Art that Made Us: Consumers and Conscience

The story of Britain in the 18th century, which saw an explosion of creativity and a country with enough money, from trade and conquest, to pay for it. Sculptor Thomas J Price visits Harewood House to see the elaborate Robert Adam-designed interiors, Joshua Reynolds portraits and Thomas Chippendale furniture that the slave trade paid for. This was also the great age of mockery, and artist Lubaina Himid reflects on William Hogarth's scabrous exposure of upper-class hypocrisies, while Stewart Lee analyses the cutting humour of A Modest Proposal, Jonathan Swift's bitter satire about the treatment of the Irish poor, with passages performed by Jason Isaacs