A History of Private Life - Education in the Moral Home

Historian Amanda Vickery presents a series which reveals the hidden history of home over 400 years. She draws on first-hand accounts from letters and diaries, many of which have never been heard before. Including songs which have been specially recorded for the series. Homes were exposed to huge forces of change in the 19th and 20th century, responding to industrialisation, pollution, and the imperial mission. Prof Vickery explores how they remained idealised havens in a heartless, dirty world. Until the late-19th century, home was the only schoolroom many British children were to experience, especially if they were girls. But was domestic education really so inferior to formal schooling? Drawing on diaries she has discovered, Prof Vickery explores home education from the perspective of both mother and child. Readers: Deborah Findlay, John Sessions, Madeleine Brolly and Simon Tcherniak. Singers: Gwyneth Herbert and Thomas Guthrie, with David Owen Norris at the keyboard. A Loftus production for BBC Radio 4.