Matthew Sweet

Available for over a year

One of the weighty and apparently immovable pieces of our mental furniture is the notion that Queen Victoria was a prude. Another is that the Italian Renaissance was a sunny dream where man was always the unapologetic measure of all things. In the fourth part of Men Only: An informal History of the Male Nude, the author and broadcaster, Matthew Sweet, confounds both of these notions. He focusses on a cultural exchange between Queen Victoria and the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Leopold II as well as examining a sixteen inch fig leaf, penectomies and Crystal Palace. Stay tuned! Producer: Zahid Warley First broadcast in February 2012.