Heaven on Earth: a road trip through Medieval Burgundy
Heaven on Earth: a road trip through Medieval Burgundy
Lecturer: Dr Caroline Shenton
Settled by the Romans, who first brought wine and gastronomy to this most luscious of French regions, Burgundy is packed with stupendous and moving architectural wonders dating from the eleventh and twelfth centuries – many of them now World Heritage Sites. Autun, Vezelay, Fontenay, Pontigny and Cluny were spiritual service stations for crusaders, pilgrims and monks, profoundly influencing Western European art in the Middle Ages.
From the heavenly portals and sculpted capitals of the Côte-d’Or to the Maconnais, we will be taken on an armchair tour through this most gorgeous Romanesque terroir, and find out how those Benedictine abbeys and Cistercian monasteries in turn created some of the best wines in the world on their estates which we still enjoy today. Travel tips and tasting recommendations included!
Dr Caroline Shenton is an archivist and historian. She was formerly Director of the Parliamentary Archives in London, and before that was a senior archivist at the National Archives. Her book The Day Parliament Burned Down won the Political Book of the Year Award in 2013 and Mary Beard called it ‘microhistory at its absolute best’. Its acclaimed sequel, Mr Barry’s War, about the rebuilding of the Palace of Westminster, was a Book of the Year in 2016 for The Daily Telegraph and BBC History Magazine and was described by Lucy Worsley as “a real jewel, finely wrought and beautiful”.
Caroline was Political Writer in Residence at Gladstone’s Library in 2017, has appeared at the Cheltenham, Hay and Henley literary festivals and on BBC radio and TV. Caroline’s third book, National Treasures, will tell the extraordinary and sometimes hilarious stories behind the saving of London’s art and museum collections in World War Two.
Photo of Pontigny Abbey by Patrick Giraud. Licensed under CC. Attrib – Share Alike 1.0 licence