0:00:05 > 0:00:07By the second half of the 19th century,
0:00:07 > 0:00:13the Victorians had built a nation that was the richest and most powerful on Earth.
0:00:15 > 0:00:19Britain's painters celebrated Britain's triumphs.
0:00:22 > 0:00:27And yet, just when the Victorian miracle was at its peak,
0:00:27 > 0:00:33came voices of doubt, of anxiety, and even of protest.
0:00:35 > 0:00:38Science began to gnaw away at religious beliefs...
0:00:40 > 0:00:44..throwing the certainties of the Victorian world into question.
0:00:49 > 0:00:54Now, artists began to talk of waging a war on the machine age,
0:00:54 > 0:00:59and they looked beyond the triumphs of the 19th century for inspiration,
0:00:59 > 0:01:02to intoxicating dreams...
0:01:02 > 0:01:06To sensuality...
0:01:06 > 0:01:07To the imagination...
0:01:10 > 0:01:13To nightmares and madness itself...
0:01:13 > 0:01:17Even to a world beyond the grave.
0:01:20 > 0:01:24And they would open the doors to a new age of uncertainty,
0:01:24 > 0:01:27an uncertainty we still live with today.
0:02:05 > 0:02:10The wilds of Northumberland are a fitting place for a vision of Apocalypse.
0:02:12 > 0:02:17Among these rocks and hillsides grew up an extraordinary painter
0:02:17 > 0:02:21whose mind seethed with troubling visions.
0:02:29 > 0:02:36To John Martin, this craggy, dramatic landscape was the work of a vengeful, violent God,
0:02:36 > 0:02:41a Biblical wilderness in which the relationship between God and man
0:02:41 > 0:02:43was played out over the centuries.
0:02:45 > 0:02:48And John Martin had a warning for his times.
0:02:52 > 0:02:56He'd spent his childhood in the little village of Haydon Bridge.
0:03:01 > 0:03:03Like many Victorian children,
0:03:03 > 0:03:08he was dragged by his mother to church not once, but twice each Sunday.
0:03:20 > 0:03:27It's a pretty austere place, and Isabella Martin's faith matched the bleakness of the building.
0:03:27 > 0:03:31She preached a fierce sermon, that "there was a God to serve
0:03:31 > 0:03:35"and a hell to shun, and that sinners and swearers
0:03:35 > 0:03:39"would burn in hell with the devil and his angels."
0:03:46 > 0:03:52Wild landscape and terrifying religion combined to produce something astonishing.
0:03:57 > 0:04:01As he looked around he saw not glory but catastrophe.
0:04:10 > 0:04:16His pictures prophesied the end of Victorian civilisation.
0:04:24 > 0:04:28John Martin's apocalyptic paintings show the uncontrollable
0:04:28 > 0:04:30power of nature,
0:04:30 > 0:04:34and warn of the fate awaiting the Victorians.
0:04:40 > 0:04:45In The Last Judgement, the world is riven asunder,
0:04:45 > 0:04:49the saved in their Sunday best on one side,
0:04:49 > 0:04:52and the damned on the other.
0:04:55 > 0:04:59A steam train, that symbol of Victorian progress,
0:04:59 > 0:05:01falls flaming into the abyss.
0:05:03 > 0:05:10And in The Great Day Of His Wrath, Martin depicts the fate of humanity.
0:05:10 > 0:05:14Victorian civilisation will be destroyed,
0:05:14 > 0:05:16obliterated by God's fury.
0:05:19 > 0:05:22These may be religious pictures,
0:05:22 > 0:05:26but the religious beliefs of the age were beginning to crumble.
0:05:43 > 0:05:46New questions were being asked which would shake
0:05:46 > 0:05:49the foundations of Victorian certainty.
0:05:54 > 0:05:58All over the country, and here in Pegwell Bay in Kent,
0:05:58 > 0:06:00enthusiastic amateurs
0:06:00 > 0:06:04were spending their weekends fossil hunting at the seaside.
0:06:04 > 0:06:08Armed with hammers and magnifying glasses, they set out to record
0:06:08 > 0:06:10and classify the fossils
0:06:10 > 0:06:14that they found in rocks and stones and cliffs.
0:06:18 > 0:06:21In the process, those hammers were chipping away
0:06:21 > 0:06:24at once rock-solid convictions.
0:06:28 > 0:06:31Until the 1850s most people, if they thought about it all,
0:06:31 > 0:06:36believed that world was around 6,000 years old.
0:06:36 > 0:06:39According to the calculations of a long-dead bishop,
0:06:39 > 0:06:45God created the world on Sunday, October 23rd, 4004 BC.
0:06:48 > 0:06:51But now the fossil hunters, vicars and priests among them,
0:06:51 > 0:06:55were discovering that couldn't possibly be true.
0:06:56 > 0:06:59This is a fantastic fossil. Is it from round here?
0:06:59 > 0:07:01Yes, this is from a local beach here.
0:07:01 > 0:07:04This is only a small proportion of the animal.
0:07:04 > 0:07:07It would've been a much bigger fossil originally,
0:07:07 > 0:07:08maybe even 1.5 metres across.
0:07:08 > 0:07:11We've only got the central portion here.
0:07:11 > 0:07:12Are there still fossils to be found here?
0:07:12 > 0:07:14Yes, it's a very rich location.
0:07:14 > 0:07:17The magic is still here that drew the Victorians down.
0:07:17 > 0:07:19The quality of the fossils that come out is still high.
0:07:19 > 0:07:24- And they're easily removed. - It is amazingly soft, what is it?
0:07:24 > 0:07:28Well, it's actually plant remains, an algal bloom.
0:07:28 > 0:07:30All this white stuff, even the finest powder.
0:07:30 > 0:07:34So the entire rock face that we're looking at is just one giant fossil.
0:07:34 > 0:07:39So you're a Victorian clergyman, you pick this out of a cliff,
0:07:39 > 0:07:41and you can't reconcile it with the Bible.
0:07:41 > 0:07:46There is no modern equal to the things they were going through
0:07:46 > 0:07:50in terms of trying to square off what they were seeing with their beliefs.
0:07:50 > 0:07:54- It's like a mental nuclear explosion, it was that serious?- It must have been.
0:07:54 > 0:07:58We have no parallels today to even comprehend what they went through.
0:07:58 > 0:08:00Discoveries are happening all the time.
0:08:00 > 0:08:03So, they were genuinely making new discoveries?
0:08:03 > 0:08:04Yep, indeed.
0:08:04 > 0:08:07Because these cliffs are always eroding back,
0:08:07 > 0:08:12what you're looking at here are very edges of a page of geological time,
0:08:12 > 0:08:15so every now and again a single letter drops off
0:08:15 > 0:08:17and if you're lucky enough to be here to catch that,
0:08:17 > 0:08:20you may end up putting a few of them together into a story.
0:08:23 > 0:08:27And that story told by the rocks was a disquieting one.
0:08:33 > 0:08:35One painting hints at it.
0:08:45 > 0:08:49It looks like just an autumn day at the seaside,
0:08:49 > 0:08:51but it's more than that.
0:08:51 > 0:08:54It shows the family of the artist William Dyce
0:08:54 > 0:08:57on the beach at Pegwell Bay.
0:08:57 > 0:09:01Dyce himself was a keen geologist and astronomer.
0:09:04 > 0:09:07The women comb the beach for fossils.
0:09:07 > 0:09:11How many millions of years had those fossils been there?
0:09:14 > 0:09:19A man cranes his neck towards the sky to get a glimpse of a comet.
0:09:19 > 0:09:22What was our place in the universe?
0:09:24 > 0:09:26The location is significant.
0:09:26 > 0:09:30Here, Christianity first arrived in Britain.
0:09:30 > 0:09:33Now the question was, how long would it last?
0:09:36 > 0:09:42The writer John Ruskin voiced a very Victorian anxiety in 1851...
0:09:42 > 0:09:47"If only the geologists would leave me alone I could do very well.
0:09:47 > 0:09:50"But those dreadful hammers!"
0:09:50 > 0:09:56I hear the clink of them at the end of every cadence of the Bible verses.
0:10:02 > 0:10:04He was right to worry.
0:10:04 > 0:10:11The comforting myths of the Bible were being destroyed by a new belief in science.
0:10:17 > 0:10:22This is one of the grandest of the Victorian cathedrals to science,
0:10:22 > 0:10:25the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.
0:10:25 > 0:10:30The whole building is a hymn to scientific endeavour.
0:10:38 > 0:10:43Every column is carved from a different British rock.
0:10:45 > 0:10:48Every capital shows a different plant.
0:10:53 > 0:10:58As for the specimens, they're testament to the Victorian spirit of enquiry.
0:11:01 > 0:11:06It was 19th century scientists who coined the word "dinosaur" in 1842.
0:11:09 > 0:11:12There was nothing new in finding skeletons, of course.
0:11:12 > 0:11:18But when scientists looked closely at the bones, they discovered something more urgent.
0:11:18 > 0:11:23Clues to the staggering age of the world, to how life had developed.
0:11:23 > 0:11:28Bones, in other words, could be very, very worrying things.
0:11:31 > 0:11:33Even human bones.
0:11:37 > 0:11:42In this picture, parts of a skeleton have resurfaced in a graveyard.
0:11:44 > 0:11:46Can the promises of scripture be true
0:11:46 > 0:11:48when this is what we're reduced to?
0:11:54 > 0:11:58Now begins the Age of Doubt, with a capital D.
0:11:58 > 0:12:04The Bible promises eternal life, but she seems not so sure.
0:12:07 > 0:12:10The picture's full of symbolic detail.
0:12:10 > 0:12:13The dead man is named John Faithful.
0:12:17 > 0:12:21On his skull, there's a butterfly, symbol of resurrection.
0:12:22 > 0:12:26The painting posed an uncomfortable question -
0:12:26 > 0:12:28what can we believe any more?
0:12:34 > 0:12:36Well, might they ask.
0:12:36 > 0:12:42Charles Darwin was about to demonstrate the creation myths of the Bible must be nonsense.
0:12:45 > 0:12:51Here at the Oxford Museum of Natural History, religion and science met head on.
0:12:54 > 0:12:58In one corner, Professor TH Huxley, nicknamed "Darwin's bulldog".
0:12:58 > 0:13:05In the other, the Bishop of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce, known as "Soapy Sam".
0:13:06 > 0:13:11They were here to discuss Darwin's electrifying theory that species,
0:13:11 > 0:13:14instead of being individually created by God,
0:13:14 > 0:13:18evolved by natural selection, so-called survival of the fittest.
0:13:18 > 0:13:22The bishop began, he said, "You claim we're descended from apes.
0:13:22 > 0:13:28"In your case, is it on your grandfather's side or your grandmother's side?"
0:13:28 > 0:13:34According to legend, Huxley replied, "I'd rather be descended from an ape than a bishop."
0:13:34 > 0:13:37In later life, the professor could only recall that he had said
0:13:37 > 0:13:40he had no shame in being descended from an ape,
0:13:40 > 0:13:43but he would be ashamed to be associated with someone
0:13:43 > 0:13:48who used his great gifts to obscure a truth.
0:13:48 > 0:13:50It was a stunning moment,
0:13:50 > 0:13:56so stunning that one woman in the audience passed out and had to be carried away.
0:13:59 > 0:14:04The implications of Victorian science proved overwhelming for others too.
0:14:06 > 0:14:11Some of the best artists of the day sought escape elsewhere,
0:14:11 > 0:14:12in a magical past.
0:14:16 > 0:14:20They found a gentler, more romantic world
0:14:20 > 0:14:24in a medieval fantasy of damsels, knights and chivalry,
0:14:24 > 0:14:28as far away as possible from science and industry.
0:14:32 > 0:14:36One story drew them over and over again.
0:14:45 > 0:14:50The Lady of Shalott is the tale of a medieval damsel marooned in a tower,
0:14:50 > 0:14:53and her doomed love for Sir Lancelot.
0:14:56 > 0:15:00She looks out of the window at him and brings a curse upon herself.
0:15:12 > 0:15:18Such pictures seemed to satisfy a hunger in the weary Victorian soul,
0:15:18 > 0:15:21a hunger for the spiritual and the romantic.
0:15:28 > 0:15:34This love affair with all things medieval could be taken to wonderful extremes.
0:15:38 > 0:15:45Cardiff Castle is a whopping great medieval extravaganza built to keep the Victorian world at bay.
0:15:51 > 0:15:53It was dreamt up by two men.
0:15:55 > 0:16:00A wealthy industrialist, the Marquis of Bute,
0:16:00 > 0:16:03and the architect William Burges.
0:16:06 > 0:16:10Now at the time, Lord Bute had a reputation as the richest man in the world,
0:16:10 > 0:16:12so money really was no object.
0:16:12 > 0:16:20Burges' challenge, then, completely to recreate a medieval castle, was the commission of a lifetime.
0:16:28 > 0:16:34Bute and Burges were men with a vision on a truly grand scale, a vision of a world before
0:16:34 > 0:16:39Charles Darwin had asked those awkward questions.
0:16:41 > 0:16:43The place is an absolute labyrinth.
0:16:43 > 0:16:49This room, for example, guarded by the devil to keep the ladies out, is the winter smoking room.
0:16:49 > 0:16:53It's covered in images of animals.
0:16:53 > 0:16:56Even the door handle is a parrot.
0:16:56 > 0:16:59There are animals and birds all over the walls.
0:16:59 > 0:17:03But these aren't animals and birds as seen by 19th century scientists,
0:17:03 > 0:17:06they're as seen by medieval monks.
0:17:06 > 0:17:10In other words, proof of God's creation.
0:17:12 > 0:17:17And this is the small dining room, a mundane name for a room that's anything but mundane.
0:17:17 > 0:17:20Look at the detail - a howler monkey.
0:17:20 > 0:17:24When you want to summon the servants, press the nut in its mouth!
0:17:39 > 0:17:47And here's the riposte to Darwin, a book showing human learning in the hands of two monkeys
0:17:47 > 0:17:50who patently haven't the faintest idea what to do with it.
0:17:50 > 0:17:52So, to you, Mr Darwin.
0:18:06 > 0:18:11And here's a fireplace, built in the shape of the Norman keep in the grounds, and look, inside it,
0:18:11 > 0:18:15William the Conqueror's son held prisoner, as he had been in the real keep.
0:18:15 > 0:18:17No home's complete without one, really.
0:18:21 > 0:18:28But what looks like something from the past, was built on the profits of a very modern world.
0:18:28 > 0:18:34The irony is, of course, that it was all paid for by one of the age's richest industrialists.
0:18:34 > 0:18:39What made this medieval fantasy possible was the toil of Welsh miners.
0:18:56 > 0:19:01One Victorian artist led a call to arms against Victorian values.
0:19:03 > 0:19:07The avowed wish of Edward Burne-Jones
0:19:07 > 0:19:11was to wage a crusade and holy war against the age.
0:19:18 > 0:19:22The more materialistic science becomes, he declared,
0:19:22 > 0:19:25the more angels I shall paint.
0:19:32 > 0:19:35Executing this picture obsessed him all his life.
0:19:41 > 0:19:46Mortally wounded in battle, the dying King Arthur is watched over
0:19:46 > 0:19:49by three queens in the magical Isle of Avalon.
0:19:52 > 0:19:55There, legend had it, that he would sleep until one day,
0:19:55 > 0:19:59in the hour of England's need, he was summoned again.
0:19:59 > 0:20:03It's a strange, melancholy masterpiece.
0:20:03 > 0:20:08The painting's so vast you almost feel you could fall into it.
0:20:08 > 0:20:13But its scale is only part of the secret of its success, I think.
0:20:13 > 0:20:18It has a dreamy, seductive, hypnotic quality, and it sort of makes you
0:20:18 > 0:20:22understand why it was that when Burne-Jones' friends asked during
0:20:22 > 0:20:24the 18 years he spent painting it,
0:20:24 > 0:20:27"What are you doing?" he said, "I'm in Avalon."
0:20:31 > 0:20:34It's rather a nice place to be.
0:20:40 > 0:20:43Towards the end of his life, Burne-Jones wrote,
0:20:43 > 0:20:46"I need nothing but my hands and my brain
0:20:46 > 0:20:51"to fashion a world to live in which nothing can disturb.
0:20:51 > 0:20:55"In my own land I am king."
0:21:11 > 0:21:17But the world Burne-Jones railed against was gaining unstoppable momentum.
0:21:20 > 0:21:21The Victorians had built a nation
0:21:21 > 0:21:25that was striding boldly into the future.
0:21:28 > 0:21:32Machines had brought vast wealth to the country...
0:21:35 > 0:21:40..in factories, in railways, in mines.
0:21:44 > 0:21:48This pumping station was built in 1865
0:21:48 > 0:21:54for the distinctly unglamorous job of pumping the sewage away from London.
0:21:58 > 0:22:03Crossness Pumping Station is Victorian engineering at its most confident.
0:22:05 > 0:22:10No wonder the writer Thomas Carlyle called this time "the age of the machine".
0:22:15 > 0:22:20Man was conquering nature, Britain was conquering the world.
0:22:20 > 0:22:23And yet there were increasing numbers of people who found this
0:22:23 > 0:22:28new power and wealth and knowledge just unsettling.
0:22:30 > 0:22:35And they were willing to turn their back on machines altogether.
0:22:42 > 0:22:46The artist William Morris built a house for himself and his companions
0:22:46 > 0:22:51in what was then a village on the outskirts of London.
0:22:58 > 0:23:02It was intended as an experiment in communal living because Morris
0:23:02 > 0:23:06and his friends had ambitions way beyond art.
0:23:06 > 0:23:09They wanted to pioneer an entire new way of life.
0:23:09 > 0:23:13To do that, they turned their back on traditional Victorian values
0:23:13 > 0:23:17and the fruit of their labours was this, the Red House.
0:23:27 > 0:23:33On a cupboard in the hall, they painted pictures of themselves in medieval dress.
0:23:36 > 0:23:40William Morris and his young wife Jane,
0:23:40 > 0:23:44the painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his lover Lizzie Siddal.
0:23:55 > 0:24:00In their ideal world they would make everything themselves.
0:24:00 > 0:24:06They said no to factory-made, mass-produced furniture and wallpaper.
0:24:06 > 0:24:12Instead everything would be crafted by hand, just as in medieval times.
0:24:27 > 0:24:29In this hothouse atmosphere,
0:24:29 > 0:24:33the men painted the women over and over again.
0:24:34 > 0:24:38But there's something disturbing about these pictures.
0:24:38 > 0:24:42They don't quite look like real women.
0:24:42 > 0:24:46They're fantasies, with their dreamy expressions,
0:24:48 > 0:24:50their soulful eyes...
0:24:53 > 0:24:57..and their big, big hair, worn sexily loose.
0:25:02 > 0:25:06Rossetti's pictures of Lizzie are charged with obsession.
0:25:06 > 0:25:11They're images from some feverish, romantic dream.
0:25:16 > 0:25:22But the dream ended in nightmare, here in Highgate Cemetery in London.
0:25:32 > 0:25:35Lizzie was buried here, in a private part of the cemetery.
0:25:41 > 0:25:45Rossetti's relationship with Lizzie Siddal was intense,
0:25:45 > 0:25:47passionate and volatile.
0:25:47 > 0:25:49She though suffered from consumption,
0:25:49 > 0:25:53and became dependent on the opium-based painkiller, laudanum.
0:25:53 > 0:25:59In 1862, two years after they'd been married, she took an overdose.
0:25:59 > 0:26:01Suicide was suspected.
0:26:01 > 0:26:04She'd had been suffering from postnatal depression
0:26:04 > 0:26:07after giving birth to a stillborn baby.
0:26:14 > 0:26:18Her corpse was laid out in an open coffin for seven days,
0:26:18 > 0:26:22while Rossetti scanned her body for signs of life.
0:26:25 > 0:26:30Inside Lizzie's coffin, entwined in her red hair,
0:26:30 > 0:26:34he laid the only complete copy of his poetry.
0:26:34 > 0:26:38He pledged the poems would die with her.
0:26:40 > 0:26:44But the story doesn't end there. It has a rather grisly postscript.
0:26:44 > 0:26:50As the years went by, Rossetti's violent grief subsided
0:26:50 > 0:26:54and he began to regret his decision to bury his poetry with his wife.
0:26:54 > 0:26:56Seven years after her funeral,
0:26:56 > 0:26:59in the middle of the night, her grave was opened.
0:26:59 > 0:27:02Rossetti himself couldn't bear to be there,
0:27:02 > 0:27:05but they told him that her body was perfectly preserved
0:27:05 > 0:27:10and that the coffin was filled with her luxuriant copper-red hair which
0:27:10 > 0:27:14impossibly had carried on growing after she'd died.
0:27:14 > 0:27:19The manuscript was worm-eaten, but the poetry was intact.
0:27:29 > 0:27:33After her death, he worked obsessively on this painting of her.
0:27:41 > 0:27:46Lizzie is deep in a trance-like state. She's deathly pale.
0:27:48 > 0:27:50Her lips are slightly parted.
0:27:50 > 0:27:53Is she breathing or dying?
0:27:59 > 0:28:02A strangely-coloured dove carries an opium poppy,
0:28:02 > 0:28:06a symbol of her own death by laudanum overdose.
0:28:17 > 0:28:20Yet Rossetti's obsession with his dead wife
0:28:20 > 0:28:22wasn't so out of step with the times.
0:28:25 > 0:28:30The death of Prince Albert in 1861 not only plunged Victoria into mourning,
0:28:30 > 0:28:34but set off an almost fanatical obsession with death
0:28:34 > 0:28:36which lasted until the end of the century.
0:28:42 > 0:28:48As church yards filled up, the Victorians built grand
0:28:48 > 0:28:52new cemeteries, extravagant cities of the dead.
0:28:52 > 0:28:55Here loved ones lived on...
0:28:55 > 0:28:58in grand style.
0:29:06 > 0:29:14The cult of mourning may have been born of necessity, but it was also the last gasp of a religious age.
0:29:14 > 0:29:16No longer sure of an afterlife,
0:29:16 > 0:29:22it's as if the Victorians decided to cling as long as possible to this one.
0:29:38 > 0:29:42The uncertainty of what death brings runs right through
0:29:42 > 0:29:46the weird paintings of George Frederick Watts.
0:29:56 > 0:30:01In this one, Sic Transit or Thus All Things Pass,
0:30:01 > 0:30:04a body lies shrouded on a slab.
0:30:09 > 0:30:13The anonymous figure is surrounded by worldly possessions,
0:30:13 > 0:30:15all now useless.
0:30:21 > 0:30:28In Love And Death, love vainly strives to keep death from entering the house of life.
0:30:38 > 0:30:41And in Orpheus and Eurydice,
0:30:41 > 0:30:46Orpheus clutches at the body of his beloved.
0:30:50 > 0:30:53He has led her from the land of the dead,
0:30:53 > 0:30:56only to lose her forever by turning back to look at her.
0:30:58 > 0:31:01He's been offered what so many Victorians yearned for -
0:31:01 > 0:31:05the chance to bring the dead back to life.
0:31:06 > 0:31:09But he's failed in the attempt.
0:31:12 > 0:31:16Many Victorians clung desperately to the belief
0:31:16 > 0:31:18that perhaps death wasn't the end.
0:31:18 > 0:31:22Some even tried to enter the no man's land between death and life
0:31:22 > 0:31:25and to make contact with the other side.
0:31:33 > 0:31:37Into the spiritual void opened up by Victorian science
0:31:37 > 0:31:40came a rush of exotic beliefs
0:31:40 > 0:31:42and job opportunities for charlatans.
0:31:48 > 0:31:55Seances, when mediums allegedly made contact with the dead, became all the rage.
0:32:00 > 0:32:03The medium would put their hand on the table.
0:32:03 > 0:32:06Before we know it the table starts to levitate.
0:32:07 > 0:32:11'Eleanor and Chris Thompson call themselves psychics.
0:32:11 > 0:32:17'They certainly have an unusual sideline, an interest in the tricks of the Victorian trade.'
0:32:17 > 0:32:20It's quite blatantly obvious here, but there's a pin.
0:32:20 > 0:32:23We've left it blatantly obvious that there is a nail.
0:32:23 > 0:32:27They would colour that to match the stain of the table so it was not as obvious.
0:32:27 > 0:32:29Normally the person that checked out the equipment
0:32:29 > 0:32:31would be someone that knew the medium.
0:32:31 > 0:32:34- And...- Secondly, the ring.
0:32:34 > 0:32:38The ring would have grooves or be shaped.
0:32:38 > 0:32:41Oh, I see. Yes, on the outside it looks like a wedding ring
0:32:41 > 0:32:44but on the inside it's got all these hooks.
0:32:44 > 0:32:46Because most of this stuff is trickery, isn't it?
0:32:46 > 0:32:51Quite a lot of it is, yes, if you go back to Victorian times, especially.
0:32:51 > 0:32:54We try and recreate things without the tricks.
0:32:54 > 0:32:58You've got some examples of the devices that Victorians used here.
0:32:58 > 0:33:03- What's this? - This is actually a planchette, which is French for little plank.
0:33:03 > 0:33:06All you do is put the pencil in, tighten it up,
0:33:06 > 0:33:08so you've then got like a three-legged table.
0:33:08 > 0:33:11The same sort of table they'd use on the Ouija board.
0:33:11 > 0:33:12If one person's doing it,
0:33:12 > 0:33:16it wouldn't be too difficult with practice to learn to write messages.
0:33:16 > 0:33:20So we're careful to make sure there's more than one person got their fingers on
0:33:20 > 0:33:21so it's more difficult to manipulate.
0:33:21 > 0:33:27- What interests me about you two is that you know these are tricks. - Yes.- Yes.
0:33:27 > 0:33:29It's fakery and it's made easier if people have a hunger
0:33:29 > 0:33:32- to believe there's something out there.- A lot easier.
0:33:32 > 0:33:35Yet you do genuinely believe there's something out there.
0:33:35 > 0:33:38How do you describe yourselves now?
0:33:38 > 0:33:40Are you psychics or what?
0:33:40 > 0:33:43We believe we've got a gift.
0:33:43 > 0:33:46Eleanor, what do you describe yourself as?
0:33:46 > 0:33:49Psychic or psychotic, I don't know which. The jury's still out on that one.
0:33:49 > 0:33:53Why were the Victorians so interested in the paranormal, do you think?
0:33:53 > 0:33:57They were desperate for answers. The church didn't control the country anymore.
0:33:57 > 0:34:03You couldn't get punished for things, more mediums were out there, they wanted to find something else.
0:34:08 > 0:34:12This need to know what lies the other side of death
0:34:12 > 0:34:17is the theme of John Everett Millais' Speak! Speak!
0:34:21 > 0:34:25A man starts up in his bed as the ghost of his dead wife,
0:34:25 > 0:34:30dressed in her bridal clothes, summons him to join her.
0:34:49 > 0:34:51The Victorians loved the supernatural -
0:34:51 > 0:34:56ghosts, spirits, apparitions, visitors from the other side.
0:34:56 > 0:34:58But most of all, they loved fairies.
0:34:58 > 0:35:01And they took their fairies very seriously indeed.
0:35:06 > 0:35:11Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, was a true believer.
0:35:11 > 0:35:15His father was a celebrated fairy painter.
0:35:38 > 0:35:42Fascination with fairies allowed people to reconnect with a nature
0:35:42 > 0:35:45from which they felt they'd been separated.
0:35:47 > 0:35:52But it also fed a deep Victorian hunger to believe there was more to
0:35:52 > 0:35:58life than the merely physical, that there was some alternative reality.
0:36:06 > 0:36:09But even fairyland had its dark side.
0:36:12 > 0:36:15John Anster Fitzgerald's series of nightmare paintings
0:36:15 > 0:36:19depict dreamers plagued by hideous goblins.
0:36:27 > 0:36:31They hold steaming bowls of toxic liquids.
0:36:33 > 0:36:38Half-empty medicine bottles including laudanum lie on bedside tables.
0:36:40 > 0:36:44Late Victorian painters were travelling into ever darker regions.
0:36:52 > 0:36:58One of them sought in painting a refuge from the torments of his own mind.
0:37:03 > 0:37:06It was one of the strangest stories of the Victorian age.
0:37:14 > 0:37:19Richard Dadd was a phenomenally successful fairy painter
0:37:19 > 0:37:23who was admitted to the Royal Academy at the age of only 20.
0:37:23 > 0:37:25But he was highly unstable.
0:37:27 > 0:37:32Dadd's fragile mental health collapsed during a trip abroad.
0:37:32 > 0:37:35He was seized with an urge to attack the Pope and only
0:37:35 > 0:37:39couldn't carry it through because the Pope was so well protected.
0:37:39 > 0:37:43His father insisted he was just suffering from sunstroke.
0:37:43 > 0:37:47But then, back home, when father and son were walking in the park one day,
0:37:47 > 0:37:51Richard Dadd grabbed the knife he had bought especially for the purpose
0:37:51 > 0:37:54and slit his father's throat.
0:38:07 > 0:38:11He was arrested and found to be suffering from insanity.
0:38:22 > 0:38:29In 1864, Richard Dadd was brought here to the new Broadmoor Hospital for the criminally insane.
0:38:29 > 0:38:34He passed under this arch on a cart, almost certainly in chains,
0:38:34 > 0:38:37and he underwent the admissions process.
0:38:46 > 0:38:50Once the mad had been ignored or laughed at.
0:38:50 > 0:38:57The Victorians put them in huge new hospitals to be cared for and sometimes cured.
0:39:03 > 0:39:06Richard Dadd found a kind of refuge here.
0:39:06 > 0:39:11Copies of his paintings still hang on the hospital walls.
0:39:11 > 0:39:16He was admitted by the hospital superintendent, Dr William Orange.
0:39:19 > 0:39:24This is Dr Orange's initial report of Richard Dadd.
0:39:24 > 0:39:28- "Tongue, broad and flabby..." - "Tongue broad and flabby, pulse regular.
0:39:28 > 0:39:29"Heart's action, normal.
0:39:29 > 0:39:31"Has never had syphilis.
0:39:31 > 0:39:34"Still believes himself to be a marked man
0:39:34 > 0:39:37"under the influence of an evil spirit.
0:39:37 > 0:39:40"And in explaining his ideas, he becomes very much excited
0:39:40 > 0:39:44"and occasionally his eyes have a wild appearance."
0:39:44 > 0:39:49We'd probably describe him now as being a paranoid schizophrenic.
0:39:49 > 0:39:52Mm. And then this next entry?
0:39:52 > 0:39:56"Employs himself generally in painting
0:39:56 > 0:40:01"and is at present engaged on a watercolour fairy scene,
0:40:01 > 0:40:03"which he is executing with great care."
0:40:03 > 0:40:08- Was he encouraged to paint while he was here?- I think he was encouraged.
0:40:08 > 0:40:15I think there was a good tradition in that era of patients being encouraged to be distracted
0:40:15 > 0:40:18with activity that maybe suited their personality.
0:40:18 > 0:40:24For him, he had always been a fine artist and it seems right that that would be encouraged.
0:40:24 > 0:40:26- So it was a sort of therapy? - I believe so.
0:40:26 > 0:40:30In the same way today, we use art and music
0:40:30 > 0:40:35and other distractions in therapeutic pursuit in exactly the same way.
0:40:44 > 0:40:49Richard Dadd spent the last 22 years of his life here in Broadmoor.
0:40:49 > 0:40:53He was incarcerated in one of these rooms
0:40:53 > 0:40:56and he was given another one to paint in.
0:40:56 > 0:41:00By the latter stages of his life he was pretty much forgotten about,
0:41:00 > 0:41:02in fact many people thought he'd died long ago.
0:41:02 > 0:41:05But he left behind a body of work
0:41:05 > 0:41:08that is astonishing in its intensity.
0:41:24 > 0:41:29His most famous picture is a fairy scene depicting...what exactly?
0:41:32 > 0:41:37It's a mouse-eye view, seen from ground level through the grass.
0:41:40 > 0:41:43A fairy woodman raises his axe to strike a nut.
0:41:50 > 0:41:55Around him, strange figures watch or indeed ignore his attempt.
0:42:04 > 0:42:08The deranged details of this interior world are unfathomable.
0:42:15 > 0:42:18Richard Dadd's were dark and very private visions.
0:42:20 > 0:42:25But there was another, more optimistic, dream that chimed with the public mood.
0:42:35 > 0:42:39A fantasy of Imperial greatness.
0:42:39 > 0:42:43By the second half of Victoria's reign, Britain ruled an empire
0:42:43 > 0:42:48four times the size of that of ancient Rome.
0:42:57 > 0:43:03In the eyes of many, Victorian Britain rivalled Rome in nobility and sophistication.
0:43:09 > 0:43:11Here at the British Museum,
0:43:11 > 0:43:17the glories of the classical world had been gathered for them to admire.
0:43:21 > 0:43:25The world of ancient Greece and Rome offered the Victorians a mirror
0:43:25 > 0:43:28in which they saw themselves reflected back.
0:43:28 > 0:43:35But their interpretation of the classical world has a distinctly Victorian twist to it.
0:43:42 > 0:43:44This Victorian painting imagines the moment
0:43:44 > 0:43:46when a classical Greek sculptor
0:43:46 > 0:43:50shows his newly finished work to the public.
0:43:50 > 0:43:53They're dressed in classical robes,
0:43:53 > 0:43:58of course, but they could easily be Victorian middle-class art-lovers
0:43:58 > 0:43:59at a private view.
0:44:01 > 0:44:05They stroll around sizing up the work,
0:44:05 > 0:44:12with everyone chatting away looking like they're having a thoroughly pleasant and civilised afternoon.
0:44:17 > 0:44:24These apparent Romans are really Victorians at ease with themselves, at home...
0:44:25 > 0:44:26..in the bath...
0:44:29 > 0:44:32..and quite often in nothing at all.
0:44:40 > 0:44:47Paintings and sculptures of nudes had fallen from favour in the prudish mid-Victorian years.
0:44:47 > 0:44:50But the obsession with the classical past
0:44:50 > 0:44:55allowed the naked body to make a triumphant return.
0:44:58 > 0:45:01Here's the surgery of the Greek god of medicine.
0:45:02 > 0:45:05"Doctor it's my foot!"
0:45:05 > 0:45:10His remarkably fit-looking patients have taken the helpful precaution
0:45:10 > 0:45:13of stripping off before they queue up for their prescription.
0:45:16 > 0:45:20This was the great age of the collector -
0:45:20 > 0:45:24men who had made their pile and now wanted to spend some of it on works of art.
0:45:24 > 0:45:28What they were after was something with a hint of sophistication.
0:45:28 > 0:45:31Anything which had mythical heroes, gods,
0:45:31 > 0:45:35goddesses - especially goddesses - would fit the bill perfectly.
0:45:48 > 0:45:52The man who built this splendid Victorian house in Bournemouth
0:45:52 > 0:45:56was a canny businessman who made his money in property.
0:45:59 > 0:46:05Merton Russell-Cotes was a passionate collector of a very particular kind of art.
0:46:29 > 0:46:34For Russell-Cotes, it really mattered that any suggestion
0:46:34 > 0:46:39of sauciness in his splendid collection be firmly squashed.
0:46:39 > 0:46:44So he referred to his nudes as the "human form divine".
0:46:44 > 0:46:50In other words, these weren't earthly or fleshy figures, they were god-like.
0:46:52 > 0:46:57Defenders of the nude insisted that these painted figures weren't real women.
0:46:57 > 0:47:00They represented an ideal.
0:47:00 > 0:47:04So a painting of a naked goddess was one thing,
0:47:04 > 0:47:10a painting of a naked Mrs Jones from next door would be quite another.
0:47:12 > 0:47:16A favourite subject was the classical story of Andromeda
0:47:16 > 0:47:17chained to a rock.
0:47:19 > 0:47:22Though to our perhaps jaded eyes,
0:47:22 > 0:47:26there might seem to be more than a hint of bondage about this picture.
0:47:27 > 0:47:33If naked women looked more like classical statues than real people,
0:47:33 > 0:47:36polite society could find no fault with them.
0:47:36 > 0:47:41The trouble was, how could you be sure that only polite society got to see them?
0:47:45 > 0:47:52The common Victorian belief that art was good for you ran into some real problems with these paintings.
0:47:52 > 0:47:59"I know only too well how the rough and his female companion behave in front of these pictures,"
0:47:59 > 0:48:04complained one critic. "I have seen the gangs of workmen strolling around
0:48:04 > 0:48:11"and know that their artistic interest in the studies of the nude is emphatically embarrassing!"
0:48:22 > 0:48:26This painting, The Dawn Of Love by William Etty,
0:48:26 > 0:48:28shows the goddess of love, Venus,
0:48:28 > 0:48:30and her winged messenger Cupid
0:48:30 > 0:48:32who seems to be having a bit of a nap on her bed.
0:48:32 > 0:48:36Russell-Cotes was very proud of this painting but some members of
0:48:36 > 0:48:40the public weren't so sure, and they wrote to the local paper about it.
0:48:41 > 0:48:45"In civilised life," wrote an angry gentleman,
0:48:45 > 0:48:52"the dawn of love, real love, is seldom heralded in with clothes off!"
0:48:52 > 0:48:55That prompted one art-lover to respond,
0:48:55 > 0:48:59"Did anyone ever see the dawn of love come into the world with clothes on?"
0:49:10 > 0:49:12The Bathers Alarmed.
0:49:12 > 0:49:16There's a sense, looking at some of these paintings, that the Victorian interest in sex,
0:49:16 > 0:49:20which had hitherto been kept pretty strictly under control,
0:49:20 > 0:49:25was now really straining at the leash, and perhaps was about to slip it all together.
0:49:38 > 0:49:44As the century approached its end, for some people at least the firm foundations upon which
0:49:44 > 0:49:48Victorian society had been built were beginning to crack.
0:49:48 > 0:49:56Decades of religious doubt, huge social changes, and a general weariness at stern moral teaching
0:49:56 > 0:50:00were changing the way people felt about the old order.
0:50:03 > 0:50:08A new group of artists led the charge, producing work that was grotesque,
0:50:08 > 0:50:11provocative, decadent.
0:50:13 > 0:50:19The new generation used to meet here in the ornate rooms and bar of the Cafe Royal.
0:50:19 > 0:50:24Men like Oscar Wilde and Aubrey Beardsley, their lovers male and female,
0:50:24 > 0:50:29loved everything that was exotic, shocking or scandalous.
0:50:33 > 0:50:36What the so-called Decadents adored about the Cafe Royal
0:50:36 > 0:50:41was its exaggerated, almost absurd, air of luxury.
0:50:44 > 0:50:51About as far from the stifling conventions of the Victorian home as it was possible to get.
0:50:56 > 0:51:00"If you want to see the English people at their most English",
0:51:00 > 0:51:02said one writer, "go to the Cafe Royal,
0:51:02 > 0:51:06"where they're trying their hardest to be French."
0:51:11 > 0:51:14At the heart of this group of artists was the young Aubrey Beardsley.
0:51:14 > 0:51:20His illustrations for Oscar Wilde's play Salome, and his erotic drawings,
0:51:20 > 0:51:26are as unsettling, as modern and as shocking as they must have seemed a hundred years ago.
0:51:29 > 0:51:35Like other Victorians who had fallen out of love with corsets and moral homilies,
0:51:35 > 0:51:41Beardsley created another world quite different from that of the respectable middle class.
0:52:06 > 0:52:11His pictures were deliberately designed to disturb.
0:52:16 > 0:52:18Depraved...
0:52:21 > 0:52:22..macabre...
0:52:26 > 0:52:29..sinister...
0:52:29 > 0:52:31That was what some people said of them,
0:52:31 > 0:52:38reflected too in the group's drink of choice, the notoriously potent absinthe.
0:52:41 > 0:52:43So what's all the paraphernalia, then?
0:52:43 > 0:52:44Well, what we have here
0:52:44 > 0:52:48is a traditional absinthe glass.
0:52:48 > 0:52:51As you'll see there's a clearly sort of demarcated area
0:52:51 > 0:52:52for the absinthe dose.
0:52:52 > 0:52:57This is typical of absinthe, that you use a sort of drug-like term -
0:52:57 > 0:52:59dose - that's been used for a century.
0:52:59 > 0:53:02You wouldn't really say a dose of gin or a dose of whisky.
0:53:02 > 0:53:04You place a perforated spoon like this.
0:53:04 > 0:53:07It's got a little notch to grip the edge of the glass.
0:53:07 > 0:53:11You put a sugar cube on the spoon like that.
0:53:11 > 0:53:14The iced water drips
0:53:14 > 0:53:18over the sugar cube and it dissolves the sugar cube slowly,.
0:53:18 > 0:53:23As the water reaches the absinthe, or mixes with the absinthe,
0:53:23 > 0:53:25you'll see it starts to change colour.
0:53:25 > 0:53:28It's a sort of opalescent, milky kind of colour.
0:53:28 > 0:53:31There are little swirls happening there that you can see now.
0:53:31 > 0:53:33Its popular image is
0:53:33 > 0:53:38almost as a narcotic, something that really does your brain in.
0:53:38 > 0:53:44Essentially, by far the most dangerous thing in absinthe is the alcohol.
0:53:52 > 0:53:55It is... I'm rather lost for words.
0:53:55 > 0:53:59- There are all sorts of different tastes in there.- Exactly.
0:53:59 > 0:54:01All sorts of different tastes.
0:54:01 > 0:54:04- I shouldn't care to spend the evening on it.- I don't know!
0:54:04 > 0:54:07- I'd much rather have a whisky. - DAVID LAUGHS
0:54:21 > 0:54:25The last decade of the century came to be known as the naughty '90s.
0:54:28 > 0:54:31If duty and morality had been the watchwords of Victorian Britain
0:54:31 > 0:54:34at its height, now others could be added.
0:54:35 > 0:54:39Freedom and fun.
0:54:39 > 0:54:43What had happened was that ordinary people, in this case middle-class
0:54:43 > 0:54:47ordinary people, could now enjoy the fruits of their labours.
0:54:47 > 0:54:51They could take pleasure seriously.
0:54:59 > 0:55:04All that invention and industry had brought wealth and leisure.
0:55:04 > 0:55:09Enjoying yourself was no longer just for the toffs.
0:55:13 > 0:55:21The values which had made Victorian Britain great and grand were slowly but surely being laid aside.
0:55:32 > 0:55:37When Victoria died after 63 years on the throne,
0:55:37 > 0:55:43film cameras were there to record her funeral on 2nd February, 1901.
0:56:07 > 0:56:11The coming of cinema spelled the end for the sort of story-telling pictures
0:56:11 > 0:56:14that Victorian artists had painted for so long.
0:56:14 > 0:56:17But the legacy of those pictures is astonishing.
0:56:21 > 0:56:25They had charted the explosion of the great cities
0:56:25 > 0:56:28and how the Victorians had transformed them
0:56:28 > 0:56:30and learned to love them.
0:56:37 > 0:56:41They had painted the Victorian dream of home sweet home.
0:56:44 > 0:56:46And the dangers that menaced it.
0:56:50 > 0:56:53They'd created hymns to the labour and ingenuity
0:56:53 > 0:56:56that made Britain the workshop of the globe.
0:56:58 > 0:57:03Acted as cheerleaders for the Empire as Britain conquered the world.
0:57:07 > 0:57:11And as compassionate witnesses to the hardships of the workers
0:57:11 > 0:57:14whose labour had made Britain rich.
0:57:16 > 0:57:22They had pushed at the boundaries of Victorian conformity
0:57:22 > 0:57:27and provided comfort for the troubled Victorian soul.
0:57:31 > 0:57:36Their pictures of the most dramatic, feverish time in our history
0:57:36 > 0:57:39were the cinema of their day.
0:57:39 > 0:57:41And they're still all around us.
0:57:41 > 0:57:45They're hanging on a wall near you.
0:58:12 > 0:58:15Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd.
0:58:15 > 0:58:18E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk