Excess Baggage Australia - Art galleries in Britain & Ireland - Iceland
John McCarthy meets poet and author Lavinia Greenlaw who tells him about the designer William Morris's journeys to Iceland in the 1870s and how what he saw informed his radical socialism. She also compares his experiences with her own trip there in the wake of the financial crash. Novelist Niall Griffiths emigrated to Australia as a child with his family but they returned to Britain after a few years. He tells John about rediscovering his childhood haunts thirty years later and how modern Australia lived up to his memories. John also talks to art historian Christopher Lloyd who reveals that Britain's art galleries are full of overlooked masterpieces and that a trip to any part of Britain can be a journey of aesthetic discovery.
Producer: Harry Parker.