An evening’s TV

An evening curled up in front of the TV recently was filled with opportunities to “pervert reality”.

First up: a travel programme from the naval town on Dartmouth. In days gone by, captured ships would be towed into the port, and their contents auctioned. “How much am I bid for this fair young maiden,” perhaps? And what of the lasses found on seized ships belonging to the notorious ‘white slavers’?

My viewing continued with the first of a series discussing the Regency. Sir Thomas Lawrence gained something of a reputation, it seems, for illicit relationships with a number of the society ladies whose portraits he painted. Some of them were most certainly depicted with knowing, guilty smiles.

I wondered, though, about the ones who were dealt with in a different way. I’m imagining, let’s say, the youngest daughter of the Duke of Clarence; her father responded to Sir Thomas’s complaints that the young lady seemed unable to sit still whilst being painted by writing to him authorising him to “apply all necessary chastisement” should she be insufficiently compliant. Would those be tears in her eyes in the resulting depiction?

Finally, a programme with the rather bizarre idea of sending teenagers on a party holiday to Magaluff – whilst also, without their knowledge, shipping their parents out to the resort to secretly monitor what was going on. I’m sure the stepfather of the lass seen topless miming blow-jobs for strangers on a booze cruise would have taken far sterner action than the programme could show; faced with the footage she could scarcely argue as he took off his belt and made her bend over to be thrashed in her hotel room on the last night of the stay.

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