In Our Time (radio series)

The Gin Craze, first broadcast December 15, 2016 Social history at its most vivid: how 18th-century Britain switched from beer to cheap spirits, and how the panic that followed produced Hogarth's Gin Lane. Angela McShane, Judith Hawley and Emma Major trace the politics behind it, from William of Orange making Protestant Dutch gin the loyal drink to tariff changes that priced out everyday beer, then the crime, the moral alarm and the attempts to control it. A good first episode if you like history told through daily life, and a sharp lesson in how a moral panic takes hold.