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Podcast: Arts & Ideas
Episode: The Black Country past and present
Description: In The Old Curiosity Shop, Charles Dickens portrayed The Black Country as a polluted hellscape where little Nell sickens and dies. So popular was the book that this idea of the region was rivetted into history and endures to this day. In this edition of Free Thinking Matthew Sweet sets out to find the real Black Country, a place whose borders you can cross without knowing, with a reputation for insularity in spite of centuries of migration.
In a programme recorded at the Birmingham Hippodrome for the BBC’s 2022 Contains Strong Language Festival, Matthew’s guests are the poet Liz...