Eccentric Circles

Written by: Evergreen Podcasts
  • Summary

  • Some periods, some cities give rise to ideas and circles of thinkers, that are both of the time and outside it. Machine Age London has had a deep legacy on all our lives - on matters as disparate as education, sex, drugs, yoga and rock ‘n’ roll.
    Evergreen Podcasts 2024
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Episodes
  • Episode 13: Escape to the Future
    Feb 5 2025
    To wrap things up we return to conversations with several academics we heard from earlier. We ask them why is it that our subjects are so much less known than their Bloomsbury Set contemporaries. We focus on the end of the Machine Age and its anticipation of the Space Age to come, and ask how our subjects fared in the run up to World War 2 when faced with a choice of mostly totalitarian futures. In particular, we return to the artist and writer Wyndham-Lewis and his short-lived sympathy… for Hitler. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    39 mins
  • Episode 12: Escape to the Past… or, Magic Bowmen and Scary Fairies
    Jan 29 2025
    Machen was a great influence on HP Lovecraft, and the development of the fantasy and horror genres. Stephen King is a fan. There is a direct line from Machen's writing to Dungeons and Dragons, grail quests such as Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and Game of Thrones. Machen bemoaned modernity, the mechanised slaughter of the Great War and especially the dreary Church of England, which had lost all sense of magic. Instead he took refuge in the past, a fantastic and eternal realm of changelings, fairies and monstrous beings. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    49 mins
  • Episode 11: Roadman
    Jan 21 2025
    Immensely talented and good looking, in the years leading up to the Great War Augustus John was a celebrity. London restaurants named dishes after him. But now he has faded into obscurity. The man who might today have been as famous as Picasso was unable to live up to his artistic promise. Yet the bohemian lifestyle he led, his dress and commitment to non-conformity was his true great work and was hugely influential. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    34 mins

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