Biographicon

In this episode Roz Southey talks about Newcastle upon Tyne's Charles Avison the most prolific English concerto composer of the eighteenth century and an outstanding figure in the town's musical history.

In this episode I am joined by Helen Williams, a specialist in eighteenth-century book history to find out about the Newcastle-born printer, newspaper editor and radical Sarah Hodgson. Dr Helen Williams is Associate Professor of English Literature at Northumbria University. In collaboration with the Worshipful Company of Stationers, she holds a British Academy Innovation Fellowship entitled 'Commu...

This episode features Dr Sue Allan, an expert on Cumbria’s folk tradition, talking about one of the most significant dialect poets of Georgian Northern England, Robert Anderson from Carlisle. A calico printer by trade, the 'Cumberland Bard' Robert Anderson has long been considered the standard bearer of Cumberland's contribution to bardic verse. Anderson was a close friend of the local stroller Ch...

A major influence on the radical Thomas Spence, James Murray was a preacher who used the pulpit and print to promote new ideas. As well as publishing works on religious subjects, Murray was also a grammarian whose book The Rudiments of the English Tongue was published in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in about 1771. In this episode Rachel Hammersley joins me in Newcastle’s Lit and Phil to discuss Murray’s in...

Richard Pears and I discuss William Newton, arguably northern England's first home-grown architect who was responsible for Newcastle’s Assembly Rooms and Charlotte Square the town’s first fashionable garden square. Richard’s work examines the emergence of the professional provincial architect and his remarkable local archive work has allowed him to supplant the standard ‘urban renaissance’ underst...

William Shield was born in the village of Swalwell near Gateshead in County Durham. Through the help of his friend, the poet and actor John Cunningham, he became the leader of the Durham Theatre Company band in the 1760s providing him with the opportunity to develop his compositional abilities. After moving to London, he pursued a successful career performing and writing stage works at the Theatre...

In All Saints Pavement Church in York City Centre, there is a marble plaque high on the wall, dedicated to one of the most famous provincial theatre managers of the eighteenth century: Tate Wilkinson. It is a material memorial to a brilliant actor whose fame has dimmed to obscurity. Who has heard of him today? In this episode, I talk with Professor Emerita Gillian Russell about Wilkinson, York and...

The 18th century Newcastle entrepreneur, Anne Slack, who published under her maiden name Fisher, has been described as the first female grammarian of modern English. However, she has disappeared into the archives and Barbara Crosbie wants to bring her back. In this episode, Barbara and I talk about why she was such a trailblazer, and the work Barbara has done to revive interest in this significant...

Professor Jon Mee from the University of York joins me in this episode to talk about the cantankerous northern antiquarian Joseph Ritson, the man who is responsible for making Robin Hood a champion of the poor. Ritson was from Stockton-on-Tees and his research into northern verse and song make him an example of early English ethnographer. A vegetarian and radical who adopted the French Revolutiona...

Be warned – you may risk arrest if you listen to this podcast! In this first episode of Biographicon, Professor Alastair Bonnet and I explore the mind of Thomas Spence – a thinker so dangerous he was made illegal. As Alastair argues Spence was “the poorest and most determined militant in English history” and Spenceanism is the only political ideology outlawed by the British parliament. We take you...

"By separating into one biographicon this peculiar class of lives, a philanthropic emulation would be excited, a debt of social gratitude would be discharged, a trophy to patriotism would be erected, and an instructive knowledge of the present state of nations and the gradual concatenation of intercourse would be diffused. Literature should rear altars to the missionaries of human civilization." -...