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Author Adam Nicolson and producer/ director Claire Whalley introduce their new BBC Four series, The Century that Wrote Itself, and show clips from this intimate look at letters and diaries from the 17th century. The series traces our modern sense of self back to the time when ordinary people first took up the quill. At a time of great upheaval, writing was both a means of escape and of fighting for what you believed. Account books became confessionals, and letters weapons against the authorities. From an ambitious shepherd, to a Quaker woman imprisoned for her conscience, rising literacy allowed people to re-write the country’s future. And their own.

Nicolson is the author of many books on history, travel and the environment. He is winner of the Somerset Maugham Award and the British Topography Prize and lives at Perch Hill in Sussex. He is writing a book on Homer. Claire Whalley is managing and creative director of What Larks Productions, which produces high-quality arts, history and social documentaries. She has produced and directed a number of films including the Bafta-award-winning The Choir, Sissinghurst and Timewatch for the BBC and Meet the Amish for Channel 4.

Presented by BBC Four