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- [00:01]
A
This episode is supported by FX's the Shards, a seductive drama from executive producer Ryan Murphy. Set in 1980s Los Angeles, the series follows a group of glamorous, deeply entangled high school seniors drawn into a life of wealth, beauty, parties and excess. At its center is Brett, whose reality begins to unravel when the arrival of a new student coincides with a series of mysterious murders. FX's the Shards premieres August 5th on FX and Hulu.
- [00:33]
B
Hello, and welcome to a brand new series of Legacy. Before on the show, we've talked a lot about ideals like the legacy of cosmetic surgery, for example, and the incredible, sometimes slightly terrifying evolution of the facelift. And we've talked about how an obsession with youth and changing our appearance is reshaping our faces.
- [00:53]
C
Yeah, it really is. I just looking at myself and the camera, I can't. When we record, I try to only look afro, but I can see myself grinning back so that when I. When Alpha talks about plastic surgery and the need to lift your face, I'm getting old and I can feel my wrinkles, my anxieties.
- [01:08]
B
That's one of the great cons of the anti aging movement, Peter. Everyone is getting older. That's the point.
- [01:14]
C
But look, when we suggested that series, you know, and I thought, well, I haven't really thought about body modifications and tattoos and rejuvenations, but, you know, as always, it was going back deep into time to think about how important that was as a human condition. And, you know, I had a couple of people who sort of said, why are you talking about cosmetic surgery? And I thought it's exactly what something like Legacy should be doing, because first it's, you know, we want to go find turnover stones. Other people don't do it. But also because that long tradition is precisely the. The whole point.
- [01:43]
B
And let's be real, we're following our interests. And I am super interested in cosmetic surgery just because I can see it becoming so normalized, like a big cultural shift happening in real time around us. Another thing that I'm very interested in, Peter, is holidays. I love to travel, and I don't actually take anywhere near enough proper holidays because, like you, I travel a lot for work. And so it kind of feels like I'm having an amazing time, even though I'm actually never resting. But I'm super interested in the idea that other people do take proper holidays and rest and even I sometimes do. And the ideal around that, the ideal of being a traveler, being a tourist, going on, as we're going to talk about in this episode, A special kind of journey. A journey that required huge amount of time, staggering amount of money, and sometimes bit of pain and endurance. We're talking about the original historical status symbol, the original gap year.
- [02:43]
C
The gap year. You know, to my generation, it means backpacks, it means sleeping on floors, it means terrible food, it means packing Imodium to make sure you're going to be okay and surviving on cheap beer. So please tell me we're not doing the gap year of people on a string budget trying to find ways to get lost and find themselves.
- [03:02]
B
Well, in my generation, it was similar, but it had been slightly upgraded from sleeping on the floor to sleeping on the beach in Thailand wearing elephant trousers. But no, that is not the kind of gap year we're talking about. We are going back to the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries to look at a rite of passage that was reserved for the wealthiest, most privileged young men and eventually women in Europe and America. A journey that literally shaped Western culture, filled our museums, and changed the way we think about travel forever.
- [03:34]
C
Ah, I know what you're talking about. So we're going to do the Grand Tour. I owe this one to you, Rafa. We were talking about a plotting ahead and I thought, you know, more World cup, maybe do the rugby World cup, cricket World Cup. And you said maybe we should do holidays.
- [03:46]
B
And I staged an intervention before we got to rugby and cricket. I'm saturated with sports for the 2026. Peter, just warning you now maybe we can talk about cricket in 2027.
- [03:56]
C
The Grand Tour is what we're going to be talking about in this series and the ways in which people have traveled for enjoyment and for pleasure in the past. Hello and welcome to a new episode of Legacy. I'm Peter Frankenberg.
- [04:11]
B
I'm Afwerhaj.
- [04:12]
C
And this is Legacy, the show that explores the lives, events and ideas that have shaped our world and asks whether they have the reputations that they truly deserve.
- [04:21]
B
This is modern travel, the original gap year.
- [04:27]
C
Thanks for joining us on Legacy Today to support the show, please do sign up and become part of our very special family at Legacy plus.
- [04:34]
B
It really is special. You will love it there. You get early access, fewer ads, Q&As and bonus content like when we dug into the world of facelifts or when we caught up with Gary Lineker for an exclusive, exclusive conversation about the World Cup.
- [04:50]
C
And we don't put our off cuts behind the paywall. That's some of our best content about the history and relevance of escalators or the way in which the Iran crisis is all about the energy transition for the United States and Canada. So please do follow up. Sign up@Legacy Supportingcast FM. Right. Afra, I'm over to you because this is your idea and I love it. I love the Grand Tour. I love the Grand Tour in literature, I love the Grand Tour in history, and better still, I love the idea of the Grand Tour. That's what we should be doing. If we had a luxury travel company sponsoring us, we could be recording this from all the different locations on the grand tour too. But you very generously described yourself as being part of a completely different generation to me, which I think is true, because no one ended up on the beach.
- [05:32]
B
I knew that would get you. I knew that would be.
- [05:34]
C
You needled me. But go on. Did you have a traditional backpacking gap year? Did you have you. Have you traveled a lot for. Not for work?
- [05:44]
B
I didn't have a gap year. I feel like I. I don't want to. Like, I want to choose my words carefully. But I wonder if anyone listening to this who has an African mother has actually ever taken a gap year, because it's not really part of the African parenting lexicon. Let me just put it like that. It's like you finish school, now you're going to university, and then you're going to get a job. And there were no gaps involved. But being kind of an entrepreneurial, creative thinker, I managed to find ways that sounded like they were part of this and professional path that kind of allowed me to have a similar experience. So I did manage to get jobs abroad when I was at university. And as soon as I graduated, literally a few days after I finished my finals, I went to live in West Africa where I could travel around a lot of different African countries. So I think I was also experiencing that, I think, very natural yearning that people of that age do to want to have a completely different experience and feel out of the rat race. Because you've been in education your whole life, if you've gone straight to university, it just feels like a continuation. I often think actually university education is so wasted on 18 year olds. I would love nothing more than to go and be an undergraduate now. It would be heaven. But at that age, it was just more of the same, you know, having a timetable and doing exams and feeling the pressure of grades.
- [07:02]
C
But can I just say, if you are one of my students who subscribes and listens to legacy, education is not wasted on you. Age 18 and it's not wasted on undergraduates. I know what Alf was trying to Say, but I promise you keep going. I'll see you at the seminar. Make sure that you hand your work in on time. But look, a gap year. It's about trying to find yourself and to travel and to go, experience curiosity. But that's not exactly what the Grand Tour is. Tell me what, tell me about the Grand Tour effort.
- [07:30]
B
So, essentially, from the mid 17th century, right up until the arrival of the mass railway and mass Transit in the 1840s, there was this tradition of taking a trip through Europe. And it was partly travel and to get out and have a change of scenery, but really it was part of the social project. It was the ultimate finishing school for young, affluent, usually British elite men. And they would leave home for one, often two, even three or four years to absorb the art, culture and roots of Western civilization. And actually, I mean, we'll come to this, but I think the Grand Tour is one of the things that has solidified this idea of Western civilization as the kind of foundation of the culture of European countries. But anyway, we'll come to that. But the Grand Tour, Peter, I know you know a lot about this as well. Where does it actually originate, the name and the concept?
- [08:27]
C
Well, it's the kind of greatest hits of the classical world. So it was not just go off on holiday. It was, you're going to go and enrich yourselves by learning about the great people, the great writers, the great artists of the past. The term is coined by a Catholic priest, a travel writer called Richard Lascelles. And he wrote a book that was published possibly the end of the 17th century, called an Italian Voyage. And the idea was that the Grand Tour was a way in which you could learn about the great heroes, the great events of the past. You could stand in their footsteps, you could see the things they saw. And by taking in those experiences, it would make you a better person, a better, better citizen, a better scholar and more human. So he wrote. I mean, he's kind of like a travel blogger, I guess, is what he'd be today, or an influencer with masses of followers on Instagram. And if you are a mass, have masses of followers on Instagram, having a good hook is quite a good thing. So the Grand Tour is his contribution. And he wrote, no man understands Livy and Caesar like him, who have made exactly the Grand Tour of France and the Giro of Italy. So it's a kind of about, how do you find a circuit of the greatest hits of classical civilization in the way of making you belong as part of a group of elite travelers and
- [09:39]
B
individuals And I think this is probably quite relatable today. It wasn't just about reading the classics, it was about experiencing them. It was this idea that you needed to have a kind of experiential indoctrination with the culture and history of the Renaissance and ancient civilizations. So you needed to walk where Caesar walked. You needed to breathe the air of the great Renaissance masters. You needed to be there to experience it, to become a truly cultured person.
- [10:10]
C
And it's a slightly different world today. I mean, there've been some, some photos in the press recently about a particular view in Santorini, one of the Greek islands, or Mykonos, another one in the Cyclades, where everyone takes exactly the same photo. And it's a kind of, I would almost say, rite of passage, because that sounds like it's a good thing, but it's kind of. Everybody needs to have had that same experience. Literally the same photo has been taken by millions of people just to prove they were there. That's a bit how the Grand Tour was, but it's, it has a very specific kind of British element to it because the standard Grand Tour is connected closely to the rise of the British Empire as well. And that there is a kind of set itinerary. You started London, you cross that choppy channel that separates us from our cousins in France and Belgium to Calais or to Ostend, and then you head to Paris. And Paris was the place where you'd learn about the refined arts, fencing and dancing and riding. You speak French, you think about philosophy and art, and it would be a way of saying, look, this is a whole new world which is closer to the worlds of the Romans. But the British had to work out how to insert themselves into that story too.
- [11:19]
B
And you can't go to Paris without doing a bit of shopping. So this would also be where you would buy your incredibly expensive French wardrobes. You needed to be dressed for the occasion of doing this Grand Tour around Europe. So in Paris, they would see the couturiers and, and get dressed and then armed with this luggage, they would push south. And this was where they would go to Switzerland and face the Alps again, as you said, Peter, it's not like now where you can get a high speed rail or you can hire a car and drive. You know, even though those hairpin turns through the Alps can be a bit much, it's essentially a pretty safe thing to do. It was a lot riskier in those days.
- [12:00]
C
It was because these distances are a long way and you're in a, you know, you don't have the pneumatic tyres that make and the suspension that make car journeys. Okay, you're being dragged along on a horse and car, so your back is going to be hurting. You don't cover that much distance every day. There's no kind of Egyptian cotton thread beds. If you are super rich, even if you're very wealthy, the comfort levels are not great. And also you're negotiating, dealing with languages you perhaps don't speak, food you never had before. And so there's a degree of discovery the whole way through. But there's a kind of like motorway service stations, there are pit stops where you stop all the way. But when you get to the Alps, you've got the nice fresh air that gets glamorized and Lake Geneva, but, you know, it takes a long time to get through mountain passes. It's nice for the scenery. But when you, when you're going through those mountain passes and it takes you days and weeks on end, there are so only so much mountain views that you can take in while waiting to. For the promises of Milan and of Florence and of Rome as well.
- [12:58]
B
It's quite an image. I mean, having to have your carriage dismantled and then these wealthy aristocrats being essentially strapped into sleds that would carry them over these treacherous passes. It really is another world. But it was worth it as far as they were concerned because once you made it over the Alps, you hit as this elite young British person, the jackpot. Because then the world opened up to you had Florence, Venice, Rome and Naples. And Rome would be the absolute climax of this trip. It was regarded as the intellectual, scientific and artistic center of the world for these elite people, British young men. But it wasn't all just men, was it, Peter?
- [13:39]
C
No, but it, you know, it helped if you were a man because wealth tended to flow through from families into male pockets. Although if you look at Jane Austin doesn't always work that way. But, you know, if you're that. If you're that age, you basically had unlimited funds. You know, the British conquest around the world and it's the, the economic model of machine allowed people to become richer and richer to be able to afford to go and do these trips. And travel has always been the domain and the privilege of those who are able to take time off and to fund themselves. But often they had people traveling with them, you know, retinues of servants, right, including people who had teach them along
- [14:16]
B
the way, including people who were essentially there to rein in their excessive behavior. There was often a tutor, colloquially known As a bear leader. The reason they were called a bear leader is because even though these young men were aristocratic, they were regarded at this stage as uncultivated and needing to be literally led by the nose until they could be more refined. So the bear leader was there to make sure that the young lord was actually looking at the ruins or the Da Vincis, learning his Latin, not going off on a frolic of his own and contracting syphilis, because that is something that really happened. And if you've had quite a sheltered life, you know, among high society in England, then being let loose on Venice, for example, is kind of like the vegas of the 18th century. It was regarded as the pleasure capital of Europe and it was basically a massive opportunity for prostitution, gambling and carnivals. The philosopher Samuel Johnson actually said, a man who has not been in Italy is always conscious of an inferiority from his not having seen what it is expected a man should see.
- [15:25]
C
Yeah, well, there you go. I mean, the barely debasing today's generation means your parents, you know, to make sure that you're not. Not rushing out of control. Although as we know, everybody parents in slightly different ways. But what was the idea of the, of the grand tour was to teach you to become refined, like you said, afraid to be, to come back better educated, have seen the great moments of history and, you know, Florence and Naples and Rome and Venice, you know, they are very different to places like Reading or Birmingham or Luton, you know, so this opening up of a world that is deeply connected to the past is basically saying that the British are in a continuum that stretches back deep into history. But while the aim is to try to get you to look at the museums and make sure that you pay attention, not surprisingly, people are more interested in the booze, in the sex, in the having fun, in the gambling and to living it up. So the barely do comes with you is to try to sort of keep you under control and make sure you don't get into. Into trouble. Barely does. One word. What about the macaronis Afro? Who are the macaronis?
- [16:25]
B
The macaronis were young British men who'd returned from the grand tour in Italy and had brought back a taste for a very exotic dish called macaroni. But along with it, they had also brought back a taste for the incredibly flamboyant continental fashion. So in the 18th century, for example, we're talking huge powdered wigs, very tight clothes. These are men, by the way. We're talking about tiny hats and very affected ways of speaking. And these macaronis were ruthlessly mocked in the British press for being effeminate and un British. So the Grand Tour, on the one hand, it was seen as making you this kind of philosophical, cultivated person, but it carried a lot of perils of turning you into a fashion victim. And it's actually, I think, really interesting to think about the residue of that because I think there is still this tendency to mock people who take on so called European affectations. And there's this idea. I was reading George Orwell in a book he wrote in the interwar period about the English and his perceptions of the English and he was saying, you know, the English are a race who regard it as devastatingly effeminate for a man to ever speak a foreign language with the correct accent. And I just thought that's so interesting that that is a kind of strain, this like unapologetic pride in refusing to speak foreign languages properly. So you can imagine, and I can see you just looking appalled at the thought, Peter you, of your seven languages that you speak perfectly. But it is a strain in English culture. And I, I can just imagine these kind of aristocrats feeling so proud of their, like, perfect Italian and just being regarded as complete pansies or whatever they would have been called in the press.
- [18:06]
C
That's exactly right. But I mean, it's. No, I'm, I'm, I'm smiling because it also hasn't really changed. You know, the idea about multilingualism is it's a sort of threat and it's rather than, rather than a privilege. And in fact, here in England we have these very strange debates because most people who are bilingual or trilingual, they tend to be people who are immigrants. Because you read, the reason you speak another language is not because you've studied at a private school that you've been coached in Latin and Greek and French and German grammar. It's because you've come from a culture where you, where you're speaking a language at home. And so the idea in England about language and about why you're learning them, it's sort of deeply rooted, I think, in this idea that, that if you're, if you're wealthy, you shouldn't be engaged in some of these dark arts of living in a foreign way. And it all sounds sort of when you're talking about wigs and small hats and tight clothes, it all sounds sort of, that it's rather harmless, but it's a bit more complicated that. As we'll see after the break.
- [19:04]
A
This episode is supported by FX's the Shards, a seductive drama from executive producer Ryan Murphy. Set in 1980s Los Angeles, the series follows a group of glamorous, deeply entangled high school seniors drawn into a life of wealth, beauty, parties and excess. At its center is Brett, whose reality begins to unravel when the arrival of a new student coincides with a series of mysterious mysteries murders. FX's the shards premieres August 5th on FX and Hulu.
- [19:34]
B
Hello, I'm Monica Reinagle, host of the Nutrition Diva podcast. Summer is here, and with it, the hot and sticky weather. A morning working in the garden or maybe on the golf course can leave you more depleted than you realize. And plain water isn't always the most efficient way to restore the balance. That's where Liquid IV comes in. Its science backed formula is clinically proven to hydrate faster than water alone. Whether you're exercising, playing outside, or simply surviving a summer heat wave, it's an easy way to stay hydrated. Shop now@liquidiv.com Liquid IV hydration that goes wherever life takes you. The Grand Tour was an important rite of passage for wealthy young aristocrats. But it was also more than that, Peter. It served as an engine for cultural, intellectual and aesthetic exchange in, in Europe from the 17th to 19th centuries. And of course in that era, long before the Internet, obviously, but even the telephone or the telegram, you had to physically travel to really experience other cultures, cultural, literary, philosophical ideas. So this influx of people who had the privilege of education and the time to write and produce culture had a really profound effect, especially on the literary world. And I'm sure a lot of people listening will know that, because they, like I, have probably mainly experienced the phenomenon of the Grand Tour through books, through authors, through authors whose lives we know about who went on these grand tours. But also the way the grand tour as a phenomenon shows up in so much of our literature.
- [21:09]
C
Well, you've got writers like Joseph Addison or William Beckford or Goethe and his Italian journey, which explain how people are traveling around and why. They're very stylized, their personal narratives, but they also talk about falling in love, about cultural observations, about how they engage with the natural world too. And then you've got sort of instructional narratives, you've got the guidebooks that tell you what you should see, how things were made, what their dates are. A bit like the Blue Guide Baedekers that are incredibly dry even for a fusty academic like me. There is no wit or enjoyment, but they are very, very fact based because you're there to get the facts and, you know, and it, it produces A sort of a form of, of travel writing. And again, today we do things in a slightly different way, but it's the same sort of thing that, you know, you, you, you look on Google or you get, you get your AI engine to tell you what are the 10 things to look at. And of course, everybody gets told. Told the same stuff. So, so these books that create these genres of travel writing, like Francis Bacon on travel in the 1620s, they kind of set a primer that at the same time creates a literary tradition, but they also serve. You can't, I'm thinking, as a bit of a prison because they're only showing you what everybody else knows about and sees too.
- [22:27]
B
And as well as the content of books that were shaped by these grand tours, I am super interested in the way it shaped the almost structure of literature or the tropes or the concepts that, that became embedded into literature. So the grand tour encouraged writers to see a landscape through the lens of classical art and later through a romantic sensibility, because they're traveling around Rome, for example, looking at these ruins and projecting this very romanticized idea onto the ancients. And as a result, you get these really, really important works. For example, Edward Gibbon's the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which was in part inspired by his travel.
- [23:10]
C
Yeah, he's sitting on some stones in Rome and he goes, how did this happen? And he writes one of the great histories, not just the Roman Empire, but as you absolutely, as you say, afua. He's reflecting on, if this happens to Rome, is it going to happen to Britain?
- [23:24]
B
And it's still regarded as the foundational text of the modern idea of Western civilization. And, you know, if you're listening to this, it might seem inevitable that Britain kind of regards itself as a part of Western civilization, that Europe is considered as this bastion of Western civilization. It's actually quite a new idea that really was solidified in the 18th and 19th centuries. And Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall, the Roman Empire exposed a whole new audience to the idea that Britain was a kind of direct descendant of the ideas of ancient Rome and of Athenian democracy, and it was somehow linked to our democracy. And this is all. Obviously there are lots of historical facts in his work, but it's a construct, the idea that this is some kind of continuous history, which is a topic for another day, but it is.
- [24:11]
C
Any books you could suggest that I could offer small commission that talk about the ways in which history has become Eurocentric and that maybe there are different
- [24:19]
B
perspectives it's really hard to think of what. I mean, there is this book called Silk Roads. There's this book called the Silk Roads. But, you know, like, I don't know if people have heard of it.
- [24:27]
C
Gosh, I can't believe I've fallen so low to try to. Try to hustle or a couple of extra copies. As this episode comes out, I'm going to be watching the clicker on Amazon to see if I move up a couple of places just to prove that
- [24:37]
B
this is not a racket in which we try to sell each other's books. Your friend Josephine Quinn, Quinn's incredible book, and now I can't remember what it's called.
- [24:48]
C
How the World Made the. How the World Made the West.
- [24:49]
B
How the World Made the West, which I loved, is also a really important.
- [24:56]
C
I thought we were friends. I love. I love Jo. She's a friend and a colleague.
- [24:58]
B
Brilliant.
- [24:59]
C
I know you're selling her book, but you didn't want to sell. You didn't want to sell mine.
- [25:03]
B
Read the Silk Road and How the West. How the World Made the West. And there's actually another book by a historian called Georgios Faroufaxis, I think his name is. He's of Cretan heritage. He just wrote a book called the Idea of the West, Also brilliant. Anyway, I digress a bit, but that's a very important book. Edward Givens. And also another book you may have heard of, called Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, which was also massively influenced by her Grand Tour of Europe, in which she started to romanticize this Gothic intensity of the Roman ruins or the wild beauty of the Alps. And if you've read Frankenstein, you'll know exactly why I am singling those out as elements that help shape the.
- [25:45]
C
And it's because if you pick up this book, my God, I can't believe I get to push two of my books.
- [25:50]
B
Another crucial work, Earth Transformed by Peter Frank. How have we ended up in an orgy of selling your books? Peter, we should.
- [25:58]
C
How have we not done this before
- [25:59]
B
with 150 episodes so crucial to understanding this?
- [26:04]
C
The reason why I'm popping that book up is that as I write in Earth Transformed, Mary Shelley and Lord Byron and Percy Shelley had all been to Lake Geneva for a summer for some holiday on the way back for the Grand Tour. And they'd hoped that they would have wonderful weather, nice fresh air, blue skies. And because of the eruption of a volcano called Tambora in Indonesia, one of the most powerful eruptions for millennia, the amount of debris ejected into the atmosphere created conditions across Europe and across large parts of the way creates the first economic recession in the United States. But it means that there's unusually bad weather in Lake Geneva and constant thunderstorms. And some of that gothic setting that AFWA is mentioning is not just that she's reacting to what she's seen while traveling around Europe. It's about the specifics of, A, being locked inside because it's pouring down with rain, B, the kind of dramatic functions of the terrible, unusual weather. But also you've got to find things to do. And so they sit around telling each other this house party, telling each other ghost stories. And that's how Mary Shelley comes up with Frankenstein. Had she stayed at home or gone to reading, then things might have looked slightly different. Although it was a very, very wet summer in England, too. But the lightning and the thunder is such an important part of the backdrop of the story of Frankenstein. You can't help feeling the mountains and the settings where this was written, this was written too. What about the permissive idea and sex in. In the Grand Tour ideas? Afwa and I can see you're smiling because you've got the good stuff to talk about.
- [27:29]
B
You're not going to expect what I'm going to say, but I think it's time Brexit entered the chat because, oh,
- [27:34]
C
I wasn't expecting this.
- [27:35]
B
Actually. We are actually recording this on basically the 10th anniversary of Brexit, aren't we? Off the vote.
- [27:40]
C
That's right.
- [27:41]
B
One of the legacies of the Grand Tour is that it promoted this narrative, or it helped popularize this narrative, that the continent, Europe, is this exotic space for liberation and consequently potential moral danger for the upright British character, because it's a refuge from the restrictive norms of Britain, where there is a much more permissive atmosphere, a more passionate way of Life. Now, in 2026, as we're recording this, I am confident everyone listening to this, we'll still recognize those narratives. We still have this idea of the Mediterranean world as having a kind of slightly looser moral code and being more sensuous. All these ideas, the holiday fling, were massively amplified during this era. And I think that it's affected Britain's perception of Europe as a kind of foreign place where they do things differently, that they don't really share our moral and social code. And I think that it's been one of the factors that has helped Britain evolve this kind of isolationism or this exceptionalism that, you know, it's option membership of Europe is optional because we're we're kind of different. And I think that also is a bit of a construct. Of course, different countries are different and the atmosphere in Rome is different to the atmosphere in London. But the idea that you can kind of create a binary where you have like proper British norms and then these like, licentious Roman ideas is something that these writers helped construct. And it was partly because that's what they wanted to see. This was the whole point that they were having a break, they were having a gap year, they were escaping from the norms back home. So of course they lent into the idea they could do things differently, they could get away with things they couldn't get away with at home. And they enjoyed that before they went back to their quite proper aristocratic lives in Britain.
- [29:31]
C
And that spills over as again, you'll find in Earth transformed into ideas about Europe in the United States in the late 19th century, where the southern part of Europe, Italians, Portuguese, Spanish, Greeks, not welcomed by the WASPy Northern Protestants, where there seem to be as exactly, as you say, afwr, a different moral code that they're sort of loose when it comes to morality and sex. They are, you know, they don't pay their way, they don't work so hard. Those things are all baked in because of ideas about the Grand Tour and about the idea that, you know, there's a different moral compass and it's somehow dodgy. But that idea of the Grand Tour being, you know, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. You're encouraged to go and get it out of your system. You're encouraged to go and experience it. You're encouraged to go and pick up syphilis, to go and have sex as much as you can, to drink too much, to be profligate, to live like there's no tomorrow. But then once you come back, you've got to behave in a different kind of way. It's not surprising, though, Afro, I guess, that lots of writers find that self exile is quite an attractive option that they go and live out in outside of Britain too.
- [30:32]
B
And it helpfully creates quite a useful literary device, which is this perceived contrast between the northern culture, which has stayed moralistic and repressed, and the southern culture, passionate, artistic, corrupt. I mean, these are obviously like very, very cliched tropes that have only a tangential relationship to fact. But they really found a home in literature and they helped writers kind of explore these worlds in a way that set up a binary that was brilliant for characters and for people falling from grace or straying outside the moral boundaries, which is always a good way of attracting readers and audiences. So you see that in Stern's A Sentimental journey or in E.M. forster's A Room With a View. So the Grand Tour, even if you don't necessarily think of it extra explicitly when we think about these ideas, I think has had a really big influence on the way we self identify in Britain and our culture. And as we'll see after the break, it also played quite a tangible role in what the landscape of British cultural institutions physically looked like.
- [31:51]
A
This episode is supported by FX's the Shards, a seductive drama from executive producer Ryan Murphy. Set in 1980s Los Angeles, the series follows a group of glamorous, deeply entangled high school seniors drawn into a life of wealth, beauty, parties and excess. At its center is Brett, whose reality begins to unravel when the arrival of a new student coincides with a series of mysterious murders. FX's the Shards premieres August 5th on FX and Hulu.
- [32:27]
C
So I guess it's a bit like a finishing school, the Grand Tour. It's kind of completes your education, makes you grow up because it allows you to learn to become a man. I know some women do take part in the Grand Tour too, but it's a kind of rite of passage. You get out of your system and then you come back connected to this great long tradition of the classical world and take up your rightful place in British society. What about the sort of some of the other darker sides that are fundamental of how cultural objects end up outside their original context, how they're brought back. Sometimes they're bored, sometimes they're. Sometimes they're taken. That ways in which goods are moved and artworks end up in Britain.
- [33:04]
B
Well, we talked about how you would stop in Paris on your Grand Tour and get all these clothes made. You know, there's a bit of shop, shopping and fashion involved. Wasn't just clothes that these aristocrats were bringing back. They were bringing back stuff, a lot of stuff. And some of it is still very contested today because this was the golden age of aristocratic hoarding. If you go to a country house today, go to Chatsworth or Hope Tin House in Scotland, you will see rows of classical marble busts, Italian landscape paintings and ancient Greek urns, almost all of which were accumulated by young aristocrats on their grand tours. And they basically just went and helped themselves to ancient stuff. Peter, and brought it back. And sometimes they paid for it, but you know, who they brought it from, what they paid, how they acquired it, is a huge topic in its own of a big spectrum of quite questionable acts.
- [34:01]
C
Is it questionable? I mean, isn't it just if you're, if you're considerably richer than everybody else, you know, you, you go to town and. I mean, it's always awkward when people come and buy the crown jewels and ship them off home. But you know, that that's. It's not unique to the Grand Tour, you know, that that happens at, you know, many, many times in history in different, different cultures, too. So I, I do think that it's. Right. There is a question mark about when things get located out of their traditional, cultural, historic positions. But looting through warfare and extraction, which also does happen, is slightly different to people buying the entire contents of palazzi and churches in Italy, isn't it?
- [34:42]
B
Well, this is not happening in a vacuum. And actually, in the next episode, we're going to look more at the wider context of empire and ideas about race and culture. But even though we're talking about Europe here, grand tourists from northern Europe and Britain in particular, they didn't look at countries like Italy and Greece as their civilizational equals. Much as they admired the antiquities, ancient civilizations felt a connection to those they saw themselves as enlightened. Northern Europeans, the true inheritors of classical civilization. The modern Greeks and Italians living there were regarded with quite a bit of superiority and, and there is actually, if you read works about race and culture from this era, a really sort of contemporary weird racialization that the Italians, for
- [35:29]
C
example, having a field day with them, all of this stuff really white.
- [35:33]
B
Even the French were regarded as kind of racially suspect right up until the 19th century. So there were degrees of whiteness which conveniently, British writers put themselves absolutely at the top of the hierarchy and kind of slotted other Europeans at various rungs lower down the ladder based on how dark they were, how eastern or exotic their culture was seen to be, you know, how adjacent they've been to the Ottoman Empire or how tainted by connections with Africa and the Moors. I feel like you have something to share about, about this.
- [36:04]
C
No, I'm just. I've got Montesquieu in his l' esprit de Lois, or the Spirit of the Laws, writing in the 1750s, saying people in cold climates are more vigorous than people who live in hot countries. They are more confident in themselves, they've got more courage, and here's a quote for you. A better sense of one's own superiority than people who live in hot places, whereas everyone lives in hot country. They're like old men, they're timid. So I think all of those things are baked in and of course, what's interesting is that there's this connection, as we've talked about in this episode, to the classical world, that we're somehow the heirs. But it requires a lot of intellectual fancy footwork to be able to be the heir. Also, the Germanic traditions, the Montesquieu also says they rose and quit the forests to come and take over the Roman Empire. Those are the people who actually overthrow Rome and they end up living in England and creating a new culture. So there's a lot of kind of reconfiguration of the past, but that idea about race, about climate. And it's important because, again, I think for, I guess for obvious reasons, we tend to think about race in terms of Europeans and white people and then people from different ethnicities. But even within Europe, that division of who is considered acceptable, what looks there are these fault lines that sit there. Sit there too.
- [37:15]
B
I think it's a really important point and you often bring it up. Peter. You know, when I talk about race, you kind of say, well, what about the Croats or the Ottomans? You know, they weren't. They don't fit neatly into this kind of 21st or 20th century binary. And it's true, because European historic ideas about racial superiority were actually pretty complex. The only way I think you can safely simplify them is to point out that British thinkers on the subject always put British people, specifically those of the Anglo Saxon, or they sometimes describe them as Teutonic, or they had all these names for what they basically regarded as the ultimate superior, completely like non, non questionable white race. But they. They did put other Europeans into different positions in that hierarchy. And so this is the context for these grand tours. So when these British aristocrats are going round Southern Europe, they are not doing it on a basis of equality. They are doing it in a way that they feel in some ways entitled to the art and culture on offer there. They kind of see it as a bit of a looting ground. So much as they might be paying for some of these things, they're not treating the vendors or the creators as their equals. And I think that's why there is this taint of looting around the ways in which grand tourists acquired artefacts from that era.
- [38:34]
C
I think it's because, as you say, Afra, the subtext, and often it's explicit, actually, is that these people in Southern Europe, they might be connected to the territories and the people of the Roman Empire, but they're not to be trusted and they're not to be trusted sexually. They'd ought to be trusted culturally. And so therefore, these great works of art are better and safer kept in England because people in England will look after them and respect them and will venerate them in and understand them and interpret them in ways that the local populations can't. And that is about, if you're in the most generous telling. It's about the wheels of history turning and the ascendant powers in Northern Europe, economic, political, military, finding a way of telling their own story. If you're cynical and you're, you know, you say this is all disingenuous, it's. It's all bullshit, for want of a better word. And it's a way of expropriating other people's past and taking it over for yourself. And I think that those discussions, debates are, they are. They are alive at the time as well as they are now. But that fancy footwork of trying to look at the world around you and make sense of it is what's key. What I want to talk to you, we'll do this on the next episode, is about black and Asian people and what the grand tour means to them and whether black and Asian people take part in that, too. So please tell me that we're going to talk about that on our next episode.
- [39:48]
B
Yeah, well, we've actually presented the grand tour, haven't we, as an exclusively white, Northern European, even phenomenon. But the true history is so much more interesting because there were quite a number of black and Asian elites also on these grand tours and their impact not just on that era, but on the modern legacy of travel. The way we travel now, the ways we think about luxury travel and what's the story associated with it are very profoundly shaped by those groups. So we are going to go much deeper into that in the next episode.
- [40:20]
C
Thank you for all listening to Legacy,
- [40:22]
B
to dive deeper and to support the show. Join our amazing community of subscribers. On Legacy. You'll get early access, bonus episodes, fewer ads, Q&As and more. Go to Legacy Supportingcast FM.
- [40:37]
C
You also won't find me trying to sell copies of my own book there, too.
- [40:40]
B
But everything else, be careful what you promise, Peter.
- [40:42]
C
Okay, maybe, maybe we should do an episode or just about that. For everything else, though, including our substacks and updates on TikTok and Instagram, just check out the show notes or search Legacy podcast. I'm Peter Frankenbern.
- [40:53]
B
I'm Afwa Hirsch. And we'll see you on the next episode of Legacy.
- [41:13]
A
This episode is supported by FX's the Shards, a seductive drama from executive producer Ryan Murphy. Set in 1980s Los Angeles, the series follows a group of glamorous, deeply entangled high school seniors drawn into a life of wealth, beauty, parties and excess. At its center is Brett, whose reality begins to unravel when the arrival of a new student coincides with a series of mysterious murders. FX's the Shards premieres August 5th on FX and Hulu.