TIME'S WITNESS

Between the fall of the Bastille in 1789 and the opening of the Great Exhibition in 1851, history changed. The grand narratives of t he Enlightenment, concerned with kings and statesmen, gave way to a new interest in the lives of ordinary people. Oral history, cost ume history, the history of food and furniture, of Gothic architecture, theatre and much else were explored as never before. Antiqua rianism, the study of the material remains of the past, was not new, but now hundreds of men - and some women - became antiquaries a nd set a...[Read more]