Oakham to Cambridge Great British Railway Journeys


Oakham to Cambridge

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For Victorian Britons, George Bradshaw was a household name.

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At a time when railways were new, Bradshaw's guidebook inspired them

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to take to the tracks.

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I'm using a Bradshaw's guide to understand how trains transformed

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Britain - its landscape, its industries, society

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and leisure time.

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As I crisscross the country 150 years later, it helps me

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to discover the Britain of today.

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I'm now concluding a journey that began in West Wales

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and will end in East Anglia.

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Today I want to learn about how the Victorians pioneered moving images,

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the forerunners to cinema and television,

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and how a Cambridge graduate developed the most original theory

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since the creation.

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This week I have travelled from east to west across Bradshaw's Britain.

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I began in Pembrokeshire and moved across South Wales to

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Herefordshire and on to the Cotswolds.

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I passed through Oxford, the city of dreaming spires,

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and traversed Bedfordshire.

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And I will finish at another academic citadel.

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On this leg of my journey, my first stop will be Oakham from where

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I'll head east to handsome Stamford then on south to Peterborough

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before ending my journey at the great university city of Cambridge.

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Today I get to grips with a Victorian melodrama...

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It's a story about a signalman who gets the opportunity

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to either save his son or crash a train.

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HE GASPS

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..hear ghoulish hospital tales...

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Something like an amputation would

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have taken round about 2-3 minutes, have to work extremely fast.

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..and learn about the student days of Charles Darwin.

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These are the actual beetles that he gave him

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so much pleasure and so much obsession

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when he was an undergraduate.

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This is absolutely stunning!

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My first stop will be Oakham in Rutland.

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Bradshaw's draws my attention to the Shire Hall which "stands

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"within the ruined walls of the old castle founded by the Ferrers

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"family soon after the conquest.

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"Over the gates are several gilded horseshoes

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"with the names of noblemen by whom they had been given.

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"It had been quite an immemorial custom to ask every peer

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"who visits the town for one or else to pay a fine."

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All this talk of horses and gifts has me quite intrigued.

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Oakham is a market town dating back to Anglo Saxon times.

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At its heart lies a 16th-century butter cross

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where butter was traded and clergymen preached.

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Not far from the town is a traditional blacksmith's,

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which now produces ornamental and architectural ironwork.

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It is not often called upon to produce a gilded horseshoe

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but it retains the skill to do so.

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I'm meeting the owner, John Spence.

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-Hello, John. Very good to see you.

-Likewise.

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Bradshaw's Guide tells me about these horseshoes at Shire Hall

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and I understand you know a bit about them.

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Yes, I've made a few horseshoes in my time there.

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By the way, how long has your family business been going, then?

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We've been going as a business since 1896. I'm 5th generation

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continuous father to son, father to son.

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And how many horseshoes have you personally made for the castle?

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-Four horseshoes.

-And who were they for?

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Well, there was Prince Charles,

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Princess Alexandra, and the last one,

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the Duchess of Cornwall, we've just done recently.

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John's company made its first horseshoe for the Shire Hall

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in 1981 in a manner recognisable to blacksmiths down the ages.

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My horseshoe today has been cut out with a laser.

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But that's where the hi-tech stops.

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The letters have been welded on and will be decorated by hand.

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John that is absolutely lovely. "Great Railway Journeys 2014"

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and a fantastic locomotive. Is this finished?

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Yes, well, the letters need painting black.

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Well, you've gone to so much trouble,

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would you mind if I just give you a hand

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by painting a couple of these letters?

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Have you got any pointers for me, what should I be doing here?

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Don't get too much paint on your brush.

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And I say, they're quite intricate, and they're quite small as well.

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Quite fiddly.

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Let's hope my paintwork will pass muster

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at Oakham Castle's Shire Hall,

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one of England's finest examples

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of late 12th-century domestic architecture.

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Mr Leader of Rutland County Council.

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Though I am not a peer, sir, but the most humble commoner

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I have the honour to present a horseshoe to Oakham Castle.

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Thank you so much.

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Normally, it's a member of nobility we would receive this from,

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but today we're very happy to receive it

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from a member of nobility of the media!

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Thank you very much indeed.

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This is the most extraordinary building.

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Tell me, how did this tradition of the horseshoes begin?

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It seems to date right back from when the hall was built

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by the Norman barons only 100 years after the Norman conquest,

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and they were the barons who were in charge of shoeing all the

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horses of William the Conqueror's army. They had this tradition

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that if somebody passed across their lands and wouldn't pay their tolls,

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they could take a horseshoe off of them, so they couldn't get through.

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So, it seems to have grown up from this into this incredible

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tradition that we've got here.

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The very oldest one that we have is 1470 one from Edward IV

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given during the Wars Of The Roses, an incredible amount of time ago.

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And in the middle here,

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clearly Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

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Queen Victoria here?

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She is indeed, there's a matching pair of two horseshoes

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on the left, Queen Victoria's mother

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and on the right was Queen Victoria herself

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when she was still Princess Alexandrina Victoria.

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The hall is very sparsely furnished, but what are these benches for?

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This is the oldest serving courtroom in the country dating back to 1229.

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It is still used. It is used every other year,

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we have a visit from a judge...

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-What, regular trials?

-Regular trial.

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I can imagine that some severe justice has been dispensed here

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over the centuries.

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Now look, I feel very embarrassed about this

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cos I didn't know there was such distinguished company

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and I brought my humble horseshoe.

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What will you do with it? Have you got a basement you can put it in?

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Certainly not! But we do have a spot over there,

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which is in a prominent position beneath

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the Duke of Wellington which we thought would be appropriate for you.

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I am overwhelmed. Thank you.

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A distinguished spot among illustrious company.

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An honour indeed.

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My journey takes me eastwards towards Stamford in Lincolnshire.

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"Stamford," says my Bradshaw's,

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"is pleasantly situated on the banks of the Welland River.

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"It is remarkably picturesque."

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So much so that it has often been used as a location for film-making

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and I want to understand how the Victorians

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whetted our appetite for the movies.

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I shall begin around the "many handsome public edifices

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"among which we may mention the theatre and the assembly rooms."

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Stamford today is a prosperous market town

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and a magnet for tourists who come to appreciate its medieval inns

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and handsome Georgian stone buildings.

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'Jill Collinge is to be my guide.'

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There are lots of places that were pretty in Victorian times,

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but not so very much today.

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Why does Stamford remain so beautiful?

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It's because of the railways.

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The Great Northern Railway should have been coming through the town.

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There was opposition from the local lord of the manor,

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the Marquess of Exeter, who was very opposed to change.

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Earl Fitzwilliam in Peterborough really encouraged the Great Northern

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to go to Peterborough, which of course it did.

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This caused great trouble amongst the businessmen

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of the day in Stamford, but nevertheless

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because of these building restrictions,

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Stamford avoided any ravages of Industrial Revolution.

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So, today you see very much an 18th and early-Victorian town.

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And for that very reason, it has been chosen again and again

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as a location for filming.

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George Eliot's novel Middlemarch was filmed by the BBC here

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about 18 or so years ago and it was a wonderful backdrop

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for the film to take place, very little had to be changed in the town.

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And Pride And Prejudice, the most recent filming has been done here

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on two main streets that are used often for the filming.

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It was a beautiful backdrop.

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That was the 1790s that that was being filmed in.

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So we're very lucky.

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I'm heading for what were, in the 18th century,

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the assembly rooms on St George's Square

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and also home to one of England's earliest provincial theatres.

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Today, it's an arts centre.

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Richard Rigby knows all about a very early form of cinema,

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which was enormously popular in Bradshaw's day - the magic lantern.

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I quite like to dress extrovertly, but what are you dressed as?

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I dress as a showman. I am a magic lanternist and we all...

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we all put on a bit of a show.

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I love the hat particularly. Do you mind if wear your spare?

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Oh, I'd be delighted. It will go very well with your jacket.

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Right, I'm ready for the show.

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So magic lanternists, what, they would go from town to town

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giving performances, would they?

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Yes, they were known as 'galante' men.

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They go all over Europe and

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they would project onto any whitewashed wall

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or just a sheet of muslin.

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Of course, it had to be dark

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because all they had as an illuminant would be a candle.

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-What's the earliest slide you have got?

-Ah! That's this one here.

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It's a panorama - Christmas dinner in the big house.

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That is slid through the lantern, hence the word 'slide'.

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-Ha!

-And that goes right back to 1640, 1650, that sort of time.

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What other sorts of moving image did they develop?

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We've got Mr Pickwick here.

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See if you can get him to skip for me.

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MICHAEL LAUGHS

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-Isn't that lovely.

-Marvellous.

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Magic lantern performances became hugely popular entertainment,

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and played an important part in educating Victorian society.

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They were used to tell Bible stories and by the Temperance movement

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as well as to demonstrate scientific principles.

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Remember, these were more important than books

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because most people couldn't read, but they could understand a picture.

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Richard has offered to put on a magic lantern show for me today

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in the old theatre, opened first in 1768 and reopened in 1978.

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We have set up a little Victorian melodrama.

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It's a story about signalman who has the most dreadful dilemma.

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He gets the opportunity to either save his son or crash a train.

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HE GASPS Would you like to do the reading

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-and I will operate the lantern?

-I would love to.

-Excellent.

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"I have been in the box from a youngster,

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"and I've never felt the strain of the lives

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"which my right hand held in every passing train.

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"That day, the missus went shopping,

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"took the train to the city.

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"So she settled to leave me Johnny.

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"The boy would be safe with me.

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"It was rare, hard work at Christmas with trains from ere and yon.

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"With a start, I thought of Johnny and I saw the boy was gone.

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"'Twas 100 lives or Johnny's.

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"Oh, heaven, what should I do?

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"On the wind came the words, 'Your duty!

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"'To that you must always be true.'"

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"She had seen him just as the engine of the Limited closed my view

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"and she leapt on the line and saved him

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"just as the train dashed through.

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Happy ending.

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Fantastic Victorian melodrama brought to life on the big screen.

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After a good night's sleep, I'm heading back to the station.

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I've heard that there's a bookshop

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that could be of particular interest to me and I can't resist.

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Do you deal in antique books about trains as well as modern books?

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Yes, yes, we do. That's how the business started.

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I wonder if there are any old copies of Bradshaw's here.

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Aha!

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Bradshaw Timetable for November 1896.

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I would think a timetable for 1896

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is somewhat limited in its usefulness!

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Well, it's not useful for today, but it is a historical document.

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It shows the passenger services as they were at that time.

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Well, let me give you back that very precious Bradshaw

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as I continue my journey with mine.

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Great pleasure to see you. Goodbye.

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From Stamford my train will take me out of Lincolnshire,

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south east to Cambridgeshire and the city of Peterborough.

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Bradshaw's is not exactly enticing about Peterborough.

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"The country is flat and uninteresting in winter.

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"It has but one church beside the cathedral,

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"which is the only object of interest."

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But more relevantly it tells me that Peterborough is on

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the Great Northern Line where three or four other lines strike off.

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At this important junction, I think it might be the right place

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to think about the conditions of Victorian railway workers

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and in particular what happened to them

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when they were injured during the course of their dangerous work.

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With the opening of the line to Peterborough by the London

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and Birmingham Railway in 1845, the cathedral city began to expand.

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The Great Northern Line arrived five years later

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and transformed it from a market town to an industrial centre.

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The area became Britain's leading producer of bricks,

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clay being plentiful in the area.

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Despite Bradshaw's reservations, I think the city rather grand

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with an abundance of stately buildings.

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I'm on my way to one now.

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Opened in the centre of town in 1857,

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the Peterborough Infirmary was the city's first hospital.

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Today the building houses the city's museum,

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but evidence of its former use has been preserved.

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I have come to meet Stuart Orme to find out more.

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Stuart, this lovely building doesn't feel like an infirmary.

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It has the feel of an elegant town house.

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Well, it was an elegant town house,

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of course, before being the first hospital in Peterborough.

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And you'll have come in through the front door,

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that was the main entrance for emergency patients

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and also for men coming into the hospital.

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The back door, which is down here at the bottom of the staircase,

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which is now the entrance to our art gallery,

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that was the women's entrance. So, Victorian values, of course,

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men and women having separate entrances.

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So, of course, there's no naughty touching going on

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as patients inside the building.

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From the outset, the main users of the hospital

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were railwaymen injured at work.

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So vulnerable were they to accidents that they

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and their families began an early form of health insurance.

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They paid a penny a week into a medical fund.

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The injuries suffered by railway workers toiling amid heavy

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machinery all too often resulted in peremptory amputations.

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Upstairs, the hospital's original operating theatre

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has been preserved.

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Ah! Absolutely macabre and creepy!

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'It's chilling to imagine conditions for patients here.'

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Well, of course, this was far more sophisticated

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than your railwaymen in the 1850s would have been used to.

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This is actually dating to the 1890s and the beginnings of modern surgery.

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Back in 1850s, you would have been treated in the patient waiting room

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downstairs, so you imagine sort of people sitting there

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waiting to see their doctors, the curtain pulled across the room and

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somebody brought in for an amputation on the other side of curtain,

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which wouldn't have been a pleasant prospect

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for either of the people concerned, I would suspect.

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And certainly railway workers working on dirty yards,

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a significant problem is going to be of infection,

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so therefore the only solution you've really got is to actually amputate

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the limb altogether. And the operations themselves

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would have been very crude.

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So with a surgical knife like this being used to sever your way

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through the flesh, so you could get down to the layers bone underneath.

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Generally speaking, something like an amputation would have

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taken around about 2-3 minutes.

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Have to work extremely fast and extremely precise because you're

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quite literally worried about your patient either dying of shock

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or bleeding to death on the operating table

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because of course, they're conscious.

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So once you've got through the flesh,

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then you move on to removing the bone underneath.

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You've left behind a flap of skin which you can fold over

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and hopefully create a pad for the wound.

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During Queen Victoria's reign, medicine passed many milestones

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as research and experimentation advanced.

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One of earliest developments was the use of anaesthetics

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as a result of which you get the use of these sorts of things.

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Place over the nose and mouth of the patient

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and then you can put a few drops of chloroform on to the outside

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and they're out for the count. Meaning that you can do much more

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sophisticated, invasive surgery and don't have to worry about

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the patient immediately expiring from shock.

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But the biggest concern in medical practice was the risk of infection.

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During the 1860s, Dr Joseph Lister began to use carbolic acid

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to disinfect operating theatres.

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So what he does is he arranges within his surgical procedures

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that there is a sort of dilute spray, 5% carbolic, sprayed from something

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that's like a brass garden sprayer.

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That spray all over the room literally saturating patients,

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the nurses, the doctors, everything in carbolic,

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but at least it kills the germs.

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By end of the 19th century, there's a realisation you can go one stage

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further - rather than just killing the germs, you can try and eradicate

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them and make sure they're not there in the first place.

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Hence now we've got nice white clean surfaces with the walls

0:20:400:20:44

in here, white, clean floor. It makes it easier to keep the place clean

0:20:440:20:48

and make sure there are no germs in here in first place.

0:20:480:20:51

How big a change does it make, then?

0:20:510:20:53

Back in 1830s, you probably stood at best 50-50 chance

0:20:530:20:57

of surviving an operation. By the 1890s, it's about a 2.5% death rate.

0:20:570:21:02

So, it's basically a dramatic shift in half a century.

0:21:020:21:06

So, the Victorians preside over the most enormous advance in surgery?

0:21:060:21:09

Absolutely. It's one of those quantum leap periods

0:21:090:21:12

of technology, if you like, in terms of surgery and surgical technique

0:21:120:21:16

and of course, importantly the survival rates thereafter.

0:21:160:21:19

It seems that the Victorians established the principles

0:21:220:21:26

of theatre practice as we know it today.

0:21:260:21:29

'The final leg of my journey takes me

0:21:350:21:36

'southeast to my undergraduate stomping ground.'

0:21:360:21:39

"The University of Cambridge," says Bradshaw's,

0:21:420:21:44

"is second to no other in Europe in any single

0:21:440:21:48

"department of literature, and in mathematics has no rivals."

0:21:480:21:53

I'm on my way to Christ's College, which Bradshaw's tells me

0:21:530:21:56

was founded in 1442 and has two courts, one rebuilt by Inigo Jones.

0:21:560:22:02

The purpose of the university is to teach its students to think.

0:22:020:22:07

I'm going to Christ's in pursuit of one who thought back to

0:22:070:22:10

first principles to the very origins of life.

0:22:100:22:13

Cambridge is a small and architecturally beautiful city,

0:22:190:22:22

which grew up as an inland port on the River Cam.

0:22:220:22:26

The mix of colleges, churches, bridges and gardens have made it

0:22:280:22:32

an attractive and popular place to visit.

0:22:320:22:35

Founded in 1209, the university today has 31 colleges.

0:22:400:22:45

Charles Darwin came to Christ's College in 1828.

0:22:450:22:49

I want to learn about the author of On The Origin Of Species.

0:22:490:22:53

Most of us know Charles Darwin from the photograph of him

0:22:580:23:01

as an older man with a big, bushy beard.

0:23:010:23:04

But the Charles Darwin who had rooms at Christ's looked like this,

0:23:040:23:08

and the intellect that developed the theory of evolution

0:23:080:23:12

was nurtured here.

0:23:120:23:13

I'm heading to the handsome library, which holds over 80,000 books

0:23:180:23:22

and manuscripts and serves students, fellows, researchers and staff.

0:23:220:23:26

'I believe it also hold records of Darwin's of student days.'

0:23:280:23:32

-Amelie, hello.

-Hello.

0:23:330:23:35

'College librarian Amelie Roper has agreed to show me

0:23:350:23:38

'some items of interest.'

0:23:380:23:39

So here we have letters documenting his great passion

0:23:410:23:45

for beetle collecting.

0:23:450:23:46

So here we have a letter to his cousin Fox.

0:23:460:23:51

So you can see it begins, "My dear Fox," and then he's saying,

0:23:510:23:53

"I'm dying by inches from not having anyone to talk to about insects."

0:23:530:23:58

-HE LAUGHS

-That's marvellous.

0:23:580:24:00

It's lovely, isn't it?

0:24:000:24:02

Now, change of handwriting here, is this someone different?

0:24:020:24:05

No, this is still Darwin,

0:24:050:24:06

but this is some 30 years later. So, this is 1858 now.

0:24:060:24:11

And this actually records the time when his son William

0:24:110:24:14

started at Christ's and this is a very evocative letter.

0:24:140:24:19

"I was in old court, middle staircase

0:24:190:24:22

"on right-hand going into court

0:24:220:24:25

"up one flight, right-hand door and capital rooms they were."

0:24:250:24:29

I'm keen to see these 'capital' rooms

0:24:320:24:35

and have arranged to meet there the Curator of Insects,

0:24:350:24:38

Dr William Foster, of the University Museum of Zoology.

0:24:380:24:42

-OK, so here we are.

-Thank you.

0:24:420:24:43

Charles Darwin's undergraduate rooms are beautifully preserved.

0:24:470:24:51

Darwin studied for a Bachelor of Arts degree at Christ's

0:24:530:24:56

and his interest in natural sciences began as a hobby.

0:24:560:25:00

Rumour had it that initially he was not a particularly conscientious

0:25:000:25:03

student, enjoying the finer things of life like hunting and dining.

0:25:030:25:08

Where does the story begin, William?

0:25:110:25:12

Well, the story begins with Darwin being at Cambridge.

0:25:120:25:15

And as you've already heard, his big passion was collecting beetles.

0:25:150:25:19

I mean, nothing else that he did at Cambridge excited him so much.

0:25:190:25:22

So, these are the actual beetles that gave him so much pleasure

0:25:220:25:26

and so much obsession when he was an undergraduate.

0:25:260:25:28

This is absolutely stunning to see so many...

0:25:280:25:31

-Well, hundreds of them in there.

-It was very fashionable for

0:25:310:25:34

biologists in that period to collect things in a kind of competitive way.

0:25:340:25:39

Beetles are good. Lots of species, easy to preserve,

0:25:390:25:43

and people were collecting them.

0:25:430:25:46

In 1831, Darwin set sail aboard HMS Beagle.

0:25:460:25:50

During the two-year voyage around the world, he collected

0:25:500:25:53

thousands of specimens - among them, Galapagos finches.

0:25:530:25:58

Darwin noticed that the songbirds on the different

0:25:580:26:00

islands in the Galapagos, while similar, showed variations in size,

0:26:000:26:05

beaks and claws from island to island.

0:26:050:26:08

He would later conclude that, because the islands

0:26:080:26:10

are isolated from each other and from the mainland,

0:26:100:26:13

the finches on each island had adapted to local conditions

0:26:130:26:16

over time.

0:26:160:26:18

I think importance of Beagle finches to Darwin's ideas of evolution has

0:26:180:26:21

-been hugely exaggerated.

-Really?

-He himself was a little bit unsure about

0:26:210:26:27

the identifications of what island they came from, so he didn't want to

0:26:270:26:30

erect any kind of false hypotheses on the basis of the finches.

0:26:300:26:33

It was more that his theory helped explain the finches

0:26:330:26:36

than his finches helped explain his theory.

0:26:360:26:39

'After his Beagle voyage, Darwin spent eight years studying

0:26:390:26:43

'marine invertebrates.'

0:26:430:26:44

From 1846 to 1854 he worked on barnacles, the Cirrepedia.

0:26:440:26:50

By really studying one group, he began to realise

0:26:500:26:53

that the boundaries between species was not as immutable and absolute

0:26:530:26:57

as everybody had thought at the time.

0:26:570:27:00

This work on the variation in a species helped him to formulate

0:27:000:27:04

his theory of evolution, incorporated in the famous book

0:27:040:27:08

that changed the world's view of life.

0:27:080:27:11

I am rather in awe of this object here.

0:27:110:27:13

This is the first edition of On The Origin Of Species, 1859.

0:27:130:27:18

All things considered, what is the significance of this book?

0:27:180:27:22

I think this book is the most important book ever written.

0:27:230:27:27

After this, nothing was the ever same again.

0:27:270:27:29

Human beings were no longer, could no longer consider themselves special,

0:27:290:27:33

at the centre of the universe.

0:27:330:27:34

We are one species amongst millions, evolved from them,

0:27:340:27:38

and things will evolve from us. Everything changed after this.

0:27:380:27:41

My journey that began in West Wales ends here.

0:27:470:27:51

As we know from our own age,

0:27:510:27:52

progress in communications is revolutionary.

0:27:520:27:56

In the 19th century, it was the spread of the railways

0:27:560:27:59

and other developments such as in photography as I saw in Swansea.

0:27:590:28:04

But nothing is as powerful as an idea.

0:28:040:28:07

At a time when religions of the Bible were universal,

0:28:070:28:11

the theory of a graduate of this college, Charles Darwin,

0:28:110:28:15

shook Bradshaw's world to its roots.

0:28:150:28:18

The scholarship of the Victorians is their most important legacy.

0:28:180:28:22

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