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Journey into History (1952)
 

Synopsis

Warning: screenonline full synopses contain 'spoilers' which give away key plot points. Don't read on if you don't want to know the ending!

British sightseeing often involves a journey through time as well as space. One can visit Roman Britain, the Middle Ages, Shakespeare's England or a hundred similar examples.

Travelling back two hundred years lands us in Dr Johnson's London, a rowdy, lusty place as depicted vividly in Hogarth's paintings. In Syon House, Isleworth, Robert Adam's architecture is altogether more elegant, the statues and china figurines demonstrating that the eighteenth century was also an age of taste. Porcelain figurines from the Wernher Collection at Luton Hoo add further weight to this notion. A contemporary advertisement looks for porcelain and chinaware painters, and clay modellers.

The eighteenth century was also an age of exploration, and artefacts and paintings from the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich are used to evoke the era of Captain Cook and his contemporaries (whose voices can be heard via extracts from their diaries).

Finally, Hogarth's paintings are used to explain that the faces of Londoners have changed little in the period.