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Podcast: Arts & Ideas
Episode: The well-groomed Georgian
Description: New Generation Thinker Alun Withey on what made 18th-century men shave off centuries of manly growth. Recorded before an audience at the York Festival of Ideas.
You can hear audience questions from the event as an episode of the BBC Arts&Ideas podcast.To be clean-shaven was the mark of a C18 gentleman, beard-wearing marked out the rough rustic. For the first time, men were beginning to shave themselves instead of visiting the barber, and a whole new market emerged to cater for rising demand in all sorts of shaving products - soaps, pastes and powders. But...