Nicholas Orme: A Year of Great Promise (1480)

Travels Through Time

In the last decades of the fifteenth century, life in England was finally starting to settle down after years of upheaval and conflict during the Wars of the Roses which had riven society since the mid 1450s.

Waves of Plague had decimated the population, causing widespread distress but providing unexpected opportunities for those who survived. The cultural and political landscape were ripe for change.

This week’s guest, the distinguished historian Nicholas Orme, takes us back to this time. He guides us back to 1480, a year he describes as being ‘on the cusp’. ‘It is not exactly a year of great achievement’, he argues, but in England it was ‘a year of great promise.’

Nicholas Orme is Emeritus Professor of History at Exeter University, he has written more than thirty books. Tudor Children, his latest, takes the reader from birth to adulthood through the themes of work, play, religion and education.

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Show notes

Scene One: Westminster. William Caxton's shop, where he is selling books, 80% of them in English, including his printed edition of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales which helps to develop the 'King's English', based on the Midlands dialect.

Scene Two: Oxford. William Waynflete is opening his new grammar school, Magdalen College School, which for the first time is going to teach classical, rather than medieval, Latin and bring England into the Renaissance.

Scene Three. Bristol. William Worcester is measuring and describing the streets of the city: the first ever historical survey of an English town.

Memento: Second edition of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales published by William Caxton.

People/Social

Presenter: Violet Moller

Guest: Nicholas Orme

Production: Maria Nolan

Podcast partner: Ace Cultural Tours

Theme music: ‘Love Token’ from the album ‘This Is Us’ By Slava and Leonard Grigoryan

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