Use BBC.com or the new BBC App to listen to BBC podcasts, Radio 4 and the World Service outside the UK.

Find out how to listen to other BBC stations

Episode details

Radio 4,04 Feb 2009,30 mins

Renaissance Dance - Working Class Liverpool

Thinking Allowed

Available for over a year

RENAISSANCE DANCE Elizabeth I danced six galliards every morning up until a year before her death, and Francis I of France publicly performed as the head of a centaur with the Cardinal of Marseille as the rear end. In the renaissance obsessed courtly classes dances went on for days or even weeks as many frustrated foreign ambassadors did attest. A kingly distraction from national duty or the essence of state craft itself? Professor Margaret McGowan, author of Dance in the Renaissance talks about her exploration of this social obsession. WORKING CLASS LIVERPOOL Dr Selina Todd, Lecturer in Modern History at the University of Manchester is the author of a new paper which looked at how sociologists researched the Liverpool working class identities in the late fifties and early sixties. Laurie Taylor is joined by Dr Selina Todd and Beverley Skeggs, Professor of Sociology at Goldsmith’s University of London to discuss the experiences of the working class and efforts to describe them.

Programme Website
More episodes