Chalke Talk

The podcast from the Chalke Valley History Festival
Released every Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings

Chalke Talks for THEME: History of Art


  • 20. BRIGHT YOUNG THINGS: CECIL BEATON, REX WHISTLER AND THE WILTSHIRE SET
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    From the hedonistic Bright Young Things of the 1920s emerged a group of artists who found inspiration and freedom in south Wiltshire where they discovered havens in which they could push the boundaries of artistic freedom. Cecil Beaton and Rex Whistler were among the finest artists of their generation, one a photographer and designer, the […]

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  • 35. TEN CITIES THAT MADE AN EMPIRE
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    Historian, broadcaster and former Shadow Education Secretary Tristram Hunt takes a new approach towards the history and decline of the British Empire. By examining the stories and defining ideas of ten of the most important cities, he shows how they transformed the culture, economy and identity of the British Isles for good.

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  • 81. A NEW WAY OF SEEING: THE HISTORY OF ART
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    Cultural critic Kelly Grovier questions whether greatness can be attributed to a single indispensable detail, such as a spectral sixth finger that ghosts Mona Lisa’s hand and the unfinished pearl in Vermeer’s most famous painting. He combs the most revered paintings and sculptures in art history for overlooked details that, once spotted and explored, alter […]

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  • 140. HOW RUSKIN SHAPES OUR WORLD
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    John Ruskin was the best-known and most controversial intellectual of the Victorian Age. He was an art critic, a social activist, an early environmentalist; he was also a painter, writer, and a determined tastemaker in the fields of architecture and design. In the bicentenary of his birth, Andrew Hill shows how Ruskin’s radical ideas are […]

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  • 184. THE COLLECTOR EARLS OF PEMBROKE: WILTON’S HISTORY TOLD THROUGH ITS ART COLLECTION
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    Every picture tells a story and nowhere more so than in a private collection, still hanging in the house for which it was bought. The collection at Wilton is one of the oldest in Britain, dating back to the seventeenth century, when the Earl of Pembroke was among Van Dyck’s earliest English patrons. Art historian […]

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  • 193. KENNETH CLARK: LIFE, ART AND CIVILISATION
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    James Stourton, former Chairman of Sotheby’s UK, and official biographer of the great British art historian Kenneth Clark, draws on previously unseen archives to reveal the astonishing life of this formidable intellect who wielded enormous influence over all aspects of the arts despite deep emotional and intellectual contradictions and a very complicated private life.

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