Quick bonus post: if you do one thing today

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

I apologise to readers who are abroad or are in any other way unable to get the BBC iPlayer, but if you are in lucky receipt of it, do watch this:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00wh6lz/At_Home_with_the_Georgians_A_Mans_Place/

I felt a bit throaty this evening, and settled down on the sofa with the dogs and a very hot toddy, only to find there was nothing amusing on the actual television. So I wandered through the BBC programmes available to replay, and stumbled upon this, quite by chance. It is the most excellent Professor Amanda Vickery, on the Georgian Home. Although I studied history, and am fascinated by the Georgians, I quite often swerve away from this kind of thing on television. It is so often over-presented, with lots of breathy editorialising, or otherwise marred by stupid dramatic reconstructions, often with questionable soft-focus lighting, as if everything was seen through a layer of vaseline in The Old Days. But there was nothing else on, and I felt tired and not that well, so I clicked on the button in a desultory, not-expecting-much sort of way.

It is quite brilliant. It is all Lord Reith ever wanted: informative, educational and entertaining. It is aesthetically rich, historically revelatory, and surprisingly moving. There is a bit about Jane Austen towards the end which actually made me cry.

It is available until 10pm tomorrow, so if you have a moment before then, I cannot recommend it highly enough.