Tristram Hunt on Josiah Wedgwood, the radical potter | A Drink with the Idler

Idler editor Tom Hodgkinson chats to historian and V&A Director Tristram Hunt about the Staffordshire potter, Josiah Wedgwood, and why he can be considered the "Steve Jobs of the eighteenth century".

Dr Tristram Hunt is Director of the Victoria & Albert Museum and one of Britain’s best-known historians. He served as MP for Stoke-on-Trent Central from 2010 to 2017 (when he led the campaign to save the Wedgwood Museum) and as Shadow Secretary of State for Education between October 2013 and September 2015. He was a senior lecturer in British history at Queen Mary, University of London, and has written numerous series for radio and television. His previous books include ‘The English Civil War At First Hand’, ‘The Frock-Coated Communist: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels’, ‘Ten Cities that Made an Empire’ and ‘Building Jerusalem: The Rise and Fall of the Victorian City’, between them published in more than a dozen languages.

His new book, ’The Radical Potter: Josiah Wedgwood and the Transformation of Britain’, is out now.

This conversation was recorded as part of the Idler’s weekly online event, A Drink with the Idler. The full recording is available to magazine and Academy subscribers via idler.co.uk. Visit the website to join.

Thank you to Smythson, our sponsors for this event.