47 min
The Edwardians: The Good the Bad and the Ugly (Part 1) Eccentric Circles
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- History
We tend to think of the Edwardian period as a dull interlude, where a complacent ruling class lazed away in blissful ignorance of what was coming: industrialised warfare and the dissolution of empire.
In reality, this was a time of huge upheaval. There was the fight for Irish Home Rule, suffragism, socialism and vegetarianism. Telegraph cables stretched around the world. Darwinism had dealt creationism and the Judaic religions that championed it a severe blow. This left a gap for other faiths to fill, as people turned elsewhere to meet the human need for the mysterious.
It was a time of occultism, sex novels and human zoos. It was also when the wheels began to come off the imperial project. And in 1912, this proud maritime nation was able to celebrate a true feat of engineering: the launch of the unsinkable Titanic.
We tend to think of the Edwardian period as a dull interlude, where a complacent ruling class lazed away in blissful ignorance of what was coming: industrialised warfare and the dissolution of empire.
In reality, this was a time of huge upheaval. There was the fight for Irish Home Rule, suffragism, socialism and vegetarianism. Telegraph cables stretched around the world. Darwinism had dealt creationism and the Judaic religions that championed it a severe blow. This left a gap for other faiths to fill, as people turned elsewhere to meet the human need for the mysterious.
It was a time of occultism, sex novels and human zoos. It was also when the wheels began to come off the imperial project. And in 1912, this proud maritime nation was able to celebrate a true feat of engineering: the launch of the unsinkable Titanic.
47 min