Heartbeat of the past

‘Life consists not of a series of illustrious actions, or elegant enjoyments,’ wrote Dr Johnson (of whom you may think you have heard too much in the last few weeks, but he is often so pertinent).

‘Life consists not of a series of illustrious actions, or elegant enjoyments,’ wrote Dr Johnson (of whom you may think you have heard too much in the last few weeks, but he is often so pertinent). He was commenting upon the barbarity of Scottish houses in which it was impossible to open a window and get some ‘fresher air’. The greater part of our time, he reminds us, ‘passes in compliance with necessities in the performance of daily duties, in the removal of small inconveniences…’ It’s how people live from day to day that reflects the success of governments and nations. What matters are the common things of life, so that the grandiloquent epigram will soon slip from our minds, but we’ll never forget the vivid image of a burly, breathless Johnson struggling to open a window in a smelly inn in Banff.

He would thoroughly have approved of the latest grand project from Radio Four, A History of Private Life, which will take us through the last 400 years of life at home in the company of Professor Amanda Vickery and a team of actors and singers. Intimate lives and private rituals are much harder to retrieve than the public face of institutions and the political machinations of Parliament and town hall. But, argues Vickery, ‘relationships and emotion are the heartbeat of the past’. For her academic work, she has trawled through the local record offices of counties up and down Britain and netted some wonderfully vivid accounts of domestic heaven and hell in private diaries, letters and account books that have survived often beyond the wishes of their creators that they not be read.