A story beginning here in Hanover in northern Germany ... Under George I and George II Britain became the world’s most liberal and cosmopolitan society. Dr Lucy Worsley, The First Georgians: The Germans Who Made Britain I, BBC 2014
Parliament took drastic action: they had the idea of importing a ready-made royal family from overseas. ibid.
Now between father [George I] and son [George II] there was all out war. ibid.
Voltaire wrote that the English were the only people on Earth enabled to limit the power of kings by establishing wise government. ibid.
The corruption of the South Sea scandal went right to the heart of the government ... Insider trading was rife. ibid.
A new force in Georgian society – satire. ibid.
George II’s reign would be long and turbulent. German born, he found himself ruling a Britain that was heading into the future at lightning speed. Dr Lucy Worsley, The First Georgians: The German Kings Who Made Britain II
This was the most dysfunctional royal family since the Tudors. ibid.
George became the King who wasn't there. ibid.
Caroline worked hard to strengthen the Georgian dynasty. ibid.
This emerging middling sort differentiated Britain from its continental neighbours where the aristocracy still held sway. And with this new social class came new spending power. ibid.
Georgian coffee-houses were called the Penny Universities. ibid.
A new blight sweeping London – the craze for gin ... There were riots about the gin tax. ibid.
The first King of all Britain: is name is James, and if his early years were traumatic, they were only a taste of what was to come for his remarkable family. In the coming century seven members of this dynasty will rule the three separate kingdoms. Dr Clare Jackson, The Stuarts I: And I Will Make Them One Nation, BBC 2018
James made his official entry into London in early 1604. ibid.
Ireland was James’s Catholic kingdom. ibid.
Charles was a weak physical specimen. Charles was also a stammerer. ibid.
Between 1603 and 1714 the kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland were ruled by a royal family that more than any other shaped modern Britain. Dr Clare Jackson, The Stuarts II: A King Without a Crown
Cromwell was anything but democratic. ibid.
One in five adult males would fight; one in twenty would die. ibid.
Prince James was son to King James II of England and VII of Scotland. Dr Clare Jackson, The Stuarts III: A Family at War
Seven years after his restoration serious questions were being raised about the competence of Charles as King. ibid.
Across the three kingdoms there was huge paranoia about the Catholic threat. ibid.
History has rewritten William’s landing in England … This was the last successful military invasion of the British Isles. ibid.
In the early hours of 5th November 1605 King James I of England came face to face with a young man who had tried to kill him. That man had been discovered just hours from blowing up the Houses of Parliament and with it King James himself. His name was Guy Fawkes. The Last Days of Guy Fawkes I, Channel 5 2015
Guy listened as Catesby revealed a breathtaking plan. ibid.
The plotters had been betrayed. ibid.
The plot had finally been busted only hours from success. ibid.
Guy Fawkes is taken to the Tower of London. ibid.
Britain today is alive with music ... all these were first forged in the energy and inventiveness of 18th century Britain. Suzy Klein, Rule, Britannia! Music, Mischief and Morals in the 18th Century I, BBC 2014
In the years after Purcell’s death, London was beginning to reawaken. ibid.
George set about ingratiating himself with the aristocracy becoming an enthusiastic supporter of Italian Opera. In 1719 the King stumped up £1,000 to help launch a new Royal Academy of Music. ibid.
The British for the first time became consumers ... Music became a kind of conspicuous consumption, a driving force in a cultural boom. Suzy Klein, Rule Britannia! Music, Mischief and Morals in the 18th Century II, BBC 2014
The pursuit of enjoyment was becoming more fashionable and more commercial than it had ever been. ibid.
Singing clubs like this were formed for the love of male companionship. ibid.
Music was a galvanising force, creating a powerful sense of identity in the new nation state of Great Britain. Suzy Klein, Rule Britannia! Music, Mischief and Morals in the 18th Century III, BBC 2014
Working people across Britain who started using music as an escape from the toil of daily life. ibid.
Handel was in a unique position to harness the forces of Protestantism, nationhood and communal singing. ibid.
It is from a strange mixture of tyranny and cowardice that exclusions have been set up and continued. The boldness to do wrong at first, changes afterwards into cowardly craft, and at last into fear. The Representatives in England appear now to act as if they were afraid to do right, even in part, lest it should awaken the nation to a sense of all the wrongs it has endured. This case serves to shew that the same conduct that best constitutes the safety of an individual, namely, a strict adherence to principle, constitutes also the safety of a Government, and that without it safety is but an empty name. When the rich plunder the poor of his rights, it becomes an example of the poor to plunder the rich of his property, for the rights of the one are as much property to him as wealth is property to the other and the little all is as dear as the much. It is only by setting out on just principles that men are trained to be just to each other; and it will always be found, that when the rich protect the rights of the poor, the poor will protect the property of the rich. But the guarantee, to be effectual, must be parliamentarily reciprocal. Thomas Paine 1792
If there’s one thing that unlocks the secrets of the British, we are fixated with ... your own home. Amanda Vickery, At Home with the Georgians: A Man’s Place, BBC 2010
Marrying well for the female was the career of the eighteenth century ... Female expectations were rising too. ibid.
There’s a revealing demonstration of just how much women relished administrative power in the novels of that great chronicler of Georgian domestic life drawing-room politics – Jane Austen. ibid.
The wealth that early nineteenth century people were making was being made out of the sweat of other fellow human beings. If you made a lot of money out of a mill in the north or out of a small factory in the middle of Birmingham, the reason is you’d made your money is a lot of people had worked on your behalf – they’d worked like slaves. A N Wilson, author The Victorians
Travel back two hundred and fifty years and witness a Britain openly, gloriously and often shockingly rude. Rude Britannia I: A History Most Satirical, Bawdy, Lewd and Offensive, BBC 2010
We had a fierce belief in our right to be rude. ibid.
The first chronicler of Georgian rude: William Hogarth. ibid.
Hogarth made Southwark Fair a portrait of the city. ibid.
The Beggar’s Opera by John Gay. ibid.
Henry Fielding – these attacks on political sleaze were even more direct than Gay in The Beggar’s Opera. ibid.
The Law allowed literary bitchin’ to flourish. ibid.
A master of rude words ... Alexander Pope. ibid.
Bawdy humour was at the heart of the success of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy Gentleman. ibid.
This was the colourful world of satirical and humorous prints. ibid.
A poet with the rudest reputation in Regency Britain – the devilish Lord Byron. ibid.
There would always be a different, ruder country. In Rude Britannia life was celebrated in music halls with bawdy humour and lewd songs. Rude Britannia II: Presents Bawdy Songs & Lewd Photographs
The shock of the rude nude photograph. ibid.
The cheeky carnival of the seaside. ibid.
The alliance of toffs and prolls and a racy night out was a serious threat to Victorian values. ibid.
On the stage rude stars were created. ibid.