4. Story of England: Industrial Revolution

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Modern England as we know it started in the industrial heart of Ironbridge in Shropshire- now a verdant gorge that once was black with smog, fire and slag heaps. Dan tries his hand at casting iron at one of the last working foundries in the country and gets the scoop on the scandals of Georgian high society with historian Catherine Curzon. The Regency period was a wild time of £15,000 pineapples, the marriage market and the tell-all memoir of a famous courtesan who named and shamed the Duke of Wellington. But the new wealth England experienced came at a price; Dan traces the dark history of Europe’s addiction to sugar and Britain’s slave trade, while actor Paterson Joseph recounts the…