 > 0:52:29that it became the Victorian house style.
0:52:31 > 0:52:32Railway stations...
0:52:34 > 0:52:35..bridges...
0:52:35 > 0:52:37museums...
0:52:38 > 0:52:40..schools and colleges.
0:52:42 > 0:52:44But even at their most expansive,
0:52:44 > 0:52:48such buildings couldn't conceal the anxieties of the Victorian age.
0:52:50 > 0:52:53In the later years of the 19th century, the triumphant, mournful
0:52:53 > 0:52:56and even frightening elements of Gothic
0:52:56 > 0:52:58increasingly came together.
0:52:58 > 0:53:01Nowhere more so than in this now-forgotten gem
0:53:01 > 0:53:04of late Victorian architecture,
0:53:04 > 0:53:08built in 1885 on the fringes of the great sprawl of London.
0:53:10 > 0:53:14It was the brainchild of Thomas Holloway, philanthropist
0:53:14 > 0:53:19and purveyor of quack remedies, notably Holloway's ointment.
0:53:19 > 0:53:21It had made him millions
0:53:21 > 0:53:24and now he wanted to give something back to society.
0:53:24 > 0:53:26His appointed architect, Thomas Crossland,
0:53:26 > 0:53:30a devotee of Pugin's ideas.
0:53:30 > 0:53:35The building is every bit as large as St Pancras railway station,
0:53:35 > 0:53:38and every bit as copiously decorated.
0:53:38 > 0:53:43But its purpose, not transportation but confinement.
0:53:43 > 0:53:46This was a lunatic asylum.
0:53:54 > 0:53:56The spectacular Holloway Sanatorium
0:53:56 > 0:54:00embodies the Victorian fascination with institutions.
0:54:03 > 0:54:08Whether you were sick in mind or body, criminal or poor,
0:54:08 > 0:54:14they believed architecture could bring stability, order, wellness.
0:54:17 > 0:54:19Yet something doesn't add up.
0:54:19 > 0:54:23This building was meant to be a cathedral dedicated
0:54:23 > 0:54:27to improving the lives of the mentally ill, but look
0:54:27 > 0:54:30closely at the decoration and it suddenly seems
0:54:30 > 0:54:31less optimistic.
0:54:32 > 0:54:35Some of these writhing creatures suggest
0:54:35 > 0:54:37the visions of a disturbed mind.
0:54:40 > 0:54:44They have the feel of involuntary confessions.
0:54:44 > 0:54:46Of terror, or the fear of failure
0:54:46 > 0:54:49in what was meant to be a place of hope.
0:55:03 > 0:55:08This is the recreation area, and for me it's one of the most poignantly
0:55:08 > 0:55:12eccentric spaces ever dreamed up by the Victorian imagination.
0:55:12 > 0:55:18Imagine yourself one of the first patients committed to this space, this place -
0:55:18 > 0:55:22how was it meant to improve your condition?
0:55:22 > 0:55:25Well, first off all, spiritual uplift.
0:55:25 > 0:55:29The whole room looks like a chapel and it's crowned by this
0:55:29 > 0:55:33enormous, tremendously impressive hammerbeam roof.
0:55:34 > 0:55:38Down below, everywhere you look, encouragement.
0:55:40 > 0:55:45On the walls, just above this coiling ornate golden decoration,
0:55:45 > 0:55:50are a series of moral parables, phrases designed to make
0:55:50 > 0:55:53those confined here feel as if they've still got a chance.
0:55:53 > 0:55:56"Call no man happy till you know his end" - you may get better yet.
0:55:59 > 0:56:03And everywhere you look, images of the great and good,
0:56:03 > 0:56:04past and present.
0:56:04 > 0:56:08Moral examples for the sick to aspire to
0:56:08 > 0:56:11ranging from Wellington, Nelson, Oliver Cromwell,
0:56:11 > 0:56:15the Defender of the Faith, all the way to Queen Victoria herself.
0:56:17 > 0:56:20But the question is...
0:56:21 > 0:56:26..could Gothic actually heal the sick Victorian mind?
0:56:26 > 0:56:27Could it make people better?
0:56:29 > 0:56:34Sadly, the evidence suggests the answer was no.
0:56:41 > 0:56:43Instead of curing the afflicted,
0:56:43 > 0:56:47vast institutions often became dumping grounds for problem people.
0:56:49 > 0:56:51In the second half of the 19th century, the number of
0:56:51 > 0:56:57so-called "persons of unsound mind" locked away more than quadrupled.
0:56:58 > 0:56:59Many of them never left.
0:57:02 > 0:57:06By the late 20th century, most great Victorian asylums
0:57:06 > 0:57:09would have closed their doors to patients.
0:57:09 > 0:57:13So the Gothic Revival style all too often turned out to be little more
0:57:13 > 0:57:17than Olde Worlde set-dressing for complex modern problems.
0:57:20 > 0:57:24As the Victorian Age drew to a close, the two faces of Gothic
0:57:24 > 0:57:28offered two very different visions for Britain.
0:57:30 > 0:57:36On one side, the pessimism of Frankenstein, of Bleak House...
0:57:36 > 0:57:38the nightmares of the opium eater.
0:57:40 > 0:57:44On the other, the idealism of Pugin
0:57:44 > 0:57:48and those who followed him to the happy land of Gothic Revival.
0:57:51 > 0:57:52Would there be a winner?
0:57:55 > 0:58:00Personally, I think the bad dreams of the Gothic imagination
0:58:00 > 0:58:03have stood the test of time better than the well-meaning fantasies
0:58:03 > 0:58:05of the Gothic Revival architects.
0:58:05 > 0:58:06Now, why is that?
0:58:08 > 0:58:12I think it's because they simply told the modern world
0:58:12 > 0:58:15more of the uneasy truth about itself.
0:58:15 > 0:58:21But more than that, they showed more imagination, more bite.
0:58:21 > 0:58:23HE GROWLS
0:58:27 > 0:58:29But that's for next time!
0:58:29 > 0:58:30GHOULISH LAUGHTER