Dr Richard A Gaunt, Associate Professor in History at Nottingham University, takes us beyond many people’s senses of Georgian England as a place of tea-sets, lavish country houses, dancing, men in wigs, and ladies in bonnets. His talk goes behind the surface of these popular images to consider major social themes during the period. Buoyed by new sources of wealth and influence, Georgian England offered exciting new opportunities for getting and spending, social climbing, and town life, but it was a society of stark contrasts between rich and poor.