1 00:00:09,010 --> 00:00:18,160 Good afternoon and welcome to this book at lunchtime event on Charles Dickens and the properties of fiction, The Larger World by Dr. 2 00:00:18,160 --> 00:00:21,940 Oh, sure she does good. My name is Professor Wes Williams. 3 00:00:21,940 --> 00:00:28,000 I'm Professor French and I'm also the director here at Torch, the Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities. 4 00:00:28,000 --> 00:00:32,830 I'm delighted to welcome a show. She had to speak about her book. Also on the panel today. 5 00:00:32,830 --> 00:00:39,310 Professor Sophie Upsala and Professor Jeremy Tambling, who will be chairing the discussion. 6 00:00:39,310 --> 00:00:47,140 It's a great pleasure to be here, as I say, to introduce this third book at lunch time of this term book at lunchtime, as regulars will know, 7 00:00:47,140 --> 00:00:52,300 is Torture's flagship event series taking the form of fortnightly, 8 00:00:52,300 --> 00:00:57,870 more or less bite sized book discussions with a range of commentators in our normal times. 9 00:00:57,870 --> 00:01:02,590 We'd also offer you something to eat. In other words, some lunch. But this time it's food for thought. 10 00:01:02,590 --> 00:01:07,270 Please do take a look at our Web sites and newsletter for the full programme of the rest of this term. 11 00:01:07,270 --> 00:01:13,650 And next. The book under discussion today than Charles Dickens and the properties of fiction. 12 00:01:13,650 --> 00:01:19,740 I just say one or two sentences about it and let others talk about it in much more detail for the rest of the discussion. 13 00:01:19,740 --> 00:01:25,590 Well, this book does just demonstrates that a cosy, secluded home life, a strong, 14 00:01:25,590 --> 00:01:31,350 if you like, protected sense of home was beyond the reach of most Victorian Londoners. 15 00:01:31,350 --> 00:01:36,480 Exploring the significance of tenancy in Dickins fiction allows readers to gain 16 00:01:36,480 --> 00:01:42,810 insights into the chaos and the unexpected harmony to be found in rented spaces. 17 00:01:42,810 --> 00:01:51,510 The loneliness, as well as the sociability, the interactions between ranges of cohabitants, the complex gender dynamics at play. 18 00:01:51,510 --> 00:01:59,210 And last, but certainly not least, the vital relationship between space buildings and money. 19 00:01:59,210 --> 00:02:04,610 In a moment, I'll hand over to Professor Tambling, who will fully introduce the book and the rest of the panel. 20 00:02:04,610 --> 00:02:09,270 This will be followed by a brief reading by Dr. Dasgupta herself. 21 00:02:09,270 --> 00:02:16,980 Afterwards, our commentators will present their thoughts on the book coming out of it from their very different and distinct disciplines. 22 00:02:16,980 --> 00:02:23,160 Part of the point of these discussions is to kind of animate interdisciplinary debate. 23 00:02:23,160 --> 00:02:27,300 We will then give shochu the chance to respond to some of the points raised before 24 00:02:27,300 --> 00:02:31,470 entering into what hopefully will be a fascinating discussion between all three. 25 00:02:31,470 --> 00:02:38,640 And indeed, you, the audience. I'll come back at around quarter two to pick up any questions that you'd like to 26 00:02:38,640 --> 00:02:43,320 put in the chat box or in the in the cause of question function as we go along. 27 00:02:43,320 --> 00:02:48,030 They'll be passed through to me. Our media them through to the speakers themselves. 28 00:02:48,030 --> 00:02:53,490 All that's left for me to do now, then, is to thank you all for coming and to briefly introduce our chair. 29 00:02:53,490 --> 00:03:02,270 Professor Jerry tangling. Is a writer and critic who had been engaged with education and teaching literature, film, 30 00:03:02,270 --> 00:03:09,140 opera and cultural studies in its richest and broadest sense at many levels and across the world 31 00:03:09,140 --> 00:03:15,590 from amongst his many appointments from Hong Kong to Manchester and beyond as a literary scholar. 32 00:03:15,590 --> 00:03:23,180 He makes tremendous sense of the insights of critical and cultural theory and has a long term focus on the culture of cities, 33 00:03:23,180 --> 00:03:35,140 and in particular that of London. Professor Tambling, many publications include, most recently Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby and The Dance of Death. 34 00:03:35,140 --> 00:03:40,860 It's hard to think of a better chair for our discussion today. So I shall disappear from the screens and hand over to you. 35 00:03:40,860 --> 00:03:49,170 Jeremy. You need to unu mute yourself before you before I do. 36 00:03:49,170 --> 00:03:58,110 Thank you very much. Well, that's a very kind introduction and it's a great privilege and pleasure to be here this afternoon. 37 00:03:58,110 --> 00:04:09,980 And I'd like to be able to welcome our author, Dr Shashi Dasgupta, whose book I read with great pleasure. 38 00:04:09,980 --> 00:04:14,290 And by the way, I've actually managed to review it for the Dickensian. 39 00:04:14,290 --> 00:04:24,450 So and I asked the reviewer I asked the editor if I could take more space for it, because it is an extraordinarily fascinating book. 40 00:04:24,450 --> 00:04:34,310 So he actually gave me double the words allowance. If it is to know this is a book, which is. 41 00:04:34,310 --> 00:04:43,040 Very insightful and and extraordinarily well researched and beautifully produced. 42 00:04:43,040 --> 00:04:46,970 And I I'm going to hope my fans will comments. 43 00:04:46,970 --> 00:04:51,500 I'm I've heard what Dr. Gupta has to say. 44 00:04:51,500 --> 00:04:57,350 But it's more than just lodging. It's about being in the world. 45 00:04:57,350 --> 00:05:07,250 And it's about being in the world from really the cradle as the kinds of private space to the grave from Andrew Marvell. 46 00:05:07,250 --> 00:05:10,790 We know that the graves of fine and private place. 47 00:05:10,790 --> 00:05:23,840 But you actually have a wonderful illustration of from 1828 of the grave of the coffin as a as a space to rent. 48 00:05:23,840 --> 00:05:36,130 And of course, that reminds me of Hamlet, where the first grave digger talks about the grave as the houses and he makes it last to do this day. 49 00:05:36,130 --> 00:05:41,290 That said about the grave digger. So I'm looking forward to hearing what you have to say. 50 00:05:41,290 --> 00:05:46,360 And our other panellist is Professor Saffir. 51 00:05:46,360 --> 00:05:57,650 Sara, very much looking forward to hearing what she has to say, because I deduce her interests are actually spot on for this for this afternoon. 52 00:05:57,650 --> 00:06:08,630 And they're also very interesting to me as well personally. Professor Barça is a professor at UCL. 53 00:06:08,630 --> 00:06:19,160 She's a practising architect and she writes about the intersections between architecture and narrative, 54 00:06:19,160 --> 00:06:23,810 architecture and literature, buildings and spaces and literature. 55 00:06:23,810 --> 00:06:28,250 And her work is very exciting. 56 00:06:28,250 --> 00:06:32,720 And I'm looking forward to hearing how she is going to respond now without more do. 57 00:06:32,720 --> 00:06:39,410 I'll hand over to Dr. Dasgupta and look forward to hearing what she's going to say. 58 00:06:39,410 --> 00:06:55,930 Thank you so much. Hi. 59 00:06:55,930 --> 00:06:59,560 I am so delighted to be participating today. 60 00:06:59,560 --> 00:07:05,870 And I would like to begin by thanking towards for the very kind invitation for putting all of this together. 61 00:07:05,870 --> 00:07:10,870 And I would also like to thank the panellists, Sophia and Jeremy, for taking the time to think about my work. 62 00:07:10,870 --> 00:07:16,930 So this is such a wonderful opportunity to talk about Dickens and to meet people when all of us are so far apart. 63 00:07:16,930 --> 00:07:22,460 I'm grateful to you as well for making sure that the book could still come out in the middle of the pandemic. 64 00:07:22,460 --> 00:07:26,420 So thank you all for your support and for being here. 65 00:07:26,420 --> 00:07:33,520 What I'm going to do is I'm going to distil some of the ideas in the introduction to this book just to set the conversation up, 66 00:07:33,520 --> 00:07:46,350 and the PowerPoint simply has a few quotes on it. When Dickens is much loved brother in law, the sanitary engineer Henry Austin died. 67 00:07:46,350 --> 00:07:50,670 Dickens took on the role of adviser to his sister, Leticia. 68 00:07:50,670 --> 00:07:59,760 Together, Dickens and Leticia weighed up a range of different options for her future as Dickens took steps to arrange a government pension. 69 00:07:59,760 --> 00:08:03,480 The siblings went back and forth on the matter of Leticia's home. 70 00:08:03,480 --> 00:08:12,180 He encouraged her to leave the house that had witnessed her bereavement and to go into lodgings, counselling her about suitable neighbourhoods, 71 00:08:12,180 --> 00:08:19,260 prudent budgets for the rent, the relative merits of furnished and unfurnished rooms and the lengths of leases. 72 00:08:19,260 --> 00:08:25,410 Shorter leases, he said, were better in this case than he would not be bound to any course. 73 00:08:25,410 --> 00:08:37,940 Until you have had time for consideration and experience, the most striking letter relates to an idea of Leticia's to turn landlady. 74 00:08:37,940 --> 00:08:49,100 Always supposing that she concurs. Dickens writes, I am not quite clear as yet about the idea of taking boarders and I will tell you why. 75 00:08:49,100 --> 00:08:54,110 I don't think your spirits are fit for it or that your nervous condition is equal to it. 76 00:08:54,110 --> 00:09:03,800 And those being unfit and unequal would inevitably lessen the chance of your getting young people to come to you. 77 00:09:03,800 --> 00:09:09,850 We must consider both what the pain would be to you and what the pain would be to them. 78 00:09:09,850 --> 00:09:14,030 And I think it would not do as yet for either side. 79 00:09:14,030 --> 00:09:21,050 But if you let a lodging, a small sitting room and a bedroom or the like, you would not have the same demand upon you. 80 00:09:21,050 --> 00:09:26,510 Similarly, the other person would then have no ground of unwillingness to come to you. 81 00:09:26,510 --> 00:09:30,920 And this is what I would recommend. 82 00:09:30,920 --> 00:09:39,090 And in the fullness of time, it should seem as if it should if in the fullness of time, it should seem feasible to develop the lodging into boarding. 83 00:09:39,090 --> 00:09:46,620 Well and good. But I say most decidedly, don't think of taking boarders now. 84 00:09:46,620 --> 00:09:53,610 Reading between the lines, it's clear that Leticia wishes to surround herself with young people to alleviate her grief, 85 00:09:53,610 --> 00:09:56,790 as well as for a more practical financial reason. 86 00:09:56,790 --> 00:10:04,170 I wanted to start with this letter because it reveals just how central lodging was to domestic culture in this period. 87 00:10:04,170 --> 00:10:10,110 It reminds us that rented space was a PLUR old rather than a monolithic entity. 88 00:10:10,110 --> 00:10:16,410 Dickens points out that taking a single lodger is less demanding than managing an entire boarding house. 89 00:10:16,410 --> 00:10:24,270 So on a large scale enterprise where Leticia would be responsible for providing meals at table. 90 00:10:24,270 --> 00:10:28,110 Noting Leticia's current spirits and nervous condition, 91 00:10:28,110 --> 00:10:36,420 he contemplates the toll of such a serious venture on a landladies well-being and in turn, its impact on her borders. 92 00:10:36,420 --> 00:10:44,280 He's thinking about either side of the transaction. About the small new community the Tyisha proposes to create. 93 00:10:44,280 --> 00:10:53,580 Having offered his opinion on these plans, Dickins then invites Leticia to Gad's Hill, his home, for more immediate solace. 94 00:10:53,580 --> 00:10:57,900 You cannot begin to recover our tone and force, he says. 95 00:10:57,900 --> 00:11:09,680 Until you have had the benefit of change of place. So in these circumstances, mobility seems much healthier than attachment to place. 96 00:11:09,680 --> 00:11:14,030 Of course, Dickens was always more than happy to tell people what to do. 97 00:11:14,030 --> 00:11:18,710 And I suppose this moment is to some extent simply a case in point. 98 00:11:18,710 --> 00:11:23,390 But it also speaks to one of his central literary concerns. 99 00:11:23,390 --> 00:11:31,040 By this stage, he'd been inventing scenarios between imaginary launchers and their landladies for over 20 years. 100 00:11:31,040 --> 00:11:36,380 And as he begins to picture what Leticia's hope might look like, he's clearly thinking as a novelist. 101 00:11:36,380 --> 00:11:42,800 He's thinking about the ways in which people might come into contact and bounce off each other in a constricted space, 102 00:11:42,800 --> 00:11:48,470 participating in the kinds of interactions that are essential to narrative movement. 103 00:11:48,470 --> 00:11:58,590 Meanwhile, when he equates change of place with a renewal of tone and force, he may as well be discussing his own creative project. 104 00:11:58,590 --> 00:12:06,980 And that's what I explore in this book. Tenancy was a governing force in everyday life, and it pulled upon Dickens's imagination. 105 00:12:06,980 --> 00:12:13,670 Broadly speaking, it's the leasing of real estate in exchange for money, which is paid in periodic instalments. 106 00:12:13,670 --> 00:12:15,620 Tenants don't own their homes. 107 00:12:15,620 --> 00:12:23,360 Instead, they occupy rented property for a finite time under the authority of a landlord who is either present or absent. 108 00:12:23,360 --> 00:12:27,290 And they're expected to abide by the rules of an agreement. 109 00:12:27,290 --> 00:12:33,270 This was one of the most widely and regularly performed economic transactions in the 19th century, 110 00:12:33,270 --> 00:12:41,780 and Dickens was an active participant in rental culture. His novels are peppered with characters who are touched by the property market. 111 00:12:41,780 --> 00:12:48,400 The home passed through many hands. Tenancy encouraged and normalised certain living practises. 112 00:12:48,400 --> 00:12:54,230 It influenced the way the Victorians both conceived and negotiated their place in the world. 113 00:12:54,230 --> 00:12:58,800 And it brought particular spatial configurations into prominence. 114 00:12:58,800 --> 00:13:06,000 So was this really just a transaction completed mechanically by the vast majority of the population? 115 00:13:06,000 --> 00:13:10,680 Was it a necessary evil or something that could be celebrated? 116 00:13:10,680 --> 00:13:20,510 What happens when a contract between parties was played out by human actors who existed not in print, but in flesh and blood? 117 00:13:20,510 --> 00:13:29,500 Dickens's fiction offered a survival manual for a generation of renters who were unlikely to experience other modes of dwelling. 118 00:13:29,500 --> 00:13:34,320 But I don't think rented spaces is just a setting or a backdrop for Dickens. 119 00:13:34,320 --> 00:13:40,290 It can be a powerful agent in narrative and his take on what he calls the larger world. 120 00:13:40,290 --> 00:13:48,070 It's often extremely playful. And this, in fact, um, is my central argument in the book. 121 00:13:48,070 --> 00:13:56,890 For the property agent, Alfred Cox, change of residence was amongst the most troublesome of life's chances and changes. 122 00:13:56,890 --> 00:14:02,380 He writes, The incomer begins to discover that house hunting is poor sport, 123 00:14:02,380 --> 00:14:08,110 that it is rather tedious, troublesome and expensive toil attended by disheartening failures, 124 00:14:08,110 --> 00:14:13,900 irritating rebuffs, annoying contests with cupidity, exaggeration and deception, 125 00:14:13,900 --> 00:14:20,290 and consequently followed by disparagement of the world in general and of landlords in particular. 126 00:14:20,290 --> 00:14:25,390 So he rounds off by saying The adventures of a gentleman in search of a home might, 127 00:14:25,390 --> 00:14:31,030 in the hands of a popular novelist, be turned to exquisitely ludicrous account. 128 00:14:31,030 --> 00:14:40,300 While Cox's own task here is with sober realities, Dickens is a popular novelist who does chronicle these adventures. 129 00:14:40,300 --> 00:14:56,550 And that's what the book is about. Thanks very much. I'll now hand back over to Jeremy. 130 00:14:56,550 --> 00:15:08,010 I think the book raises an enormous number of very interesting questions, and your presentation brings some some of them to the fore. 131 00:15:08,010 --> 00:15:22,470 I was very struck by checking in OED under the word to let this morning how the two citations reading gives from the eighteen thirties to 132 00:15:22,470 --> 00:15:34,590 the idea of letting accommodation what one is from 1837 and has to do with the idea of accommodation being let's just opposite Hyde Park, 133 00:15:34,590 --> 00:15:45,570 which obviously was very fashionable and which therefore gave a kind of entree to a kind of snobbish middle class. 134 00:15:45,570 --> 00:15:54,520 And the other one was making 39 were the reference was actually to Nicholas Nickleby because it was being cited and. 135 00:15:54,520 --> 00:16:01,370 And as for a poor part of the town, which had given itself over to lodgings. 136 00:16:01,370 --> 00:16:06,900 So there's the two aspects of Victorian life here, 137 00:16:06,900 --> 00:16:20,860 becoming the respectable bourgeois or sinking down into the world and becoming like the property, which is which is erm. 138 00:16:20,860 --> 00:16:24,580 Going down in the world, you yourself are going down in the world. 139 00:16:24,580 --> 00:16:29,920 And you have to go into threadbare rented accommodation. 140 00:16:29,920 --> 00:16:39,190 It's a it's a very interesting topic. And Dickens seems to be catching on the strength of those OED references. 141 00:16:39,190 --> 00:16:51,970 I say I would say Dickens is catching a whole new mood whereby people are coming in to towns to work and to work as clocks. 142 00:16:51,970 --> 00:17:00,190 And we all know how important the clock world is for Dickens and not just make a very quick cross reference to Bartleby. 143 00:17:00,190 --> 00:17:05,590 The script another. The Melville text, which is so Dickensian in character. 144 00:17:05,590 --> 00:17:12,640 But to thinking about that Clark world that does the figure of the Clark who has 145 00:17:12,640 --> 00:17:19,650 his evening mail and in the city and then goes home to his place in Islington. 146 00:17:19,650 --> 00:17:27,670 This is one of the sketches and sketches by Bozz. And it raises so many interesting questions about this. 147 00:17:27,670 --> 00:17:39,490 The status of people who are unable to have any kind of independence, any kind of privacy, any kind of sexual or marital relation. 148 00:17:39,490 --> 00:17:46,430 What happened in those circumstances? What were the absolute economics of that? 149 00:17:46,430 --> 00:17:55,360 When and how much money was left over? And how did that limited income impact upon their ways of thinking? 150 00:17:55,360 --> 00:18:05,880 All of these are issues which you you, Shashi, whose spotlight system in which Dickens is has brought to light. 151 00:18:05,880 --> 00:18:17,650 I'm actually fascinated by them. And it seems to me there's a whole new creation of a kind of petty bourgeois in Dickens novels, 152 00:18:17,650 --> 00:18:24,310 and very much work needs to be done on exploring all of that. 153 00:18:24,310 --> 00:18:26,950 I was also fascinated. 154 00:18:26,950 --> 00:18:37,780 These are just random thoughts about about the multiple houses that Dickens became very interested in, along with Angela Burdette Coots, 155 00:18:37,780 --> 00:18:49,030 who is, of course, the richest woman in Britain, apart from Victoria and who wanted to set up mobile housing in Bethnal Green. 156 00:18:49,030 --> 00:18:56,530 And you write about that very well. And it got me interested in the whole question of Mogel housing. 157 00:18:56,530 --> 00:19:06,910 You are on your page one five two. You have an illustration of the of the first model houses in London in 1850. 158 00:19:06,910 --> 00:19:11,830 And in fact, you maybe go around, look at them because I've forgotten all about it. 159 00:19:11,830 --> 00:19:22,370 But it is very interesting, but also implies that the model becomes a new word round about the time for 1846 through to the eighteen fifties. 160 00:19:22,370 --> 00:19:25,950 And I was not just thinking about model homes, 161 00:19:25,950 --> 00:19:33,430 but I was thinking about Carlile's I say on model prisons and how Dickens parodies that with model prisoners. 162 00:19:33,430 --> 00:19:38,580 I think about hard times with the Motal school. Mr Gradgrind has. 163 00:19:38,580 --> 00:19:47,940 That's 1854 and there seems to be a very interesting pattern here of the emergence of the idea of the model. 164 00:19:47,940 --> 00:19:59,680 And on one side, I was connecting that with the idea of architectural plans being not the kind of anatomy and the model in that sense, 165 00:19:59,680 --> 00:20:04,400 since we know how architectural plans gain a new force. 166 00:20:04,400 --> 00:20:12,940 The second half of the 18th century and I was also thinking about the idea of modelling a society. 167 00:20:12,940 --> 00:20:23,980 Well, people need homes. So they and Dickens writes to Angela budget cuts about what these homes should look like in Bethnal Green. 168 00:20:23,980 --> 00:20:28,690 And he shows himself to be quite the architect. And that fascinated me, too. 169 00:20:28,690 --> 00:20:40,480 I remember that in 17 in 1849 says it's two years before that, Dickens had read Ruskin's several lamps of architecture. 170 00:20:40,480 --> 00:20:48,120 Now, we might not think of Ruskin as the greatest expert on the forensic details of architecture, 171 00:20:48,120 --> 00:20:56,590 but but nonetheless, Dickens is interested in reading. Ruskin, I think, is also something to be explored. 172 00:20:56,590 --> 00:21:07,270 Why did Dickens read? Seven names of architecture is clearly something which is pointing to an interest in the architect, 173 00:21:07,270 --> 00:21:18,040 which is there, of course, with Mr Peck's sniff in in Martin Chuzzlewit slightly earlier the Asian forties. 174 00:21:18,040 --> 00:21:19,170 And it's the. 175 00:21:19,170 --> 00:21:31,140 When Joe Gartree comes to visit Pip in Great Expectations and he's been looking at architectural drawings and he calls them to architectural Laurel, 176 00:21:31,140 --> 00:21:34,860 and the neologism is a wonderful one. 177 00:21:34,860 --> 00:21:39,450 Of course, it's truly baroque. 178 00:21:39,450 --> 00:21:47,320 It's your lines of of the the interest that there is in. 179 00:21:47,320 --> 00:21:56,160 In thinking self about building self consciously thinking not only about the function, 180 00:21:56,160 --> 00:22:09,150 but about ornamentation and thinking about then this idea of the the lodger and the 181 00:22:09,150 --> 00:22:15,960 relationships between the lodger and the landlord or landlady is as it so often is, 182 00:22:15,960 --> 00:22:25,620 and the relationship between that's implausible. I thought the book was excellent in the way it negotiated some of the ways in which plot 183 00:22:25,620 --> 00:22:38,460 details are set in motion by the relationship between the inhabitants of the House. 184 00:22:38,460 --> 00:22:54,720 I thought the section on Bleak House by Mr Crook has the ground floor and then the Mr Nimmo, who of course is Captain Holden, who is a very important. 185 00:22:54,720 --> 00:22:58,680 Virtually Off-stage figure until he dies in Chapter 10. 186 00:22:58,680 --> 00:23:07,350 But whose influence just permeates the novel and then living above that Miss Flight, 187 00:23:07,350 --> 00:23:19,260 the mad woman whose name needs to be righted by the courts of Chancery and has been waiting all these years. 188 00:23:19,260 --> 00:23:33,900 Putting those three figures together, it's an astonishing instance on Dickens is part of all of cultural sensitivity and imagination. 189 00:23:33,900 --> 00:23:44,820 But I think your book also brings out beautifully how all that forwards the plot and plots and this Richard itself. 190 00:23:44,820 --> 00:24:08,020 Well, now I've said quite enough at the moment. I'm going to hand over the stage to Dr. Sophy as Sara and look forward to more. 191 00:24:08,020 --> 00:24:25,570 VNU need to unmuted. Can we go? 192 00:24:25,570 --> 00:24:31,540 Great. Yeah. Can you see that, my screen. We can. 193 00:24:31,540 --> 00:24:37,580 Sorry. Thank you very much, Jeremy. 194 00:24:37,580 --> 00:24:45,770 And thank you very much for inviting me on this interesting event. I read the book by you, Sassy, with great interest, 195 00:24:45,770 --> 00:24:52,730 and I'm happy to talk about the fabric of space and time intersections between architecture and literature. 196 00:24:52,730 --> 00:25:00,500 I'm an architect myself, so I come from an architectural perspective. And my take on the book is a very architectural one, 197 00:25:00,500 --> 00:25:07,220 trying to establish this dialogue between architectural and literature from the viewpoint of the architect. 198 00:25:07,220 --> 00:25:16,430 So Schatz's book is an intensely rich exploration of the lived experiences by characters that were lodgers and tenants alongside the homes, 199 00:25:16,430 --> 00:25:24,290 the states and the communities that were created by Ray Charles Dickens novels. 200 00:25:24,290 --> 00:25:31,880 They they can work through tenancy. USC studies how the lease in a real estate interchange of money bedding periodic instalments 201 00:25:31,880 --> 00:25:36,290 alongside the people he touched in the space configurations he brought into prominence, 202 00:25:36,290 --> 00:25:42,500 gave Dickens a canvas to render London the experiences of his characters and the relationships of one another. 203 00:25:42,500 --> 00:25:48,200 But she also argues that lodging lettings and the buttons are behind occasionally encouraged, 204 00:25:48,200 --> 00:25:52,310 also fuelled Dickens imagination and helped to shape his fiction, 205 00:25:52,310 --> 00:25:58,200 quote, rented space formed a powerful agent in narrative as an imaginative discourse, 206 00:25:58,200 --> 00:26:03,950 encouraging with the fictional thinking ad of Quand in this presentation. 207 00:26:03,950 --> 00:26:08,000 I take inspiration from Schatz's notion of modern fictional thinking, 208 00:26:08,000 --> 00:26:13,310 the generative opportunities offered by speciality and sociability to a novelist, 209 00:26:13,310 --> 00:26:24,200 and now will attempt to expand this notion by looking at the generative opportunities for the Laxton of like addiction Woodly. 210 00:26:24,200 --> 00:26:26,300 As an architect and architectural educator, 211 00:26:26,300 --> 00:26:34,370 I have frequently looked at the architectural strategies used in fiction and the role of literary strategies in architecture. 212 00:26:34,370 --> 00:26:42,590 Fiction can make architects think more critically about the future realities they design and motivate people to claim the right to the imagination. 213 00:26:42,590 --> 00:26:50,900 It can also activate people's collective imagination associated with shared buildings, spaces and experiences. 214 00:26:50,900 --> 00:26:57,650 There are many interactive possibilities and parallels between the two media, some of which I cover later in great detail. 215 00:26:57,650 --> 00:27:03,450 But first, I would like to discuss the more general subject of the relationship between architecture and language. 216 00:27:03,450 --> 00:27:12,010 And it is only through this foundation of perspective that the relationship of architectural and literature can be best understood. 217 00:27:12,010 --> 00:27:20,940 Architectural has both interactive and analogical relationship with language and design, building originates in the room, 218 00:27:20,940 --> 00:27:28,360 the design briefs in the case of public buildings dedicated to organisations knowledge, it says, libraries, museums and art galleries. 219 00:27:28,360 --> 00:27:35,980 The classification of contents in space are preceded by classifications and got it in text and reflected the history of thought in a logical 220 00:27:35,980 --> 00:27:42,640 relationship between the two media goes back to the 19th century and the idea that works of architecture should be read like books, 221 00:27:42,640 --> 00:27:50,770 narratives or texts. Quite a Quincy like, and historical monuments to libraries, public inscriptions for records of people. 222 00:27:50,770 --> 00:27:52,270 The idea came on the store. 223 00:27:52,270 --> 00:28:00,490 Strong criticism, however, in the 20th century after Modernism asserted that buildings were to be read as autonomous works. 224 00:28:00,490 --> 00:28:03,730 Yet as architectural historian Adrian, 40, explains. 225 00:28:03,730 --> 00:28:11,080 Even if architecture is not a language, this does not lessen the value of language for understanding architecture. 226 00:28:11,080 --> 00:28:21,190 Architectural theorist Beeliar, for example, has made a productive analogy between the syntax of space and the syntactic and semantic structure, 227 00:28:21,190 --> 00:28:25,960 which the characteristic space relationships are defined the culture and computational space. 228 00:28:25,960 --> 00:28:33,550 Similarly, wasta griddles. We think we if the principles of space of structure function similarly to those of ordinary language. 229 00:28:33,550 --> 00:28:38,260 What about narrative motifs, or do you think literary texts or what about buildings are social objects? 230 00:28:38,260 --> 00:28:45,220 The line of social context and the order mechanism of language to organise cultural mechanisms in the relations of power. 231 00:28:45,220 --> 00:28:52,810 So we'll explore these questions through the work of John Soane and Carlos Scarper, separated by a century and a half. 232 00:28:52,810 --> 00:28:58,620 Well, faculties have a strong relationship with historian conflicts as inspirational resources and 233 00:28:58,620 --> 00:29:03,250 decent competition organised by the curators of the Science Museum in Lincoln's Infeld's, 234 00:29:03,250 --> 00:29:07,090 an area that, incidentally, provides the context for Dickens Bleak House. 235 00:29:07,090 --> 00:29:10,620 Ask participants to name their favourite object in the building. 236 00:29:10,620 --> 00:29:16,990 A winning entry drew attention to relationships intentionally created by the architect, the nymph by Richard Westmar. 237 00:29:16,990 --> 00:29:26,590 Code in the picture is overlooked in attempting back Jovani in the Max Pardillo the Gothic low in the basement. 238 00:29:26,590 --> 00:29:33,340 The fictitious monk was a satirical. How did he go? John Stone. Visitors to the museum come across the names first in the picture. 239 00:29:33,340 --> 00:29:41,420 But we see here when the huge banners open revealing the statue in the recess, presiding over the void that connects with the monk spon. 240 00:29:41,420 --> 00:29:50,300 They deface of the statue with a hammer to take it to meaning only later when they look up from the monk's cell with the picture and banners open. 241 00:29:50,300 --> 00:29:56,990 They congeries encounter between the classical sensuality of the nymph and the gothic melancholy of the monk is dramatised 242 00:29:56,990 --> 00:30:04,360 through the synchronous viewing of the two spaces and the sequence in which they're visited for such an encounter or event. 243 00:30:04,360 --> 00:30:08,870 Spacetime manipulation is frequently found in literature or film and drum. 244 00:30:08,870 --> 00:30:13,370 It communicates that life is not framed by rationality and predictability. 245 00:30:13,370 --> 00:30:18,710 Characteristically, the opening paragraph of One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. 246 00:30:18,710 --> 00:30:23,120 As these many years later, as he faced the firing squad, 247 00:30:23,120 --> 00:30:27,770 Colonial Orianna India was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to 248 00:30:27,770 --> 00:30:33,530 discover ice be pretty menacing about his Follman experiences and great expectations. 249 00:30:33,530 --> 00:30:37,160 He's another example. Although, like in one hundred years of solitude, 250 00:30:37,160 --> 00:30:42,290 the narrative fall follows a simple chronological structure to help me to comprehend 251 00:30:42,290 --> 00:30:47,090 the complex events of the characters lives known as paralysis and analysis. 252 00:30:47,090 --> 00:30:50,270 The motifs of flash forward to plus backward, often structural. 253 00:30:50,270 --> 00:30:55,940 A large part of a narrative and well-known example of family literature is almost odyssey, 254 00:30:55,940 --> 00:31:00,350 which begins immediate is when no desales carbon escape from Calypso's Island 255 00:31:00,350 --> 00:31:05,600 and Fed amorous advances is shipwrecked amongst the victims and tells his game. 256 00:31:05,600 --> 00:31:11,390 The story moves backwards in time, and as the hero narrates his many adventures and only books acting. 257 00:31:11,390 --> 00:31:15,320 Does the text written where we weigh Book eight, as he said, 258 00:31:15,320 --> 00:31:25,230 say 40 Kooka in the silversmiths does take from the front to the rear of the building and back, 259 00:31:25,230 --> 00:31:30,290 while diagonal vistas that he will distant parts of continue circumnavigation of time. 260 00:31:30,290 --> 00:31:36,320 The time it takes to walk through the sacred isn't this way, just to pose with synchronic time where rules and objects are instantaneously 261 00:31:36,320 --> 00:31:41,360 linked by cross views that even a bike dextra paralysis and analysis suggested 262 00:31:41,360 --> 00:31:45,530 on a logical relationship of architecture with little language maintain active 263 00:31:45,530 --> 00:31:49,560 relationship defines a building and its meaning in a real world context, 264 00:31:49,560 --> 00:31:53,600 except in a large collection of historical objects and building fragments. 265 00:31:53,600 --> 00:31:58,400 So this museum has his story added schematic cultural context such as you of few. 266 00:31:58,400 --> 00:32:01,730 Study, however, is, according to him, fanciful, 267 00:32:01,730 --> 00:32:08,930 smitten with love of novelty in animated by direct defiance of all established rules of the architectural schools, 268 00:32:08,930 --> 00:32:15,890 end of quote DOMAs colonnades, crepes, vol skylights, recesses, knishes and anterooms. 269 00:32:15,890 --> 00:32:26,120 Did he study has a pantheon of forms in both distortive combinations like interplay of space and time before the new classical architect is a 270 00:32:26,120 --> 00:32:32,420 need to change of past and present that is both sequential and synchronic from the Georgian front rooms to the back areas of the basement, 271 00:32:32,420 --> 00:32:38,060 with the classical Roman and Egyptian to displace the museum from a dieses history as an imaginative, 272 00:32:38,060 --> 00:32:46,910 abounded and directly accessible supra historical world, freed from the constraints of historical, stylistic and also logical knowledge. 273 00:32:46,910 --> 00:32:54,110 Interestingly, Dickins region of London, such as in dojos neighbourhood in Martin Charles's feet, two lanes and byways in court. 274 00:32:54,110 --> 00:33:01,130 Yes, and Passages is one when, quote, you never want some words about anything that might be reasonably called the street. 275 00:33:01,130 --> 00:33:03,960 Like his description of Venice in pictures from Italy. 276 00:33:03,960 --> 00:33:10,740 He's a kind of doges resist protection, nomic and systematic interpretive framework of language in museums, 277 00:33:10,740 --> 00:33:20,410 catalogues or guidebooks offering an impressionistic aesthetic that confuses the city with the idea of the Lovering a dream with reality. 278 00:33:20,410 --> 00:33:24,970 Candidates got a relationship with Venice and Houston is also based on the notion that the past, 279 00:33:24,970 --> 00:33:34,200 present and future are mineable in the Olivetti showrooming that gets US and Marco Scarabus inspiration from the Línea vertical slicing of space. 280 00:33:34,200 --> 00:33:39,640 The narrow walkways in the mezzanine. The sculptural staircase. The water in the central zone. 281 00:33:39,640 --> 00:33:47,230 The glass, mosaics and all. Take inspiration from the great catalogue of forms that is Venice with its narrow passages, 282 00:33:47,230 --> 00:33:52,780 fundamental sort of porticos, bridges stretching over the water. What did flooding the edges of space. 283 00:33:52,780 --> 00:34:00,840 The range of colourful materials. And that itself was decorations. By extending circumnavigation all time through twists and turns of circulation. 284 00:34:00,840 --> 00:34:08,320 Scarper contrasts, synchronic, views from the front and back end of the showroom with the seniors progress of the view through the 92. 285 00:34:08,320 --> 00:34:11,920 There are many similar views in Venice extending over the linear stretches of the 286 00:34:11,920 --> 00:34:16,300 canals to link places that they reached only indirectly by their meandering, 287 00:34:16,300 --> 00:34:25,840 intersecting canals and alleys. Stagings movement through a locked sequence is the device frequently Garba, 288 00:34:25,840 --> 00:34:31,410 even with spaces are not linearly shape, as if she's extension to Canada's museum persona, 289 00:34:31,410 --> 00:34:36,910 where the divided positioning of statues of different size and height requires the visitors to walk around them, 290 00:34:36,910 --> 00:34:39,760 crossing their own butts multiple times. 291 00:34:39,760 --> 00:34:48,070 There's another linguistic motif that Scarper uses, which is Miss Zombi, which means placing a copy of an image or object inside itself, 292 00:34:48,070 --> 00:34:55,600 like the snow globe in Orson Welles Citizen Kane Metonymy Gallery fading to the clatter story windows at the corners of the doll 293 00:34:55,600 --> 00:35:03,160 space and the kind of young extension the glass cabinets containing figurines function as many galleries inside the larger gallery, 294 00:35:03,160 --> 00:35:08,130 linking the scale of the building as a home to that of the windows and displays. 295 00:35:08,130 --> 00:35:13,330 Beam has a strong presence in Saul's museum to the vault sale in the breakfast room. 296 00:35:13,330 --> 00:35:14,280 The Cocomo doesn't. 297 00:35:14,280 --> 00:35:24,910 Pompei and Joseph Gandy's paintings of the museum are demonstrations of desire to embed his own architecture into the historical ancestry. 298 00:35:24,910 --> 00:35:32,380 DOMAs Marcosson Deborah Cameron explains that language is a neglected subject in discussions of architectural conventionally approach as a visual. 299 00:35:32,380 --> 00:35:39,190 Neither does verbal statement. Any social practise like architectural has both verbal and aesthetic dimensions. 300 00:35:39,190 --> 00:35:43,480 While the syntax of space structures, social relationships, these relationships, 301 00:35:43,480 --> 00:35:50,500 the meaningfulness and the sub in the relations of power are also a function of the Oden's systems of language. 302 00:35:50,500 --> 00:35:53,890 These operate in the interactive production of the architectural brief, 303 00:35:53,890 --> 00:36:00,070 as well as other Deusen conventions that enable exchanges between architects, clients, contractors and builders. 304 00:36:00,070 --> 00:36:03,100 As to the aesthetic function of the linguistic analogy. 305 00:36:03,100 --> 00:36:11,850 Any epical meets from the odyssey to a child's journey to adulthood demonstrate the age old relationship between space and language, 306 00:36:11,850 --> 00:36:17,470 a symbolic media that interlaced in imbuing our experience of buildings with narrative sense. 307 00:36:17,470 --> 00:36:22,690 This is perhaps what Stone aim to demonstrate in his house museum to the unit of 308 00:36:22,690 --> 00:36:27,040 architecture with boys in the arts through the intersections of architecture, 309 00:36:27,040 --> 00:36:34,460 the display and the powerful illusions constructed by the many metres. Thank you. 310 00:36:34,460 --> 00:36:44,370 I will now bust of Jamie. Lerma, you need to meet yourself with. 311 00:36:44,370 --> 00:36:48,860 But we the bad news is good. 312 00:36:48,860 --> 00:36:59,330 It is very interesting to bring together that language of architecture with the language of of narrative. 313 00:36:59,330 --> 00:37:07,340 I think, for example, what you say about the crypto, what you say about the the active and the labourers, 314 00:37:07,340 --> 00:37:14,220 these are all very fertile images for for for Dickens, 315 00:37:14,220 --> 00:37:24,620 for architectural theory and for for critical theory as well as conclusions that with your you want from before anything we've been say. 316 00:37:24,620 --> 00:37:29,030 Thank you both so much for such rich and fascinating responses to the book. 317 00:37:29,030 --> 00:37:33,440 I wish we had about four hours to talk together about about this material. 318 00:37:33,440 --> 00:37:39,890 And it seems like this relationship between architecture, space and narrative and language, on the other hand, 319 00:37:39,890 --> 00:37:46,910 seems to be a topic we've all been circling in various ways and both today and and more broadly. 320 00:37:46,910 --> 00:37:56,240 Jeremy, just on the on the phrase to let. I feel that another kind of definition of that phrase Dickins is really receptive to see is 321 00:37:56,240 --> 00:38:02,660 the fact that it also means to allow something that really comes up in Great Expectations, 322 00:38:02,660 --> 00:38:09,070 where Pip sort of comes into London for the first time and sees all of these signs that say to let. 323 00:38:09,070 --> 00:38:12,530 To let. To let it. And it kind of really worries him. 324 00:38:12,530 --> 00:38:16,100 He feels that he's being given licence to do something. 325 00:38:16,100 --> 00:38:21,280 You know, now that he's kind of come into his inheritance but doesn't really know what to do with that permission. 326 00:38:21,280 --> 00:38:26,920 So that's the third definition that I found so interesting. And so fear that this this relationship between. 327 00:38:26,920 --> 00:38:28,910 Between architecture and narrative. 328 00:38:28,910 --> 00:38:36,290 Jeremy, you referred to Dickens's own kind of desire to kind of be an architect and to orchestrate kind of domestic space. 329 00:38:36,290 --> 00:38:43,040 And all of the stories in various ways. I think that's why he loves rented space so much. 330 00:38:43,040 --> 00:38:48,620 He thinks that it's particularly fertile for maybe two reasons. 331 00:38:48,620 --> 00:38:54,350 Firstly, because when tenants come and go, they invariably bring new stories with them. 332 00:38:54,350 --> 00:38:59,620 And so narrative is refreshing itself constantly and infinitely over time. 333 00:38:59,620 --> 00:39:04,500 In the same maybe not particularly exciting architectural location. 334 00:39:04,500 --> 00:39:10,070 I mean, the other thing is, of course, that because, um, you know, with rented space comes atomisation. 335 00:39:10,070 --> 00:39:16,950 And so there's always various stories jostling for attention in close proximity with each other. 336 00:39:16,950 --> 00:39:22,790 And I think, you know, I think he's very, very excited by the fact that there might be another story just on the other set of a door. 337 00:39:22,790 --> 00:39:26,810 So on the other side of a door or, you know, on the other side of a set of floorboards. 338 00:39:26,810 --> 00:39:33,690 So those are just a few sort of initial responses to maybe where the intersections between are areas of interest might be. 339 00:39:33,690 --> 00:39:42,450 And I don't know if either of you had any any further perspectives on that. Can I please? 340 00:39:42,450 --> 00:39:45,090 I thought that this is a wonderful idea, essentially. 341 00:39:45,090 --> 00:39:53,100 And that's what what I really loved in the book, the book is so rich that, as you said, we can, but not for hours, but 40 hours talking about it. 342 00:39:53,100 --> 00:39:57,810 But this is a really wonderful idea that people have crammed together in spaces. 343 00:39:57,810 --> 00:40:03,750 And these people come together with their own stories and the ways in which the building really arranges the encounters 344 00:40:03,750 --> 00:40:08,520 either through the spaces or through the economic transactions and everything else that is happening socially, 345 00:40:08,520 --> 00:40:13,830 culturally and economically is really creating a very rich world of opportunity for you. 346 00:40:13,830 --> 00:40:21,810 Not it is for new stories, in a way. I think that you discussed this in the introduction, if I include this at all. 347 00:40:21,810 --> 00:40:30,660 It is. And. Michel Foucault gave this kind of disciplinary view of architecture in the 19th century through his model, the Panopto School. 348 00:40:30,660 --> 00:40:39,150 But this ator really discusses the ways in which people can transgress any kind of impositions imposed from 349 00:40:39,150 --> 00:40:48,300 society on them simply by rehearsing the role roots and their own modes of interacting with each other. 350 00:40:48,300 --> 00:40:58,740 And I think that that in your book, you really make the point so clearly manifested in the work of Dickens. 351 00:40:58,740 --> 00:41:03,690 It's just so fascinating, isn't it, to think that kind of the John Stone Museum is just, you know, 352 00:41:03,690 --> 00:41:10,620 a stone's throw away from so many neighbourhoods that Dickens is exploring not only in Bleak House, kind of throughout his career. 353 00:41:10,620 --> 00:41:16,560 So that sense of kind of proximity and kind of there we are a case in point, Jeremy. 354 00:41:16,560 --> 00:41:22,590 Well, yes, sure. Of course, it's the same museum as Lincoln's and feels just right. 355 00:41:22,590 --> 00:41:27,810 I think those two were talking born lives and dies, of course. 356 00:41:27,810 --> 00:41:35,460 And the point about this made me think about another form of lodging. 357 00:41:35,460 --> 00:41:51,530 I referred earlier around the to the grave urban hamlets saying that talking about the coffin and the grave as places you rent until doomsday. 358 00:41:51,530 --> 00:42:03,510 And the point, of course, is that nobody occupies space forever and that they all know that there are in 359 00:42:03,510 --> 00:42:09,200 that case that there's nobody who's outside the lodging world in that way. 360 00:42:09,200 --> 00:42:17,130 If that's the case, it gives a whole sense of the power of the ghostly power of the homeless. 361 00:42:17,130 --> 00:42:28,290 The there's the sense of of spaces which are which have got multiple things taking place inside them. 362 00:42:28,290 --> 00:42:32,190 I'm sure that Dickens is Dickens is so. 363 00:42:32,190 --> 00:42:40,110 Oh, I'm well aware of that. But it's always a sense of how things are being redescribed with value. 364 00:42:40,110 --> 00:42:47,300 There's a memory of what has been inside inside the place. 365 00:42:47,300 --> 00:42:52,500 With Talking Hall, for example, the Baroque. I've used that word before. 366 00:42:52,500 --> 00:42:58,770 I'm fascinated by Dickens in the Baroque, the baroque ceiling, 367 00:42:58,770 --> 00:43:13,260 which looks down upon something whole and which Fiz shows that ultimately with the with the the Roman looking down and pointing at toffy home, 368 00:43:13,260 --> 00:43:20,610 the talking home is no longer there. It's just the staying on the floor by his chair, as it were. 369 00:43:20,610 --> 00:43:33,530 The inhabitants is gone. The tenant has gone. And then the next chapter, virtually, we have the this extraordinary funeral of talking horror, 370 00:43:33,530 --> 00:43:43,670 which is based upon the funeral Duke of Wellington, where it isn't people who've come to see the man being buried. 371 00:43:43,670 --> 00:43:50,520 They've set their coaches. And so you've got these empty coaches, empty spaces, lodgings, if you like, 372 00:43:50,520 --> 00:44:01,140 without lodges which have moved around to see the person die, the way in which Dickens works up in terms of emptiness. 373 00:44:01,140 --> 00:44:04,590 And what has been and what will be. 374 00:44:04,590 --> 00:44:19,620 And the sense in which he he he gives a sense of of properties and peoples as as, uh, transferable as a word is is very interesting to me. 375 00:44:19,620 --> 00:44:23,850 It's so interesting because I think he's so receptive to this to this metaphor 376 00:44:23,850 --> 00:44:28,140 and he uses it everywhere who I think refers to the great marching house. 377 00:44:28,140 --> 00:44:33,830 You know, I remember the great boarding house, the world in a very, very early story. 378 00:44:33,830 --> 00:44:40,830 I mean, he's constantly kind of looking at the metaphorical potential of the space and saying that actually we're only just ever launching, 379 00:44:40,830 --> 00:44:44,800 we're only just ever passing through. And this sense of history. 380 00:44:44,800 --> 00:44:49,980 And also, I think is is absolutely key to what he's trying to argue about. 381 00:44:49,980 --> 00:44:57,190 About any space, but especially rented ones. And that there's something ghostly about any rented room. 382 00:44:57,190 --> 00:45:04,800 And there's always kind of a whisper from that person who inhabited before the passing that inhabited before them. 383 00:45:04,800 --> 00:45:13,020 And then, you know, going on far out for however long. So that that seems to be a central concern for hasn't interfered. 384 00:45:13,020 --> 00:45:16,830 I'm just interested in that relation, in that relationship between architecture and history. 385 00:45:16,830 --> 00:45:21,030 I guess architecture is it's meant not to almost meant not to change. 386 00:45:21,030 --> 00:45:30,510 It's meant to endure. Yes. You know, this was very much the view in the 19th century in the way up to the middle of the 20th century. 387 00:45:30,510 --> 00:45:35,220 But Dutch and particularly after the war, we have new thinking coming. 388 00:45:35,220 --> 00:45:38,950 That had to do a lot with the temporariness in architecture. 389 00:45:38,950 --> 00:45:47,730 Really bringing along thinking that had to do with such people and how people use spaces and how people change spaces called the adapt them, 390 00:45:47,730 --> 00:45:53,610 how they come into contact with each other, what the users want and how the users really interact with the space. 391 00:45:53,610 --> 00:45:58,280 So there was this incredibly creative British architectural centric Bryce. 392 00:45:58,280 --> 00:46:05,650 That was creating a whole new school around this notion alongside a group of critics called Archigram. 393 00:46:05,650 --> 00:46:17,480 And and it is bringing in a completely different idea about architecture in comparison to the monumental, the long lasting. 394 00:46:17,480 --> 00:46:22,430 They're sort of Peter, I mean, the regift to Egypt or the Parthenon looks to architecture, 395 00:46:22,430 --> 00:46:28,280 which is about to the dance and the changing the changing nature of architecture and the boarding houses. 396 00:46:28,280 --> 00:46:33,140 Very, very crucial in that, because it is a probabilistic mechanism of mixing, 397 00:46:33,140 --> 00:46:37,970 because people come and stay for a certain period, maybe they stay for longer period, but then they move on. 398 00:46:37,970 --> 00:46:49,160 And that move in Leelee shifts and reshuffle society. And Ed and Dickens really capitalises on certain words. 399 00:46:49,160 --> 00:46:52,070 I think you wanted to say something else. 400 00:46:52,070 --> 00:46:59,240 Yeah, I just thought I'd come in and bring some of the questions that are in the both in the function and also in the Q and A, 401 00:46:59,240 --> 00:47:07,550 but largely because they carry on, if you like, the discussion that you're already having around well, 402 00:47:07,550 --> 00:47:15,620 around time around different uses of space and so on. And the question, first of all, from Allison, I think, 403 00:47:15,620 --> 00:47:25,190 which of or wonders how difficult it is for us now to think historic liberal society where renting and not house buying is the norm. 404 00:47:25,190 --> 00:47:30,170 In other words, are we starting from a position where we think that the best thing possible is to have your own space, 405 00:47:30,170 --> 00:47:37,730 your own property, your own house, etc, etc.? And that might not be where people in Dickens time is starting from. 406 00:47:37,730 --> 00:47:41,570 Well, let's just have a minute or two on that question and your thoughts on that. We shall see. 407 00:47:41,570 --> 00:47:45,770 I can see you nodding your head. No. Thank you so much, Alison. 408 00:47:45,770 --> 00:47:53,600 So this idea that the Englishman's home is his castle. You know, I think it's very much bandied about in the 19th century, 409 00:47:53,600 --> 00:47:59,660 but only in so far is that it's an ideal and that no one actually thinks that this is a 410 00:47:59,660 --> 00:48:05,180 description of the reality or indeed maybe something that we should be aspiring towards. 411 00:48:05,180 --> 00:48:09,320 I think this idea of homeownership has is actually a recent one. 412 00:48:09,320 --> 00:48:12,950 And, you know, maybe people might be able to correct me. 413 00:48:12,950 --> 00:48:19,250 People who know more about kind of the history of the 20th century, but I'm guessing 70s, 80s is one that really takes hold. 414 00:48:19,250 --> 00:48:25,850 And well, I think what we're noticing now is that we're returning to the idea that we're going to rent for the rest of our lives. 415 00:48:25,850 --> 00:48:29,910 I mean, so kind of we're going back to the 19th century in a certain way. 416 00:48:29,910 --> 00:48:40,730 I mean, I think and I think the Victorians were aware of that what renting might imply for their kind of desire for security or privacy, 417 00:48:40,730 --> 00:48:46,670 but didn't really have any particular kind of expectation that this was going to define the way that they lived in their own lifetimes. 418 00:48:46,670 --> 00:48:52,400 I hope that starts to answer the question. I'm Sophia. Jeremy, I am sure that you have you have thoughts on this as well. 419 00:48:52,400 --> 00:48:58,740 Well, I was looking at the websites about the number of Americans asleep in their own cars. 420 00:48:58,740 --> 00:49:10,820 And I was wondering what the statistics would be actually for how many people do have home ownership, even though, as you say, with a new situation. 421 00:49:10,820 --> 00:49:16,460 I wonder if I might build on that idea of people flipping their cars to ask for a shuttle with questrom, 422 00:49:16,460 --> 00:49:24,470 which is to what degree is letting space domestic space that's being repurposed as opposed to. 423 00:49:24,470 --> 00:49:30,270 Which is part of Alison's question space that's being built in order to let. 424 00:49:30,270 --> 00:49:38,690 Have you thought from the different, if you like, between a repurposing and a kind of purpose, building speculation that that this will eventually. 425 00:49:38,690 --> 00:49:43,450 Yeah. It's meant for this kind of habitation. Yeah. So there is a bit of both. 426 00:49:43,450 --> 00:49:49,430 I think in the 19th century, so Geremek and Jeremy mentioned the model lodging houses that were being kind 427 00:49:49,430 --> 00:49:53,720 of purpose built and private kind of philanthropic enterprises to kind of, 428 00:49:53,720 --> 00:49:58,000 um, I don't know, deal with the problems with poor housing. 429 00:49:58,000 --> 00:50:03,450 And so on the one hand, those out, those are specifically made tilak for very specific reasons and for specific inhabitants. 430 00:50:03,450 --> 00:50:08,810 But also, you know, this is so much of lodging was about kind of, you know, 431 00:50:08,810 --> 00:50:18,110 finding a room over and over at a shop or dividing up much broader house and for particular purposes. 432 00:50:18,110 --> 00:50:23,810 So I would say it was a little bit of both. It's it's both makeshift and purpose-built at the same time. 433 00:50:23,810 --> 00:50:32,210 I mean, I think it just shows how absurd the concept is and how we can't necessarily come to any particular generalisations or definitions either way. 434 00:50:32,210 --> 00:50:38,180 Mm hmm. Thank you, sir. You're nodding your head vigorously here. You want to say more about this? 435 00:50:38,180 --> 00:50:45,260 I think that we are experiencing now a period where a lot of repurposing is going to take place because of the changes that Calvet brought 436 00:50:45,260 --> 00:50:55,280 to the world of the office and also legislation that allows transformation of the buildings that were designed for one purpose to homes. 437 00:50:55,280 --> 00:50:57,080 Just briefly, 438 00:50:57,080 --> 00:51:06,890 the changes that took place in the 20th century with legislation and with the policy were intended to create a specific society that owned the homes. 439 00:51:06,890 --> 00:51:09,920 So in the 60s, there was the Thomas Piketty report, 440 00:51:09,920 --> 00:51:17,630 which was commissioned by the government to create some guidelines about the ideal design of social housing. 441 00:51:17,630 --> 00:51:21,350 Unfortunately not. It came to a demise. 442 00:51:21,350 --> 00:51:25,580 And then there was the financialization and then the new legislation that. 443 00:51:25,580 --> 00:51:30,560 And it stopped social housing. And so people started buying the homes. 444 00:51:30,560 --> 00:51:38,420 But now, definitely we are going into models of good living, good working and so on and come to commodities. 445 00:51:38,420 --> 00:51:43,020 Thank you. For the most recent questions, just come in. I said from Rebecca H. 446 00:51:43,020 --> 00:51:48,820 You're sort of answering this now. But could anyone comment on today's whole Shia culture? 447 00:51:48,820 --> 00:51:53,200 So. And in particular in relation to racism in space? 448 00:51:53,200 --> 00:51:55,490 David, on the surface, as I have through time, 449 00:51:55,490 --> 00:52:03,040 but to move when his family was targeted by the National Front who immigrated to to Gateshead from Nigeria and the inequalities of space. 450 00:52:03,040 --> 00:52:08,390 And if I could just tell you what Sophie has just been talking about, the disease, the pandemic pestilence, 451 00:52:08,390 --> 00:52:15,950 the kind of, if you like, the racialized distribution of of what it means to be at home at any given moment. 452 00:52:15,950 --> 00:52:20,210 I don't know. I confess I haven't read your book yet. I don't know if it's part of the book. 453 00:52:20,210 --> 00:52:23,400 I wasn't sent a copy yet, but I will clearly. I will do. 454 00:52:23,400 --> 00:52:33,320 And I'm wondering, is that is that part of Dickens story or is it something we learn from Dickens when we think about today? 455 00:52:33,320 --> 00:52:35,750 There are so many ways in which to approach that question. 456 00:52:35,750 --> 00:52:41,870 And I suppose the first is temporary to the current current moment, which is why I think that the question is being stemmed. 457 00:52:41,870 --> 00:52:51,470 Yes, I think we are kind of really beginning to see how spatial justice and spatial injustice work in very, very profound ways. 458 00:52:51,470 --> 00:52:56,750 And in terms of kind of what what Dickens has to tell us about this. 459 00:52:56,750 --> 00:53:00,620 He is interested in immigration to a certain extent, 460 00:53:00,620 --> 00:53:08,000 so that the book has a chapter about the great exhibition and which was very much a kind of an offering, 461 00:53:08,000 --> 00:53:13,940 an official narrative of British imperial power and saying, well, come, come and see how great we are, 462 00:53:13,940 --> 00:53:18,460 but also bring your own kind of objects and things attempted to celebrate and can come together. 463 00:53:18,460 --> 00:53:24,450 But at the same time, he's interested in what happens to two boarding houses and lodging lodging houses in the same year. 464 00:53:24,450 --> 00:53:33,060 And what happens when kind of people from different nations and of different races come together in these less and monitored locations? 465 00:53:33,060 --> 00:53:36,310 I mean, he has quite a lot to say about that. This is a fear. 466 00:53:36,310 --> 00:53:41,390 Jeremy, I don't know whether you want to want to come and come in on this, but I was thinking that Mr Casby, 467 00:53:41,390 --> 00:53:50,810 of course, isn't a perfect example of the authority of the kind of rent to figure whom Dickens despises. 468 00:53:50,810 --> 00:53:59,040 Quite right. Who has a cold? Mr. Pank says his as the guy with the necessary go between banks, 469 00:53:59,040 --> 00:54:04,710 turns back on him and the treatment of bleeding, bleeding heart yards, I think is very powerful. 470 00:54:04,710 --> 00:54:08,470 And, of course, as an Italian living and in pleasing yards. 471 00:54:08,470 --> 00:54:13,140 So, Mr. Senor Candidato. 472 00:54:13,140 --> 00:54:22,330 But I mean it it's that that's an obvious part of the news to actually discuss Kaspi. 473 00:54:22,330 --> 00:54:25,390 Would be going inside. Go for it, Sophia. 474 00:54:25,390 --> 00:54:34,720 Very quickly, Thomas Boots and Charles sorry, a map of London where he mapped the different social classes and then an east end. 475 00:54:34,720 --> 00:54:41,500 The Jewish community in East End is perhaps an interesting reference in relation to this question, Alison. 476 00:54:41,500 --> 00:54:46,420 Put exactly that reference into the into the trap, in fact. So that's great. 477 00:54:46,420 --> 00:54:47,890 Two quick more things, really. 478 00:54:47,890 --> 00:54:57,040 One is right after the first question that came in was from David Postles about David Englander's research into landlord tenant relationships. 479 00:54:57,040 --> 00:55:03,300 Does anybody here know anything about that? With Dickens familiar with the legislation noted by Englander. 480 00:55:03,300 --> 00:55:10,150 I mean, could I have a little bit more detail? I appreciate it's not something that I have put a lot of thought into. 481 00:55:10,150 --> 00:55:14,660 OK, David, I'm afraid we'll draw a blank on that one, but that's exciting. 482 00:55:14,660 --> 00:55:19,840 I mean, Jeremy, could you comment on this, Jeremy? You know, I can't. I would love to have the reference. 483 00:55:19,840 --> 00:55:22,310 OK. In that case, David, can you send us the reference, please? 484 00:55:22,310 --> 00:55:28,280 And we'll talk about that leaves just one, one or two minutes to think again about the last question from nature thing, which is. 485 00:55:28,280 --> 00:55:31,030 Thanks for your insightful conversation. 486 00:55:31,030 --> 00:55:38,100 How did contrapuntal readings offer an insight into an understanding, absence and presence of imperialism in these homes? 487 00:55:38,100 --> 00:55:40,680 Again? Trust me, you're nodding. You'd understand what that means. 488 00:55:40,680 --> 00:55:50,740 If you give me a minute or two on that contrapuntal reading is where I'm kind of canonical 19th century novels, 489 00:55:50,740 --> 00:55:57,730 which seem to be very much based in the workings of the nation and register the presence of of, 490 00:55:57,730 --> 00:56:02,930 you know, what's going on on the other side of the world. I'm usually kind of colonial relation. 491 00:56:02,930 --> 00:56:08,110 So the most seminal reading of that is probably Edward cites chapter on Mansfield Park. 492 00:56:08,110 --> 00:56:13,230 I'm just reading it for the audience just to situate the question on. 493 00:56:13,230 --> 00:56:21,100 I think absolutely, yes. I mean, this is you know, Dickens is really interested in what's happening in other other parts of the world. 494 00:56:21,100 --> 00:56:22,200 And for example, 495 00:56:22,200 --> 00:56:33,180 you mentioned there and the great exhibition chapter where he kind of registers these stories of political exile in continental Europe, 496 00:56:33,180 --> 00:56:37,240 in these novels that are meant to be very, very much about what's going on in London at the time. 497 00:56:37,240 --> 00:56:41,310 So a place like Leicester Square in particular is highly cosmopolitan. 498 00:56:41,310 --> 00:56:46,980 And that's because of what's happening just off the edges of the page and, you know, on the continent. 499 00:56:46,980 --> 00:56:51,960 And I hope meeting that's starting to answer that question. But again, Jeremy and Sophia, you might have some thoughts. 500 00:56:51,960 --> 00:57:00,720 Well, I find it very interesting that the door it's the home of Arthur Pelham coming about from China, Juanjo and. 501 00:57:00,720 --> 00:57:04,620 And the historically prisoners conditions. 502 00:57:04,620 --> 00:57:10,860 He would have been in there because the space allows to the Europeans was it was tiny. 503 00:57:10,860 --> 00:57:17,660 And Marshall said life, actually. And, of course, a link. 504 00:57:17,660 --> 00:57:24,210 So the question of what was Arthur Selam doing out in China? Why was he so guilty? 505 00:57:24,210 --> 00:57:28,290 And obviously, there's a relationship between opium, 506 00:57:28,290 --> 00:57:36,030 which Dickens is very alive to and is circles with namers death and continues into our mutual friend. 507 00:57:36,030 --> 00:57:45,250 Veneering is certainly a drug dealer. And I obviously think those connexions are very, very subtle. 508 00:57:45,250 --> 00:57:49,240 And in the case of the authorities, I think they account for us with guilt. 509 00:57:49,240 --> 00:57:58,680 And then in the low, they can't speak about your past because your past actually is so compromised politically and economically. 510 00:57:58,680 --> 00:58:02,490 That's absolutely right. And this story, of course, begins with a return to Marseilles. 511 00:58:02,490 --> 00:58:11,760 There's a there's a quarantine situation. And because of that unnamed plague from from the east as as as Dickens describes it. 512 00:58:11,760 --> 00:58:19,960 So. So I think that's definitely kind of, you know, very, very well into contrapuntal reading. 513 00:58:19,960 --> 00:58:24,330 She suggested this might take for us so fearful it would take at least 40. 514 00:58:24,330 --> 00:58:30,660 I think we could be here for four days or 40 nights, some, you know, a biblical time. 515 00:58:30,660 --> 00:58:34,740 It's been amazing and really, really interesting. We have the reference from David. 516 00:58:34,740 --> 00:58:43,140 Thank you. In the chat. Now to David Engenders. I keep you speaking as if it were a German name, Englander. 517 00:58:43,140 --> 00:58:47,280 If anybody wants to pick it up, all it leaves me. 518 00:58:47,280 --> 00:58:51,960 People need to go by, too. So I will just thank everyone enormously. 519 00:58:51,960 --> 00:58:56,490 Jeremy and most of all, Shashi, for writing a book in the first place. 520 00:58:56,490 --> 00:59:00,930 For what's been a really, really interesting discussion. Thank you all. 521 00:59:00,930 --> 00:59:11,610 Everyone present for coming along. And I'll remind you to look, please, again at the website Porche for our next book at lunchtime. 522 00:59:11,610 --> 00:59:16,650 It's people like yourself who make this worthwhile. So thank you enormously. 523 00:59:16,650 --> 00:59:36,424 And see you again in a couple of weeks. Goodbye.