The Art of Gothic: Britain's Midnight Hour

7.0
20141h

Andrew Graham-Dixon explores how a group of 19th-century architects and artists spurned the modern age and turned to Britain's medieval past to create iconic works and buildings.

Seasons

3 Episodes • Premiered 2014

Still image for The Art of Gothic: Britain's Midnight Hour season 1 episode 1: Liberty Diversity Depravity

1. Liberty Diversity Depravity

In the middle of the 18th century - in England - an entirely surprising thing happened. Out of the Age of Enlightenment and Reason a monster was born - a Gothic obsession with monsters, ghouls, ghosts and things that go bump in the night. From restrained aristocratic beginnings to pornographic excesses, the Gothic revival came to influence popular art, architecture and literature.

Still image for The Art of Gothic: Britain's Midnight Hour season 1 episode 2: The City and the Soul

2. The City and the Soul

As the Industrial Revolution promised more and more inexplicable wonders of the modern world, Gothic art and literature became both backward and forward looking. In her novel Frankenstein, Mary Shelley warned of the dangers of how science could get out of control, while Sir Giles Gilbert Scott used Gothic architecture to memorialise Prince Albert as a medieval hero. Meanwhile, poets indulged in hallucinatory drugs to reach new Gothic heights. Where would it all end?

Still image for The Art of Gothic: Britain's Midnight Hour season 1 episode 3: Blood for Sale: Gothic Goes Global

3. Blood for Sale: Gothic Goes Global

Gothic fantasy horror would be outstripped by real horror as the truth of mechanised warfare dawned on an innocent world in 1914. The language of Gothic would increasingly come to encapsulate the horrors of the 20th century - from Marx's analysis of 'vampiric' capitalism to Conrad's dark vision of imperialism and TS Eliot's image of The Wasteland, a Gothic narrative seemed to make more sense of the modern world more than any other.

Cast

Photo of Andrew Graham-Dixon

Andrew Graham-Dixon

Self - Presenter

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