Show Notes
Things get rather raffish and French as Muriel entices Suzanne into that most Gallic of spaces - the boudoir - and tells her everything she ever wanted to know about it but was afraid to ask. What actually happens in that room? What is it for? We open the door on the dazzling boudoirs of the 18th-century elite, filled with art and chinoiserie, on exquisite women’s retreats and on men’s delirious dens of debauchery. The Marquis de Sade, Balzac, Baudelaire and John Malkovich put in a appearance. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
More from Garlic & Pearls
They seek him here; they seek him there... Suzanne gives Muriel a riveting rendering of The Scarlet Pimpernel, Hungarian émigrée Baroness Orczy's colourful and melodramatic 1905 historical novel set during the French Revolution, in which a gallant mild-mannered fop and his associates stick it to Madame Guillotine by rescuing French aristocrats on the run from bloodthirsty sans culottes and the dastardly Citoyen Chauvelin. And why do these British heroes do this? For the sport of pulling 'the hare from the teeth of the hound', of course! This is a highly romantic rendering of the French Revolution seen from the British side of the Channel, but was there in fact a real-life Scarlet Pimpernel? And what happened to French emigrés in Britain? Isambard Kingdom Brunel guest stars. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Muriel tells Suzanne the story of the printed cotton or linen known as toile de Jouy, generally printed in a single colour on a neutral background and created in the late 18th century by an enterprising German émigré, the engraving and colour specialist Christophe-Philippe Oberkampf, at his thriving manufacture of Jouy-en-Josas. Patterns of exquisite refinement were beloved of the powerful, from Queen Marie-Antoinette to the Revolutionaries and Napoleon. They also harnessed the talent of great artists and, with their pastoral scenes, Enlightenment themes and celebration of important historical events, gained long-lasting hold of the French collective imagination, feeding into how much the French enjoy telling themselves stories about being French. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Suzanne explores dystopia, one of the most significant sub-genres of the British novel, where trouble often starts with the breakdown of the monarchy and aristocracy (which sounds a bit like France). It begins with Jonathan's Swift's Gulliver's Travels, then Mary Shelley comes along, then HG Wells's War of the Worlds – where most of Woking is destroyed even before the M25 is built. But our main focus is Aldous Huxley's astonishing 1932 novel Brave New World and its world of skyscrapers, aeroplanes and willing enslavement through entertainment and the scariest thing of all – sex! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Muriel and Suzanne discuss a new French film set during the years 1940-41, a pivotal time in the history of France and Britain, as General de Gaulle, powered by 'a certain idea of France' and refusing to accept Pétain's new collaborationist regime, relocated to London to seek support from the British, devise the Free French response to the defeat and plan the recapturing of France. How good is the film? How persuasive is its portrayal of our respective national heroes De Gaulle and Churchill? How much accuracy do we expect from historical dramas? How much suspension of disbelief are we prepared to grant? The film has been a tremendous box office hit in France: what does this tell us about our need for an inspiring national narrative? Has the time come for France to reassess a complicated period of its history? And will this film change British perceptions of De Gaulle? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Suzanne enlightens Muriel about the Beaufort Scale and explores the remarkable story of its creator, hydrographer Francis Beaufort, who went to sea as a boy, was shipwrecked in the Far East, took part in Napoleonic sea battles against the French and in 1805 devised a brilliant empirical scale full of poetic language to evoke the changeable quality of the wind and its effect on the sails of a ship and the surface of the sea. How should one assess a breeze, a gale, a hurricane and learn to survive at sea without Beaufort's system, which even the French adopted? Daniel Defoe guest stars. Beaufort's unorthodox private life, recorded in his ciphered journal – using the Beaufort cipher – adds a layer of intrigue. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.