The Victorians are sexy!
When I lived and worked full-time in Britain in the 70s, “Victorian” was an epithet for hidebound, prudish and old-fashioned thinking. That’s all changed in the last year or two; the Victorians are sexy!
Britons have eagerly accepted recent academic reappraisals of the Victorian era. Self-reliance and enterprise were very strong features of Victorian Britain. Engineering, science, law, commerce, education, health care; you name it, the Victorians radically transformed it.
It might be nostalgia for a time when Britain was great. Or, if overheard conversations on the train are any guide, there’s a reawakening of entrepreneurial and creative spirit among the middle class, for many decades chained to the organisational employee treadmill. I’ve heard several people, and not just on the trains, say that they’re fed up with not having control of their work life, their savings and their opportunities. The chat about becoming self-employed or starting a business is higher than I’ve ever heard before. That’s strange in a recession, but maybe the disenchantment over recent events could have triggered a sea-change in British culture.
The spirit of Isambard Kingdom Brunel lives on.













