Waddesdon

Bettany visits Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire, an extraordinary French chateau built as a fairy-tale castle by Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild in the heart of the English countryside. Here Bettany meets Pippa Shirley, Head of Collections and Gardens, to discuss the contradictions at the heart of the house, which showcases the best of 18th century French decorative art.Ferdinand devised the house in part as a stage set to court power and for a ‘wow’ factor, and this very much paid off when Queen Victoria asked to visit. The Queen became obsessed with the new electric light switches, which she kept turning on and off. Later, Margaret Thatcher chose to host President Mitterand here during the 1990 summit: an event about which Lord Rothschild spills the beans in an illuminating chat with Bettany.For more information about Waddesdon, including opening times and dates, go to: Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You can listen to Waddesdon online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Waddesdon is an episode from Bettany Hughes’s Ten Places, Europe and Us.

This episode is 23:11 long.

This episode was published on Nov 28, 2016.

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