A new exhibition at the British Library ponders whether British folk – particular those in the middle classes – during the Georgian era were “tasteful and polite, or riotous and pleasure-obsessed”? The answer I came away with after attending the press preview was a little bit of both, depending on the situation.
I found the British Library’s Georgians Revealed: Life, Style and the Making of Modern Britain a refreshing and rather fun opportunity to stroll through an important time in world history.
Refreshing because … instead of laying down a king-by-king chronology of events or applying some broad stroke approach to the major events of the era, the show hones in on the rise of the middle classes in numbers and political power while demonstrating how, to a large extent, the foundations of today’s popular culture were firmly established by the values and interests of the Georgians.
And fun because … the themes of the exhibition are presented via a wide assortment of fascinating and sometimes quirky artefacts such as a deck of playing cards and a full faced mask for a high society masquerade. It’s neato to see how contemporary much of what the Georgians did and had was and how so much of our daily life in 21st London is still quite similar to affairs of that time.
Georgians Revealed: Life, Style and the Making of Modern Britain runs until the 11 March in the Paccar Gallery of the British Library, located at 96 Euston Road, NW1 2DB. Find out more at bl.uk.
