Cromer to Cambridge Great British Railway Journeys


Cromer to Cambridge

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For Edwardian Britons,

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a Bradshaw's was an indispensable guide to a railway network

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at its peak.

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I'm using an early 20th century edition to navigate a vibrant and

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optimistic Britain at the height of its power

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and influence in the world.

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But a nation wrestling with political,

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social and industrial unrest at home.

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In 1901, shortly before the publication of my Bradshaw's,

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Queen Victoria died after nearly 64 years on the throne.

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Her successor Edward VII was hardly a young man,

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and yet his accession clearly represented a big change.

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He was enormous where she had been petite.

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He was wayward where she had been discreet.

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Starting in one of his favourite counties, Norfolk,

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on this rail journey I will embrace Edward and the Edwardians.

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My rail journey will take me from

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aristocratic estates in Norfolk through

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the university city of Cambridge, onto the high life of the capital.

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I'll make my way along the south coast,

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crossing the Solent to explore the King's childhood

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on the Isle of Wight.

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Returning to the mainland,

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I'll experience turn-of-the-century past times in the seaside resorts of

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Bournemouth and Poole.

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The first leg starts at Cromer.

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My route heads south to the Norfolk Broads at Wroxham,

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where I'll shoot across to Attleborough

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and the Quidenham Estate before ending in my alma mater.

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On the way, I learn the ropes on an Edwardian pleasure boat...

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Are they up there yet, skipper?

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-Nearly there.

-Heave! Ho!

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..take a pot shot at the sport of kings...

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Is this the sort of place His Majesty would have shot?

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The King would have been probably

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standing not far from where we are now.

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Pull!

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..and, Fred Astaire, watch out,

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as I'm persuaded to put on my dancing shoes to strut my stuff.

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The railways came relatively late to parts of Norfolk.

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As a result, it offered unspoiled resorts,

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and as these timetables make clear,

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there were good connections to London and other places.

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Bradshaw's says Cromer is one of the few English health resorts that

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combine country and sea in close proximity,

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which is very restful to the eye.

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More than one Royal personage has been ordered here.

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Cromer was in the same county as Sandringham,

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which in 1862 had become Edward's country house

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when he was still Prince of Wales, with the landscape

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reminding his bride, Alexandra, of her native Denmark.

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Lying at the foot of a cliff, Cromer beach has been awarded a blue flag,

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meaning it's top quality.

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At the time of my guidebook,

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the town aimed to attract a high class of visitor.

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Indeed, Bradshaw's supplement to the spas and health resorts of

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Great Britain tells me that, "Cromer has a fine promenade of pier,

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"with an enclosure for 1,000 persons, safe bathing,

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"firm, level sands, boating,

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"fishing, first-class band and theatre,

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"Royal Cromer golf links, tennis, bowls."

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Every kind of amusement for the fun-loving Edwardian!

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I'm meeting Alistair Murphy, curator of Cromer Museum,

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to find out what made this into a holiday spot fit for a king.

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-Alistair, hello.

-Hi.

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So, Cromer is a beautiful place today,

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but what was its making as an Edwardian resort?

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Well, the railways didn't get here until 1877,

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and as a result it was a relatively undiscovered part of the coast at a

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time when holidays were already pretty well established.

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It meant that Cromer was unspoiled.

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According to my Bradshaw's, there's sailing,

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there's the royal golf links - it's catering for the upper classes,

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-is that right?

-Absolutely.

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In the 1880s, 1890s, even the

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crowned heads of Europe came to Cromer.

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But with people bathing here, was there any risque element?

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Cromer may be a trendsetter in that respect.

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If you went to the seaside in the 1880s, 1890s,

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the fathers and the sons would have

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to go to one end of the beach to bathe,

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and women and daughters would have to go the other end,

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but we think that Cromer was the first place

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to allow the indecent behaviour

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of women and men bathing together.

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We've got records of a local town

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council meeting where an elderly member

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of the council is apoplectic about

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the idea that mixed bathing should be

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happening in his seaside resort.

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As the 20th century got into its stride,

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Cromer acquired something that had become an essential part of the

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British holiday.

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Alistair, the pier is lovely and very, very well preserved.

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-Is it Edwardian?

-It is.

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It was officially opened in 1901.

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I think Cromer, as all the resorts did,

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looked to see what their competitors were doing and try and better them.

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Officiating at the opening ceremony was Lord Claud Hamilton,

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chairman of the Great Eastern Railway -

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a sure sign of how important trains

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had become to the town's tourist business.

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Bradshaw's tells me, of course, it has a large theatre.

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It does, although in 1901 there was

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just a small bandstand to start with.

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This pavilion was built the winter of 1905-06.

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And what sort of entertainment do you think

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they might have got in those days?

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Well, when the pavilion opened you would have had variety and

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musical and comedy.

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Around that time,

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bawdy music hall was being

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rebranded as the more respectable-sounding variety.

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Tables and chairs were replaced with theatre-style seating,

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and variety included acrobats, animal acts,

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jugglers and dancers on the same bill.

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It's a tradition that continues on Cromer Pier today.

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Director of this year's show is Diane Cook.

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Five, six, seven, eight.

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And going into the next dancing section, next tapping section.

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Hello, Di. I'm Michael.

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Hi, Michael. Good to see you.

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-Hello, Company.

-Hello!

-So, would you call this variety after all these

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-years?

-It's absolutely still traditional variety,

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but it does have 21st-century content now.

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And is tap still a very big and popular thing?

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Absolutely, yes. I think it's the rhythms of tap that people like,

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and it's been around for a long time,

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but of course now we're doing it in

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a street style, so it's really given it a modern feel.

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How do you start someone on tap?

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Mostly dancers start at a very early age, but the first...

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Slightly younger than you, Michael.

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-Oh, right, OK. Yeah.

-But you would start with stamps and rhythms and

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getting the rhythms together by

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teaching them how to clap the rhythms,

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and then they'll start with a stamp, that's the way.

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And then they'll go onto a brush back and stamp.

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That's it now. Brush, back and stamp.

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Brush, back and stamp.

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And then they'll add a hop, shuffle, hop, step, shuffle.

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I feel naked. That's better.

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Here we go.

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Fabulous.

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Here we go.

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Take it away, Michael.

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I think that deserves a bow, doesn't it?

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-Well done.

-Thank you.

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-Tickets. Hello, there.

-Hello.

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From Cromer, I'm taking the train inland, leaving the sea behind,

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but not the water.

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I'm heading for the complex of waterways and lakes

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known as the Norfolk Broads.

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After the naughty titillations of the seaside and the pier,

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I'm feeling broad-minded.

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The capital of the Norfolk Broads,

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Wroxham, is a magnet for visitors planning a day out.

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Modern tourists explore the waterways on motor cruisers,

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but for most Edwardian travellers boating was under sail.

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I'm meeting yacht owner Andrew Scull.

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Hello, are you Andrew?

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-Hello. I am.

-Hello, Michael.

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And this is a wherry?

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This is Olive - the first of the wherry yachts to be built in 1909.

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Absolutely spectacular.

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-May we go on board?

-Of course.

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Olive was named after the daughter of boat builder Ernest Collins,

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who was based in Wroxham.

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Andrew, what are the Norfolk Broads?

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They are a couple of principal rivers, the Bure,

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on which we are sailing today, and the Yare.

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Yare being "Yaremouth," Yarmouth.

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But the rest were peat diggings from medieval times,

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which essentially filled with water.

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And they were very useful for navigation?

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Indeed, in those days lots of the villages were in need of various

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products, so the things that the trading wherries would carry,

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it would be coal, grain, cloth,

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and they were designed to be able to be sailed by just one person.

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When the railways arrived in the late 19th century,

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they could move cargo more quickly and cheaply,

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but the resourceful wherrymen just moved sideways into leisure.

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And the railways that had ruined the cargo trade now began to bring

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holiday-makers to the Norfolk Broads.

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In Edwardian times, were tourists coming and they

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were able to ride for pleasure on the wherries?

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They were, and as more and more came, the wherry yacht came into

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existence, which was essentially designed

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for carrying holiday-makers.

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So, we've got the use of a skipper and also crew,

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who when they weren't attending to the duties of sailing the boat,

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would be providing meals and serving the visitors who came.

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So the visitors had a choice of

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doing as much or as little as they wanted to do onboard.

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Now, we are drifting around very nicely but we have a sail?

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-Indeed.

-Should we put it up?

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Let's do that.

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Michael, can I introduce you to Jerry?

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-Jerry, Michael.

-I'm Michael, indeed.

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So, what do we have to do here?

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Basically, we need to pick up a winch handle each.

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You have yours pointed downwards,

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I'll have mine pointing upwards, and then we need to wind roughly the

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same speed, exerting a little bit of

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inward pressure so the winch handle doesn't come off.

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-OK.

-Basically, We keep going until the skipper tells us to stop.

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OK.

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The sail is going up.

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-A bit harder.

-When you can do it with two hands.

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Right. Let me know when.

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OK.

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Two hands.

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Is it not up there yet, skipper?

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Nearly there.

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-Nearly there.

-It's getting hard.

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Heave! Ho!

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That'll do, thank you.

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That was good exercise.

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Look at that. What a beautiful craft.

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Exquisite.

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You can see the Edwardian attraction in it, can't you?

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Far from the madding crowd, far from the old smoke of London.

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Absolutely delightful, especially on a day like this.

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Really lovely.

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-Bye, Andrew.

-Bye-bye, Michael.

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Thank you. Skipper, bye.

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Goodbye.

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-Bye-bye now.

-Bye-bye.

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BRASS BAND PLAYS

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Brass bands became popular in the mid-19th century.

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And by the early 20th century, there were thousands,

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all over the country.

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It was truly a golden age of brass.

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HE APPLAUDS

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Bravo! The Norfolk Wherry Brass.

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And why are you called the Norfolk Wherry Brass?

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Wherry ties everything together in Norfolk.

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A form of transport,

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because many of these people come from different parts of Norfolk.

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And the wherry connects you all.

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And what was that piece you are playing?

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That was a march called Viscount Nelson.

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-And what's the connection?

-Nelson,

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of course, was born in Norfolk and learnt to sail

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on Barton Broad very close to here.

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Are you telling me that the Battle of Trafalgar

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was won on the sailing broads of

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-Norfolk?

-Absolutely.

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I rejoin the train at Hoveton and Wroxham station,

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bidding farewell to the Broads.

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I'm on the Bittern line,

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which takes its name from a species

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of heron found in the reedy wetlands.

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A golden evening caps a beautiful summer's day,

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and I'm going to spend the night in Norwich.

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At the time of my Bradshaw's, Norwich had not one,

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but three railway stations, drawing lines from all corners of Norfolk.

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It was, until the Industrial Revolution,

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the largest city in England after London,

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with the Norman Cathedral at its heart.

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An advertisement in my Bradshaw's has drawn me to the

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Maids' Head Hotel.

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"County hotel of Norfolk,

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"for 500 years," and this was written 100 years ago.

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"Sanitary certificate in every room."

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Irresistible.

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I'll be leaving this train at Attleborough, headed for Quidenham.

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The standard newspaper in October

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1909 tells me that the little village,

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one of the prettiest in Norfolk,

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was all agog because of the visit of His Majesty the King.

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He travelled from London by special train and when he descended from the

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royal saloon he was a picture of good health.

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There was very good shooting at Quidenham,

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but now that I look at the guest list,

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present were the honourable George and Mrs Keppel.

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Now, she was the king's devoted mistress,

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so at Quidenham there was a target

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even more important than the partridge

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that fell victim to his majestic marksmanship.

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King Edward VII already owned a Norfolk estate at Sandringham,

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bought for him by Queen Victoria when he turned 21.

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He became a regular visitor at Quidenham,

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home of the eighth Earl of Albermarle,

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Arnold Keppel.

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Today, you don't have to be royalty to shoot here -

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the grounds are open to the paying public.

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I'm meeting gamekeeper Robert Brown.

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Robert, Quidenham Hall presents a fine facade, impressive building.

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What would this scene have been like, do you think,

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when King Edward VII visited?

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Well, the Hall itself pretty much has not changed, but in front of us,

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people lined the roadside with flags, torches,

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bunting in the hedges.

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It would have been a very impressive site, I would have thought.

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And if it was a royal weekend, how

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much shooting would there be, do you think?

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Well, they normally shot for two-three days, consecutive days.

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And that takes a lot of organisation?

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Yes. You can imagine the amount of staff that they would have had.

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Two teams of beaters, 25 on each,

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head keeper on the horse directing everything.

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It must have been like a military operation.

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A regular presence at the shooting parties

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was Lord Albermarle's sister-in-law.

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On the guest list was Alice Keppel.

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Yes. She would have come up here with her husband

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and she was the king's

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-mistress.

-And what do you know of her?

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She was a very beautiful woman, very popular.

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Pretty convenient for the king,

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to combine two of his great interests in life.

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Probably. Yeah, I think they had to be given time, shall we say.

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I'm going to try my luck with some clay pigeons.

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It's my opportunity to walk in the footsteps of King Edward VII.

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Is this the sort of place His Majesty would have shot?

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Yeah, this would have been one of the pheasant drives.

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The king would have been probably

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standing not far from where we are now.

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Well, although I carried this gun, I thought, rather skilfully,

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I don't actually know how to use it.

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But would you...? Shall we have a little go?

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Yeah, certainly.

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Cartridges in.

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-What's that thing there?

-Safety catch.

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Push forward when you're ready and it's live.

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It's all loaded. Ready?

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Safety catch on.

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How do I pull the trigger? Do you squeeze it or...?

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You want to give it a good snatch.

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-A good snatch.

-Yes.

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Pull.

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No luck on that one.

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You've actually hit it but it didn't smash.

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-I hit it?

-The second one, yes.

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I hit it!

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Let's have another go. Safety catch on.

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Again, slide it forward when you're ready.

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OK.

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Pull.

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Yes.

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I'm so pleased. I can't tell you how pleased I am.

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How did I hit that? That's amazing.

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Maybe I was to the manor born. What do you think?

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Well done.

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And just like the king, who loved his food and drink,

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after my sporting triumph, I'm ready for a pick-me-up.

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A sloe gin with some fizz for you.

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-Good health.

-Thank you very much.

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-Why sloe gin?

-Very traditional.

0:20:540:20:56

It's what the king would have had on a shoot.

0:20:560:20:58

And we serve it at elevenses on all our shoots.

0:20:580:21:01

Elevenses. Here we go.

0:21:010:21:03

Good health. Cheers.

0:21:030:21:05

-Thank you, Robert.

-Cheers.

0:21:050:21:07

Sloe gin, but it gets through you quickly, doesn't it?

0:21:090:21:12

-Marvellous.

-Hits the spot. It's what you need.

0:21:120:21:14

And we have a selection of savoury treats here,

0:21:140:21:16

some home-made sausage rolls, some tartlets.

0:21:160:21:19

Home cooking, absolutely delicious.

0:21:220:21:25

Wonderful.

0:21:250:21:26

Well, Robert, to our...

0:21:260:21:28

..success. Very surprising in my case.

0:21:300:21:33

Well shot. Well shot.

0:21:330:21:34

On the final leg of my journey, I'm travelling from rural East Anglia to

0:21:510:21:55

a world-famous centre of academia.

0:21:550:21:58

The career of King Edward VII now leads me to Cambridge because he was

0:21:580:22:02

an undergraduate there.

0:22:020:22:04

But I'm also in pursuit of a novelist

0:22:040:22:06

who links the Edwardian era with my own,

0:22:060:22:09

because just shortly before I went to the university,

0:22:090:22:13

there died an old man

0:22:130:22:15

who had been a resident of King's College, Cambridge, for decades.

0:22:150:22:19

The extraordinary EM Forster.

0:22:190:22:21

Cambridge is dominated by its university,

0:22:380:22:41

made up of 31 separate colleges scattered around the city centre.

0:22:410:22:46

The Prince of Wales - then known as Bertie,

0:22:480:22:51

and already something of a ladies' man -

0:22:510:22:54

arrived here to study in 1861.

0:22:540:22:56

The future King Edward VII studied here at Trinity College, Cambridge.

0:22:570:23:03

Rumours circulated of an affair with an actress in Ireland.

0:23:030:23:08

His father, Prince Albert, though ill,

0:23:080:23:11

travelled to Cambridge to remonstrate

0:23:110:23:13

with the heir to the throne.

0:23:130:23:15

On his return to London, Albert's health deteriorated,

0:23:150:23:18

and within three weeks he was dead.

0:23:180:23:21

A distraught Queen Victoria would always feel

0:23:210:23:23

that her promiscuous son was

0:23:230:23:26

partly responsible for the death of her beloved husband.

0:23:260:23:31

36 years later at nearby King's College,

0:23:330:23:37

the future best-selling author of

0:23:370:23:40

A Room With A View and Howards End, Edward Morgan Forster,

0:23:400:23:44

arrived to study classics.

0:23:440:23:46

-Hello, Peter.

-Very nice to meet you.

0:23:470:23:50

I'm Michael. Good to see you.

0:23:500:23:52

I've come to meet fellow of King's and Forster expert Peter Jones

0:23:520:23:57

in the shadow of the hallowed King's College Chapel.

0:23:570:24:01

When a very young EM Forster first comes to Cambridge, to King's,

0:24:010:24:05

what sort of a person is he?

0:24:050:24:07

He would have been very shy.

0:24:070:24:09

His mother brought him up and she kept him very sheltered,

0:24:090:24:12

and he went to a public school but he wasn't really comfortable there,

0:24:120:24:15

he didn't make many friends,

0:24:150:24:17

so King's was for him a big opening up of his life

0:24:170:24:20

and a chance to make friends.

0:24:200:24:22

What sort of a place was King's when he came here?

0:24:220:24:24

In the middle of the 19th century,

0:24:240:24:26

it would still have been a college for old Etonians.

0:24:260:24:28

In 1861, the college said they were going to take everybody,

0:24:280:24:32

so King's expanded hugely.

0:24:320:24:34

This opened the place up to all kinds of influences

0:24:340:24:37

that had not been there before.

0:24:370:24:39

How did Forster feel about religion?

0:24:390:24:41

I don't think he had any faith.

0:24:410:24:43

It was something of a relief to him to find his tutor was an atheist and

0:24:430:24:47

immediately that led Forster to feel relaxed.

0:24:470:24:50

He didn't have to show that he was Christian.

0:24:500:24:52

And for much of his life he was a humanist, wasn't he?

0:24:520:24:54

Yes, that's right, the sort of faith he professed later as a liberal

0:24:540:24:59

individualist was very much what he

0:24:590:25:01

imbibed at King's, because that was the ethos here.

0:25:010:25:05

Steeped in this radical atmosphere,

0:25:070:25:10

the young Forster began to explore

0:25:100:25:12

the big themes that would run through his writing.

0:25:120:25:15

We have two of his student diaries.

0:25:170:25:20

You can see the crest of King's College

0:25:200:25:22

and then underneath EMF on each of them.

0:25:220:25:24

And the year - 1898 and 1899.

0:25:240:25:28

And if we look inside, we are in November 1899.

0:25:280:25:33

"Ainsworth came in and ate bacon.

0:25:330:25:36

"Then he and Meredith argued about beauty."

0:25:360:25:39

It shows that he's beginning to

0:25:390:25:40

relax enough to talk with his friends

0:25:400:25:42

about serious matters.

0:25:420:25:44

Love, beauty, friendship.

0:25:440:25:46

And here we see some of the novels,

0:25:460:25:48

with which we're so familiar.

0:25:480:25:50

That's right. The Edwardian period of Forster's novel writing,

0:25:500:25:54

he's building on his experiences in Cambridge and you get a sequence of

0:25:540:25:57

novels - The Longest Journey,

0:25:570:26:00

and then A Room With A View, and finally Howards End in 1910.

0:26:000:26:05

He became somebody who was willing to express

0:26:050:26:09

a very liberal and humanist view.

0:26:090:26:11

In Forster's novels,

0:26:120:26:14

liberal idealists come up against the rigid conventions of class-bound

0:26:140:26:19

Edwardian society.

0:26:190:26:22

With human relationships at their core,

0:26:220:26:25

they continue to appeal to modern readers.

0:26:250:26:28

Why do you think so many of the novels have been filmed?

0:26:280:26:32

Film-makers find the romance plots

0:26:320:26:36

and the swishier Edwardian dresses and cars

0:26:360:26:40

and so on very attractive, so they can make a kind of heritage movie

0:26:400:26:44

and all of those things - they're not really what he felt

0:26:440:26:47

-he was about as a novelist.

-Yes.

0:26:470:26:48

Although they have had the effect of making his novels popular again.

0:26:480:26:52

The Norfolk Broads wherry was a

0:27:130:27:15

large boat designed for one-man operation,

0:27:150:27:18

but I find a Cambridge punt enough of a challenge for me.

0:27:180:27:23

Whilst Edwardians enjoyed the

0:27:230:27:25

sauciness of the theatre and of the beach,

0:27:250:27:28

their monarch was enjoying shooting and Alice Keppel.

0:27:280:27:33

EM Forster, in one of his novels, describes undergraduate life with

0:27:330:27:36

the college providing a servant to

0:27:360:27:39

make your bed, but goes on to argue that the

0:27:390:27:43

real privilege of Cambridge was, for

0:27:430:27:45

a few years, to be surrounded by the

0:27:450:27:47

greatest minds of your time.

0:27:470:27:50

Next time, I discover a new era of

0:28:000:28:02

tunnelling deep beneath the capital...

0:28:020:28:04

Every 45 minutes we can get another 1.5 metres completed.

0:28:040:28:10

..I tip the scales at a historic wine merchant...

0:28:100:28:12

I've obviously misjudged you, Michael,

0:28:120:28:15

because I can see that actually you're a lot

0:28:150:28:17

lighter than I thought you were and I apologise.

0:28:170:28:19

..and get on my bike in Lycra.

0:28:190:28:22

-That was great.

-Whoa!

0:28:240:28:27

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