Lecture
Daniel Snowman
Tuesday 19.05.2026
Daniel Snowman
Fin de Siècle
Tuesday 19.05.2026
How to watch
This lecture starts on 19 May at 7:00pm (UK).
Summary
Daniel concludes his 5-part series on the arts and culture of the 19th century by leading us through the 1890s and the end of Victoriana into the early years of the 20th century—a newly emerging world of X-rays, radio, recording, film, and automobiles. In the arts, it was an era of Impressionism and “Art for Art’s Sake,” of Oscar Wilde and Beardsley and the neo-Gothic darkness of Jekyll and Hyde, Trilby and Dracula, to the supposedly more determined optimism of Art Nouveau, the modernism of Klimt and German Expressionism, the neo-Fascist Futurism of Italy and the youthful creativity of Picasso and Matisse. Not to mention the brutalities of the Great War and the multicultural messages of the Weimar era that followed.
Daniel Snowman
Daniel Snowman is a social and cultural historian. Born in London to a Jewish family in 1938 and educated at Cambridge and Cornell, Daniel became a lecturer at the University of Sussex and went on to work for many years at the BBC as senior producer of radio features and documentaries. A senior research fellow at the Institute of Historical Research (University of London), his many books include a social history of opera and a study of the cultural impact of the “Hitler Emigrés” and, most recently, his memoir Just Passing Through: Interactions with the World 1938-2021.