In my (tea) cups tonight on BBC4

Well, you wait all your life to be interviewed about tea-cups, and then it happens three times in quick succession.  I’m with C.S. Lewis when he said that ‘you can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me’, and tea is my favourite drink.  I also like tea-cups and ceramics as evidence of how people used to live, and tonight a new season called ‘Handmade in Britain’ begins on brilliant BBC4.

This season is not only about how ceramics and other objects can tell us about daily life in the past, it also showcases items from the Victoria and Albert Museum.

The first few programmes include the series ‘Ceramics – a Fragile History’ which begins tonight at 9 – you can see my interviews in episodes one (tonight) and two (9pm, Monday 17th October).  I particularly recommend the fascinating intercut interviews with Grayson Perry and Edmund de Waal that’ll crop up in episode three (9pm, Monday 24th November).  Also, in an embarrassment of riches, Lars Tharp’s ‘Treasures of Chinese Porcelain’ is on tomorrow night (9pm, Tuesday 11th October) and there’s an interview with me in that one too.

Long live BBC4!  Who else would devote four hours to the history of ceramics?  And much more exciting stuff to come.