Mark Steel follows the glorious life of Lord Byron from his birth just off Oxford Street in London to his death in Greece thirty-six years later. We see Byron on the beach, Byron and his pet bear and Byron on Never Mind the Buzzcocks, as Mark traces an extraordinary, unpredictable and rude life in Nottinghamshire, London and Athens, from Byron’s bedroom to his deathbed. In Lord Byron, Mark finds echoes of other modern heroes – revolutionaries, adventurers and poets like Joe Strummer, Lech Walesa and David Beckham, and suggests convincingly that Byron would have enjoyed Last of the Summer Wine.
He was a scientist who thought he could turn lead into gold. He was an obsessive with a secret Swiss boyfriend. And, in the world of The Mark Steel Lectures, he likes Alphabetti Spaghetti and the Communards. The contradictions of this fascinating character, half-scientist, half-magician, take us from Newton’s childhood penchant for arson to the Houses of Parliament via Old Compton Street, discovering on the way why God can’t draw circles and what Cliff Richard will be doing in the year 3150. Mark Steel explores the world and the discoveries of Isaac Newton – surely one of Britain’s finest scientific alchemical gay fraud-busting genius MPs.
With a life measured out in cigar-cutters and cocaine wraps, Sigmund Freud was clearly a genius. Here was a man who looked around the world at the start of the 20th century, saw brutal empires, millions being sucked into soulless factories, impending world war, and said: “I know what causes the problems - we want to have sex with our mothers.” Mark Steel reveals the absurdity and complexity of that genius as he travels from Vienna to London in Freud’s wake. Our Sigmund, played by Martin Hyder, steps out of the darkness like Harry Lime, snorts cocaine like Al Pacino in Scarface, and treats his friends like Richard Ashcroft in the video for Bittersweet Symphony. In the course of the journey, Mark is given a 'shoeing' in a London pub, eats a raw onion, walks with the strippers in downtown Vienna, and finds himself inside the dreamworld of David Lynch. Surely the rudest, funniest lecture BBC TV has ever seen, this is the secret world of Sigmund Freud.
Mark Steel traces the history of Greek Philosophy from Pythagoras (“never ate beans”), to Plato (“old and bald”), to Aristotle (“made lists of Olympic champions for fun, and possibly a bugger for the bottle, or possibly not”). The lecture takes in all the important areas of classical philosophy, including ethics, Sue Barker, whether the Four Tops are really the Four Tops at all, incontinence and Jim Davidson, ballooning, and why Aristotle would have disapproved of Orange marches. Filmed at the Parthenon and across Athens, Mark Steel brings you the Aristotle that history has forgotten; the one that liked a pretty girl, a shop full of beds and a KFC, and just maybe a drink as well.
Delving further, and more imaginatively, into the evolution of Charles Darwin than ever before, the Mark Steel Lecture takes this modern hero off the ten pound note and into the present day. We follow him onto the Beagle and into the bedroom, and worry for his sanity as he fashions a turtle out of mashed potato. A tortured figure whose distress eventually forced him to take to his bed and watch Animal Hospital and Countdown all day (probably), this is the show that tells you things about Darwin you never knew - including his opinion on the taste of Galapagos tortoise urine.
As he moved from Paris to London, Marx managed to leave a trail of uncleaned rooms and even more untidy relationships in his wake. Mark picks his way through the discarded Pot Noodle cartons and unexpected children to reveal the real Marx. You'll discover why the state of Marx's flat caused consternation amongst those sent to spy on him, and get to watch him doing his grocery shopping. Mark also explains what made Marx's theories so revolutionary and why Marx wasn't a Marxist.
Mark Steel turns up the volume on Beethoven with his tribute to a man who was the nearest eighteenth-century Vienna got to not only Jimi Hendrix, but also Captain Sensible. Unflinchingly exposing Ludwig’s anger management issues and his dependence on Ceefax’s 888 subtitle service, Mark Steel sets Beethoven in his revolutionary context and reveals the quirks of his character the history books gloss over. Taking in the revolutionary nature of the Freemasons, Haydn’s contractual similarity to Prince, Beethoven’s unusual fondness for semi-hemidemisemiquavers and his love-hate relationship with Napoleon, The Mark Steel Lectures once again combines unique reconstructions with inventive graphics to bring Beethoven right up to the minute.
Creator of some of the greatest works of art in human history, but at the same time barely able to finish them, Leonardo is possibly the most easily distracted genius who ever lived. Mark Steel gets close to some of Leonardo’s greatest works, and finds out what The Last Supper has in common with EastEnders. Packing in not just a life of Leonardo but also a brief canter through the political geography and the latest technological advances of the world he was born into, Mark begins by exploring the standards of great art and great beauty as they were before Leonardo truly made his mark. Then it’s a whistlestop tour round Italy as Leonardo builds a reputation both for genius and not doing what he’s paid for.
Like Dr Frankenstein himself, Mark Steel has taken the cold-cuts of the traditional TV lecture and brought it back to life with passion and electricity. Taking as its subjects both the book for which Mary Shelley is famous and the tragedy-filled life of the woman herself, the programme moves from England to Geneva and back in search of the spark that created the monster. Almost as if genetically programmed by the pioneering mother she never knew, and on whose grave she consummated her love for the poet Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley created an indestructible legend more relevant today than ever – as Mark Steel discovers with his customary wit and passion. Kenneth Branagh does not feature in this programme.
Surely Britain’s greatest unknown international revolutionary, best-selling author and hobbyist bridge builder, Norfolk born corset-maker’s son Thomas Paine wrote the Rights of Man and helped inspire the American War of Independence. Thereafter he became the Secretary for Foreign Affairs in a government that hated his country of birth. He then went to France and escaped the guillotine by accident, after having failed to sell a bridge he built over a field in London. One of Mark Steel’s great unsung radical heroes, this comedy lecture series shines a light on a little known (in Britain) hero on two continents.
Tracing her life from schooldays in radical Manchester to retirement in rural Essex, when Haile Selassie occasionally came to call, Sylvia Pankhurst the revolutionary and Rastafarian sympathiser is brought to life as only Mark Steel can. From a bed-in with Keir Hardie to Kill Bill style ju-jitsu, here’s everything you didn’t know about this pioneer of democracy. Recalling a time when Manchester was the most radical city in Britain, this latest instalment in Mark Steel’s comedy lecture series resonates with today’s human rights campaigners and anti-war radicals, as well as containing a short section revealing the best type of stone to smash windows with.
A great physicist but a lousy father, Einstein played with the nature of space and time as easily as he did his beloved violin. Mark Steel grapples with the fundamental nature of the Universe and Einstein’s dislike of socks to provide a comic guide to the essence of the most famous scientist in history. Surely the only television programme in history to explain special relativity with reference to both minicabs and Blake’s 7, this is Einstein in a nutshell, at nearly the speed of light
Join Mark Steel as he charts Cromwell’s course through British history; his election and resignation from parliament, the formation of his New Model Army, the overthrow and subsequent execution of the King, Charles I, the monumental shift of power from monarchy to parliament, the abolition of the House of Lords right through to the massacre at Drogheda. Oh, and the introduction of the first ever pineapple to Britain.
Join Mark as he charts Chaplin’s course through 20th century history, how through the initial success of the Little Tramp character he managed to negotiate the right to direct his own films and how this character came to be seen as a symbol of resistance to the regimented rules of modern society. He transformed the way comedy films were made, taking control of every aspect of the production process; he taught himself to read music so he could write his own film scores; he even insisted on having a pool of 21 trained studio dogs, all of whom were well versed in the art of comic timing...
Join the award winning comedian Mark Steel as he charts Descartes course through scientific history; his stint as a card shark in the Dutch army, his invention of the little 2, the symbol used to signify a squared number, his invention of the x and y used in algebra. Not to mention his numerous biological experiments that gave us first clear idea that the senses were linked to the central nervous system and his seminal work, ‘The Meditations’ in which he constructed a theory of the universe which instead of beginning with blind faith, insisted on the prominence of doubt as a starting point. Not bad for a bloke with a rubbish catchphrase.
Join Mark Steel as he charts Chaucer’s course through history, his appointments to the royal household, his kidnapping in France, his marrying into the aristocracy, and how through the Canterbury Tales he bequeathed to us the first written sign of an England that we’d recognise today.
Harriet Tubman, described widely as the ‘Moses of her people’ was instrumental in the efforts to abolish slavery in mid 19th century America. Born into a life of bondage, she was forced into work at five years of age and at 12 was horrifically injured by the plantation overseer when he threw a lead weight at her head. At 27 and buoyed by stories of slave rebellions emerging across the country, she escaped her Maryland plantation and headed Northwards where she knew there were strong groups of Quakers and anti slavery campaigners who were collectively known as the ‘Underground Railroad’. Join the award winning comedian Mark Steel as he charts Harriet Tubman’s course through American history; Her daring armed raids to rescue fellow slaves, her inclusion into the Underground Railroad network, her work with fellow abolitionist John Brown and her special meetings with Abraham Lincoln’s wife. The story of Harriet Tubman is a tale of one of America’s greatest war heroes, a woman who fought against a real axis of evil to strike a blow for freedom.
Walk down any high street in this country and chances are at some point you’ll see somebody wearing a Che Guevara t shirt. Most of whom have absolutely no idea who he was and what he stood for. Still, it’s a nice image, and he was handsome… Che Guevara was born in Argentina in 1928; initially he trained to be a doctor but became politically conscious and abandoned his vocation in order to travel across South America on the back of a motorbike. It was in Mexico in 1955 that Che met a young Fidel Castro who with his brother Raul had been exiled from his Cuban homeland and was preparing for an uprising there by training a crack squad of rebels in the Mexican countryside. This was Che’s calling. It’s what he’d been waiting his whole life for. It was his destiny. In this latest edition of his BAFTA nominated series of lectures, writer and broadcaster Mark Steel travels to South America and turns his attentions to the life and revolutionary times of Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, a man who started out on a motorcycle holiday, only to end up being made Foreign Minister of Cuba. Which of course is nice work if you can get it.
