THE ENGLISH HERITAGE PODCAST
Every object has a story to tell.
But how can one mystery item lead us on a journey through history, people and places?
In the English Heritage podcast, comedian and writer Amy Matthews brings you entertaining tales from unexpected places. Each week, we begin with a mystery item and with the help of English Heritage experts and special guests, Amy explores what our past can tell us about our present and perhaps our future.
Adventure and obsession: orchid hunting in the 1930s
From steamy jungles and boiling mud pools to a bathroom aboard a luxury yacht, this is a plant story like no other. Sir Stephen and Lady Virginia Courtauld weren’t just art deco tastemakers; they were globe-trotting orchid obsessives, chasing rare blooms across Southeast Asia in the 1930s and (legally!) bringing them home against the odds.
Joined by English Heritage’s Dr Andrew Hann and gardener-researcher Hannah Pearson, Amy Matthews follows the Courtaulds’ trail through diaries, photographs and maps, uncovering a tale of privilege, passion and peril. Along the way, orchids are dealt, gifted, bombed, evacuated and lovingly preserved through war, displacement and decades of change.
It’s a story of people and plants and how a collection of extraordinary flowers travelled the world and were conserved through conflict for the benefit of the world today.
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Speaking with shadows
When you’re wandering about a historic place, what voices do you hear echoing off the walls? Are they the ones you learnt about at school – or do you wonder about the shadowy, quiet voices that may have gone unheard?
Travel from 17th-century Northamptonshire, where we hear about the heroic servant who may have become Britain’s first black pub landlord, to wartime Essex, where Polish special forces soldiers trained in secrecy for life or death missions to their homeland.
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