Episode 23. Robert Blatchford
Dr Simon Machin in conversation with Dr Martin Wright, about the great crusading journalist Robert Blatchford, the Clarion magazine and movement, and Blatchford’s Merrie England which sold over 2 million copies.
Episode 22. Revd Nick Flint: A Life in Sussex
Dr Simon Machin in conversation with Sussex priest, Revd Nick Flint, about his Parish Ministry in Rusper, West Sussex, his tribute to Hilaire Belloc, Cautionary Pilgrim, and his troubled predecessor, Edward Synnott Fitzgerald’s controversial Five Years’ Hell in a Country Parish.
Episode 21. R. H. Tawney
Dr Simon Machin in conversation with Professor Lawrence Goldman about his biography of the academic, historian, socialist and private Christian R. H. Tawney.
Episode 20. Lilian Baylis and Emma Cons at ‘The Old Vic’.
Dr Simon Machin in conversation with Professor Elizabeth Schafer about her biography of Lilian Baylis of The Old Vic theatre, and about Lilian’s aunt, the social reformer Emma Cons.
Episode 19. Red Heaven and A Pilgrim’s Song: Plays about Conrad Noel and Percy Dearmer
Guest interviewer Sarah Tombling in conversation with Rachel Ellis about Hugo Ellis’s play about Percy Dearmer, A Pilgrim’s Song and Simon Machin about his play about Conrad Noel, Red Heaven, and his radio adaptation of A Pilgrim’s Song.
Episode 18. The Edwardian Temperament: Writers and Intellectuals
Dr Simon Machin in conversation with Professor Jonathan Rose about his books, The Edwardian Temperament and his classic The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes, and current research interests.
Episode 17. The William Temple Tradition in Anglican Social Theology
Dr Simon Machin in conversation with the Revd Canon Dr Stephen Spencer about his long fascination with the great Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple, and Temple’s place within Anglican Social Theology.
Episode 16. Marquis d’Oisy
Dr Simon Machin in conversation with Julian Litten about his career as an ecclesastical historian and his book about the Thaxted exotic, the self-styled Amand Edouard Ambroise Marie Lowis Etienne Phillipe d’Sant Andre Tournay, Marquis d’Oisy.
Episode 15. Alec Hunter
Dr Simon Machin in conversation with Richard Hunter about the Hunter family, childhood memories of Thaxted and his grandfather Alec Hunter, Morris man, friend of Conrad Noel and Director of the St. Edmundsbury Weaving Works
Episode 14. Participation in the Second Wave Folk Revival
Dr Simon Machin in conversation with the folk singer and curator of the Singing Landscape project, Yvette Staelens about her childhood in multi-cultural Gloucester, her career and her mother’s childhood memories of Thaxted.
Episode 13. West Gallery Music
Dr Simon Machin in conversation with Jacqueline Patten about the Bob and Jacqueline Patten English Folk Music Collection, and West Gallery Music.
Episode 12. Morris Men: Dancing Englishness
Dr Simon Machin in conversation with Dr Matt Simons about his 2019 thesis on the subject of Morris Men and English identity, which features a pioneering academic consideration of Alec Hunter, the inaugural Squire of the Morris Ring, 1934-36.
Episode 11. The Seeds of Love: Opus Anglicanum
Dr Simon Machin in conversation with the engraver and expert on plain chant, John Rowlands-Pritchard, about his career, Morris dancing and Opus Anglicanum’s CD The Seeds of Love.
Episode 10. Percy Dearmer: Family Recollections
Dr Simon Machin in in conversation with Juliet Woollcombe and Timandra Nichols, the grand daughters of liturgist and Christian Socialist Percy Dearmer about the Dearmer family, including war poet, Geoffrey and Percy’s second wife, Nan.
Episode 9. Father Basil Jellicoe and London’s Slum Priests
Dr Simon Machin in conversation with Father Paschal Worton, team vicar of St Mary’s, Eversholt Street, NW1 about London’s slum priests, including the housng reformer Father Basil Jellicoe and the Christian Socialist, Father Charles Marson.
Episode 8. Holst’s The Planets, and its Transcription for Church Organ
Dr Simon Machin in conversation with the organist Simon Johnson about his musical career and his recording of the organ transcription of Holst’s The Planets at St Paul’s Cathedral.
Episode 7. Holst Among Friends
Dr Simon Machin in conversation with Alan Gibbs about his book Holst Among Friends and the Thaxted Whitsun Festivals
Episode 6. Daisy, Countess of Warwick
Dr Simon Machin in conversation with local historian Maggie Stevens about Edward VII’s mistress and socialist convert, ‘Daisy’ Countess of Warwick and the Red Vicars of Essex.
Episode 5: Thaxted Church Life
Dr Simon Machin in conversation with Peter and Sybil King about church life in Thaxted under the Red Vicars Conrad Noel and Jack Putterill.
Episode 4: Mary Neal and the Espérance Club
Dr Simon Machin in conversation with Lucy Neal about her great great aunt, the social reformer and instigator of the Edwardian folk revival, Mary Neal.