Taste

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 18th century obsession with taste. In the mid 18th century the social commentator, George Coleman, decried the great fashion of his time: “Taste is at present the darling idol of the polite world…The fine ladies and gentlemen dress with Taste; the architects, whether Gothic or Chinese, build with Taste; the painters paint with Taste; critics read with Taste; and in short, fiddlers, players, singers, dancers, and mechanics themselves, are all the sons and daughters of Taste. Yet in this amazing super-abundancy of Taste, few can say what it really is, or what the word itself signifies.”From the pens of philosophers to the interior decor of the middle classes, the idea of good and bad taste shaped decisions about dress, wallpaper, furniture, architecture, literature and much more. The period saw an explosion in the taste industries - the origins of Chippendale furniture, Wedgwood pottery and Christie’s auction house - and a similar growth in magazines and journals devoted to the new aesthetic, moral and social guidelines. But taste was also a battle ground that pitched old money against new, the city against the country and men against women.

→ Play on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Amanda Vickery 3 episodes
  Reader in History at Royal Holloway, University of London
• John Mullan 14 episodes
  Professor of English at University College London
• Jeremy Black 8 episodes
  Professor of History at the University of Exeter

Related episodes

• Food
  
  27 Dec, 2001 640 Home and family management
• Modern Culture
  
  21 Jan, 1999 800 Literature, rhetoric and criticism
• The Decadent Movement
  
  18 Nov, 2021 820 English and Old English literatures
• Politeness
  
  30 Sep, 2004 390 Customs, etiquette and folklore
• The Grand Tour
  
  30 May, 2002 910 Geography and travel
• Bohemianism
  
  9 Oct, 2003 700 Arts
• Sensation
  
  6 Nov, 2003 820 English and Old English literatures
• Oscar Wilde
  
  6 Dec, 2001 820 English and Old English literatures
• Sensibility
  
  3 Jan, 2002 800 Literature, rhetoric and criticism
• The Baroque Movement
  
  20 Nov, 2008 700 Arts
• Beauty
  
  19 May, 2005 110 Metaphysics
• William Morris
  
  5 Jul, 2018 700 Arts
• The Theory of the Leisure Class
  
  16 Nov, 2023 330 Economics
• Originality
  
  20 Mar, 2003 800 Literature, rhetoric and criticism
• Gothic
  
  4 Jan, 2001 800 Literature, rhetoric and criticism
• Empiricism
  
  10 Jun, 2004 190 Modern Western Philosophy
• Epistolary Literature
  
  15 Mar, 2007 820 English and Old English literatures
• The Avant Garde’s Decline and Fall in the 20th Century
  
  25 Feb, 1999 700 Arts
• Seventeenth Century Print Culture
  
  26 Jan, 2006 000 Computer science, knowledge and systems
• The Temperance Movement
  
  3 Feb, 2022 340 Law

---

Programme ID: b0082dzm

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0082dzm

Auto-category: 700 (Arts and Recreation)