Radio Times

Review by:

Patrick Mulkern

Richard E Grant concludes his tour of the shimmering Côte d’Azur, picking up in the boom years that followed the First World War. It was the dawn of a golden age as Matisse and Picasso, and eventually Cocteau, set up camp here.

The 1920s saw a return to classicism as well as the embrace of hedonism – a Jazz Age lifestyle captured by F Scott Fitzgerald in Tender Is the Night, and satirised by Jean Vigo in his film A Propos de Nice.

Grant saunters from haunt to haunt like an affable art lecturer, his erudition faltering only once, with a grammatical blunder, when he speaks of Picasso’s “sturdy women swimming or laying [sic] on the beach”. Ouch!

About this programme

Author and critic Henry Hitchings explores the evolution of the novel in 18th-century Britain, and offers his view that it was a time of cultural revolution. He examines the social and political history of the period, uses paintings by great artists to illustrate scenes from key novels, and explains how major genres from light entertainment for female readers to political thrillers were perfected. Along the way, he meets authors including Martin Amis, Will Self, Tom McCarthy and Jenny Uglow.

Cast and crew

Crew

Producer

Emma Webster

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