Episodes

  • Bungalows: The perfect British design for living?

    Bungalows: The perfect British design for living?
    May 23 2025
    Britain has a lot of bungalows, but why and how did this begin? Suzanne goes enthusiastically utilitarian and modular and introduces Muriel to the history, charm and meaning of this revolutionary one-storey design, associated with the seaside and hygienic living, with pioneering architects and refinements of snobbery, with the temporary and permanent, and with the topical question of how best to house the nation.

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    59 mins
  • Surrealism: How and why Paris became a vortex for artists unleashing the subconscious

    Surrealism: How and why Paris became a vortex for artists unleashing the subconscious
    May 16 2025

    Muriel surprises Suzanne with an enigmatic tea cup covered in fur – the Surrealist object par excellence. Who was Meret Oppenheim, the woman who made it, and what inspired her? This opens up a story of Parisian Surrealism, when a group of artists explored liminal dream-like inspiration in visual arts, writing and film. Why did this happen in Paris specifically? And why did Surrealism never really take root in Britain?


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    1 hr and 5 mins
  • Toast: An ode to distinctly British crisp buttered deliciousness – with some true crime thrown in

    Toast: An ode to distinctly British crisp buttered deliciousness – with some true crime thrown in
    May 9 2025
    We all dream of the perfect piece of hot toast dripping with butter, but is it ever to be had in this world? Suzanne gives Muriel 9-step instructions on how to make it and, by way of Shakespeare and The Wind in the Willows, tells the history of the British quest for perfect toast and the development of toasting forks, toast racks and the toaster. A Frenchman, the chef and inventor Alexis Soyer, is the surprising star of this British story, and 18th-century burglarious felony and a delirious Wikipedia hoax also feature.

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    1 hr and 4 mins
  • Into the Deep: What draws the French so powerfully to the briny depths?

    Into the Deep: What draws the French so powerfully to the briny depths?
    May 2 2025

    Muriel takes Suzanne on a downward journey into the French passion for diving and underwater life. Why was the film The Big Blue such a hit in France? What cult French TV programme about the sea lies beneath it? Why is the oceanographer Jacques Cousteau so revered in France? And deeper still, what iconic submarine novel and archetypal taciturn hero informed it all?



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    1 hr and 2 mins
  • Jigsaw Puzzles: The amazing British invention that went from geographical 'dissection' to universally popular form of meditation

    Jigsaw Puzzles: The amazing British invention that went from geographical 'dissection' to universally popular form of meditation
    Apr 25 2025
    Suzanne tells Muriel the riveting story of an invention devised in London by one inspired man, in an 18th-century world of map-making, mezzotints and early industrial machinery, and explores what jigsaw puzzles do for us, what they mean, and why they are more popular than ever.

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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    55 mins
  • The Metric System: Born of a perfect storm of Enlightenment and Revolution

    The Metric System: Born of a perfect storm of Enlightenment and Revolution
    Apr 18 2025
    Muriel tells Suzanne how the French dream of the metric system became realised when the Enlightenment scientists' desire for reliable measurements met the French Revolutionaries' decision to remodel the nation according to Reason.

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    53 mins
  • Bluebells: Why does this enchanting native blue flower make the British giddy?

    Bluebells: Why does this enchanting native blue flower make the British giddy?
    Apr 11 2025
    Suzanne explores the complex botanical, mythical and poetic aspects of the British bluebell cult. Hope and death, secrecy and display and even asparagus all come into it, and Tilda Swinton, Diana, Princess of Wales and Margaret Thatcher all guest star.

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    51 mins
  • Glamour: What – and who – do the French find so bewitching about Britain?

    Glamour: What – and who – do the French find so bewitching about Britain?
    Apr 8 2025
    Happy Entente Cordiale! It is, Muriel explains, when at their most conventional that the British are at their most glamorous to French eyes. And we reveal the British winner of the title of Full Cordiale Corker!

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    18 mins