News From Nowhere - ACE076.3

VO reading Morris on the countryside near Cookham. Jane walks by herself in the churchyard at Bisham, while Morris and Grosvenor look round the church and read the long inscription from Sir Thomas Hoby’s tomb. VO on Morris’s thoughts on the Middle Ages. Lecture: on "competitive commerce" which is "destructive of Art, … the happiness of life." Next morning, breakfast at their riverside camp. Lady Place, Hurley Lock, which gives Morris the chance to expound his hatred of "restoration". Grosvenor talks about Morris’s views on the protection of ancient buildings. Two of his stained glass windows, which he refused to allow to be placed in old buildings. The boat runs aground at Sonning. Discussion on the "ideal Socialist society". Nearing Iffley. Oxford. Morris on being an undergraduate, and on decorating the new Union building with Dante Gabriel Rossetti and others. Grosvenor on Morris’s involvement with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood; he says that John Ruskin’s analysis of mediaeval art and its sociological background inspired much of Morris’s later thinking. Morris’s own words on Ruskin’s chapter on "The Nature of Gothic". Grosvenor sums it up as "Art is the expression of Man’s pleasure in his labour", which Morris believed was "the basis for a true Socialism". Some of the frescoes, based on stories from Le Morte d’Arthur, in the Oxford Union. Morris’s contribution: How Sir Palomides Loved Iseult With an Exceeding Great Love…(or How Sir Palomydes loved Lady Belle Iseult) (1857). Morris on Rossetti.