About this episode
Poverty and riots racked 19th-century rural England, but one eccentric Victorian cleric was convinced he had the solution – inventing a new language. Siân Rees introduces us to Reverend William Barnes, who developed a new version of English stripped of foreign words, which he was convinced would bind the nation together and return England to a state of harmony. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices