TV & RADIO
BBC History Magazine goes on location to hear the story behind a new historical drama
The pick of new history programmes
The Scandalous Lady W TV BBC Two, scheduled for Thursday 20 August Even beneath forbidding grey skies, Wrotham Park is magnificent. A short train ride from central London, the stately home has long been a favourite destination for film-makers looking to recreate the past. Few, though, can have had quite such a remarkable story to relate as the makers of The Scandalous Lady W.
The 90-minute drama explores what happened when, in 1781, Lady Seymour Worsley eloped with her lover, militia officer George M Bissett. In itself, this would have caused a scandal, but what followed was a sensational court case that pitted Bissett against Seymour’s husband, Sir Richard Worsley. “It’s a little like Nigella and Saatchi,” says Natalie Dormer, who plays Seymour and chats while resplendent in 18th-century costume. “The Georgian free press was a great problem for people in power.”
For women, the Georgian legal system was a problem too. Worsley’s case was for ‘criminal conversation’, a concept that rested on the idea of a wife being one of her husband’s possessions. As a ‘possession’, Seymour didn’t even testify.
The case ultimately damaged all concerned. While Worsley claimed £20,000, he had to settle for a shilling as, among other tidbits, lurid details of his own behaviour emerged. Meanwhile, Bissett and Seymour were hounded over the scandal.
As to how we know so many of the details here, that’s down to historian Hallie Rubenhold, who wrote Lady Worsley’s Whim. She took inspiration from a famous Joshua Reynolds portrait, which shows Seymour dressed in a red riding habit, garb the painter may have chosen because of Seymour’s reputation.
Perhaps the sad truth is that Worsley and Seymour should never have married. She was romantic and, to quote scriptwriter David Eldridge, “too modern for the time she was born in”. Worsley was rational, ambitious and may have been autistic. Which is not to say the story lacks wider resonance. Natalie Dormer: “There are women now in societies who don’t have legal autonomy of themselves, so it’s actually more of a relevant story than you might think it is.”
“As a ‘ possession’ of her husband, Seymour didn’t even testify in the court case”
Industrial superhighways
Canals: The Making of a Nation TV BBC One Regions, then BBC Four, scheduled for August and September
Today, Britain’s canals are largely used for leisure, but back in the late 18th century, these new routes represented, in the words of Liz McIvor, “a type of infrastructure that hadn’t been seen before”. As the industrial revolution gathered pace, these waterways were crucial for moving raw materials, goods and people. Canal mania gripped the nation.
But how to build them? As McIvor, curator of social history and technology with Bradford Museums and Galleries, relates in her series charting how the canals transformed the country, those who oversaw their construction essentially invented the discipline of civil engineering. They were men such as modestly born millwright James Brindley (1716–72), who received little formal education as a child.
“It was because of those breakthrough characters that people began to professionalise in engineering,” says McIvor. Individual canal engineers were upwardly socially mobile too, although there were limits. “Their children and grandchildren were accepted by the higher echelons of society, once the taint of trade had worn off a bit,” adds McIvor.