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[Assistant] And if one takes the longest of views, single authors have not always existed, of course. It's doubtful that Beowulf was so composed. We talk as a Beowulf poet, but he was probably a they.


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[Assistant] Nor, as one looks far into the future, may single authorship be a permanent fact of our culture in, in time to come.


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[Assistant] But from our point of view, in our millennium and a half of English literature, single individual authorship is the rule. The writer writes as we all dream, alone. And as we all read of course usually, alone.


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[Assistant] Nonetheless, in the breakthrough romantic text that we're looking at today, two geniuses merge their, their genius. Gloriously. And they're also part of a larger group or a revolutionary cohort.


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[Assistant] Called at the time the Lake Poets, and that label derives from the mountainous, beautiful, watery wilderness of North West England.


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[Assistant] My native Alps, Wordsworth like to call the region around his village Grasmere.


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[Assistant] Nature and redefinitions of nature, what it is.


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[Assistant] Are at the heart, heart of the romantic revival.


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[Assistant] And nature, the English countryside, is no more beautiful than in Cumbria, Northumberland, Derbyshire, the lake country.


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[Assistant] Now, let me briefly summarize the lives of these two writers, Wordsworth and Coleridge, and the ways in which their poetry is intricate, intricately interwoven at the period of their maximum creativity, 1800.


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[Assistant] William Wordsworth was born in 1770 in the Lake District. He was the son of a lawyer to whom he seems not to have been very close, particularly after the death of his mother when he was eight. His father died five years later.


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[Assistant] According to the account given in, of his early life in his autobiographical poem, The Prelude,


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[Assistant] Young William was allowed to run wild in nature, which became for him a kind of mother. And this is a refrain in his poetry, which is, to use a technical term, pantheistic. God inheres in the natural world around one. God is in nature. Now Wordsworth's great autobiographical poem, The Prelude, opens.


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[Assistant] Notice the use of the term fostered in that, that opening.


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[Assistant] Mother Nature was to him a foster parent. This was an important conception for him. Now more formally, young William was educated at grammar school.


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[Assistant] Now there was much loneliness in his childhood. Something that he again dwells on in the prelude.


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[Assistant] Uhm, it's a kind of, what Keith's called, the egotistic sublime. Wordsworth is obsessed with himself, he's obsessed with Wordsworth, but this of course is part of the romantic project.


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[Assistant] Uhm, words were circumstances, early circumstances, rendered him, we may say, extraordinarily introverted, and solitude is a vital element in his psychological makeup.


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[Assistant] Another of, of, of Wordsworth's most famous poems, Daffodils, School Teacher's Favourite, opens, and pay attention, uh, if you would to the opening.


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[Assistant] I wandered lonely as a cloud that floats on high o'er vales and hills.


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[Assistant] When all at once I saw a crowd, a host of golden daffodils, beside the lake beneath the trees, fluttering and dancing in the breeze.


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[Assistant] Now, if he had been in company, would that vision have been as significant to him? Loneliness and creativity are at the heart of Wordsworth's poetry. And loneliness for him is a creative state.


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[Assistant] Now how to reconnect with society is one of the great problems in the Wordsworthian view of the poetic role, because the poet, of course, cannot stay forever outside, cannot stay forever by himself or herself.


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[Assistant] To return to our brisk sort of, uh, profile of the man himself.


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[Assistant] Wordsworth attended Cambridge University, which taught him little, but where he learned much and had his first major intellectual stimulus from a visit to France at the crest of the early revolutionary period in 1790. Bliss it was, he said, to be alive in that year, but to be young was very heavy.


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[Assistant] In France, over the next couple of years, he had a relationship with a young French woman, Annette Vallon, of whom we know little except that it was very important to the young revolutionary Wordsworth. There was a child. Who knows?


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[Assistant] French people today, unbeknownst to themselves, may have the blood of Britain's greatest romantic poet coursing through their veins. Child of course is illegitimate.


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[Assistant] In the opening years of the new century, the 1800s, Wordsworth settled in the Lake District with his sister, and in some sense his muse, Dorothy, and began to devote himself seriously to poetry. He was a poet by profession. Quite interesting that he had no other role in life than being a poet.


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[Assistant] In 1795, he'd met Samuel Taylor Coleridge, whose muse was both more philosophical and wilder than Wordsworth. Opium and Immanuel Kant, the great German philosopher, these in fact came together in Coleridge's makeup.


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[Assistant] The two men, Wordsworth and Coleridge, traveled in Germany together in the late 1790s. It meant a lot more to Coleridge than it did to Wordsworth.


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[Assistant] In fact, the drug was prescribed, opium was prescribed very freely as medicine, and was also available without prescription, uh, usually in the form of laudanum, which is opium mixed with alcohol.


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[Assistant] And, uh, courage became addicted to it.


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[Assistant] Now, the fruit of this relationship between Coleridge and Wordsworth was the collaborative volume, Lyrical Ballads. In 1798, it was reissued with a manifesto preface by Wordsworth in 1800, and again with an expanded introduction in 1802. These were called forth because it was a very influential volume.


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[Assistant] Now, it's arguably, although a classically slim volume of poetry, it is arguably the most influential such book in the whole of English literature. It was a bomb under the sedate establishment of verse, which had been erected so formally and so carefully by Dryden, Pope and Johnson, those Augustans that we looked at.


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[Assistant] Now, Lyrical Balance was originally published without names, as if it were a production not of individual talent, but of the spirit of the time, the Zeitgeist, as they say in Germany.


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[Assistant] Now Coleridge was also at this time living in the Lake District, close by Wordsworth. And his personal life, unlike Wordsworth's, Coleridge's that is, was sexually chaotic.


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[Assistant] And, you know, Wordsworth was always the stable one in this partnership, the good cop.


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[Assistant] Now Coleridge, we may say, supplied the spontaneous power. Wordsworth, the tranquility, the thinking, the reflection. That they were a perfect team, even though they


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[Assistant] Like many perfect teams, they couldn't stay together very long and they broke up.


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[Assistant] Wordsworth would never like Coleridge have created one of the greatest short poems in the language Kubla Khan under the influence of a narcotic dream. Under the influence of a drug.


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[Assistant] But then, unlike Coleridge, he would probably have finished the thing once it was so magnificently started. Coleridge just simply couldn't end it, because in fact the drug wore off, the dream wore off, and he couldn't get round to finding where he'd finished it. The inspiration was gone. Just to recall the magnificent opening of that poem I'm talking to, um, Kubla Khan, Coleridge's opium poem.


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[Assistant] In Xanadu de Kubla Khan, a stately pleasure dome decree, where alf the sacred river ran through caverns measureless to man, down to a sunless sea.


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[Assistant] So twice five miles of fertile ground with walls and towers were gurgled round, and there were gardens bright with sinuous rills where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree, and here were forests ancient as the hills, enfolding sunny spots of greenery. Well, he's really tripping there.


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[Assistant] Among Coleridge's more utopian projects was his pantisocratic community, based on free love and philosophical ideas. It was derived in large part from Mary Shelley's father, William Goblin, the idea for this. It failed utterly, as such communities typically do.


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[Assistant] Words of a Slater life was tranquil, corages disastrously, catastrophically unsettled and upheaved.


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[Assistant] Briefly, Wordsworth married in 1802 and thereafter his career followed a much quieter track into fame. A much quieter...


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[Assistant] Somewhat disillusioned and ultimately very conservative political view of the world took him over. His last years were passed as poet laureate loaded with honour.


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[Assistant] His great autobiographical poem, The Prelude, much revised, appeared in its final form a year after his death in 1850, and it is more properly a postlude than a prelude.


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[Assistant] Born in the late Augustan era, he died an eminent Victorian.


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[Assistant] But literary history identifies him as a giant of the Romantic revival. This was when he lived most as a poet in the 1790s.


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[Assistant] Courage's life was, as I say, much more disordered. Few lives have been as disordered. He left in his chaotic waker a magnificent collection of fragments, short works and prolegomena.


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[Assistant] Like Wordsworth, and inspired by the mysteries of his own ego, he compiled a magnificent autobiography, prose in his case, Biografia Literaria, the biography of a literary sensibility.


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[Assistant] It's a work which fuses Coleridge's amazing sensibility, towering intellect, and his extraordinary powers of criticism, and his feeling for poetry.


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[Assistant] Coleridge is, among his other achievements, the greatest theorist in English literature and a great critic, which Wordsworth wasn't.


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[Assistant] Coleridge died, wrecked by addiction, years before Wordsworth in 1834. And his greatest complete poem, which we'll be looking at in a few moments, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, was composed during his collaborative years with Wordsworth.


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[Assistant] Uhm, and it was completed, partly I think because of Wordsworth's being there alongside him, unlike the tantalizingly fragmentary Kubla Khan, which I was reading a few minutes ago.


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[Assistant] Wordsworth, in fact, was very good for Coleridge, but the relationship didn't last more than, at least in its kind of most...


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[Assistant] Creative, uh, form didn't last for longer than a couple of years.


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[Assistant] Now, let's look more closely at what I've been alluding to, that explosive volume.


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[Assistant] Lyrical ballads. Now, the title itself merits attention. Ballads.


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[Assistant] As was discussed in the Scott lecture, ballads are poetry of the folk, the people. They do not historically have single authors. They are the product of a community, a communal voice.


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[Assistant] Now lyrics on the other hand, songs, remember it's called lyrical ballads, may be thought aboriginally to be similarly authorless. Dig back for example into the cultural subsoil.


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[Assistant] Produced one of the richest harvests of ballad and song in North America referring to the blues. And you don't find, as it were, composers. What you find is unoppressed people.


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[Assistant] Now ballad revivals took fire across Europe in the late 18th century as, as, as that period rediscovered the primal pre-literary energies of literature. It was as if the poets of the time sank shafts like oilmen into a new source of fuel deep beneath the historical surface of their society.


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[Assistant] Now, the ballad revival also marked a desire to return to cleansing simplicities, the natural world of literature, away from the industrialization, the institutionalization, which was the bureaucratization, which was transforming, deforming their world. They wanted to get rid of the machine and the garden, and ballads was one way of doing that.


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[Assistant] Goethe and Schiller, great German figures, were ballad revivalists, and significantly Wordsworth and Coleridge were in Germany in the period running up to lyrical ballads.


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[Assistant] In Britain ballad collectors like Bishop Percy with his Reliques and Scott, uhm, with his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border had amassed a historical archive of British balladry and there were, there were traditions for poets like Wordsworth and Coleridge to draw on.


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[Assistant] This belief that the, at the dawn of the industrial age, poetry could return to the primal level of its history, the ballad, was of course, it was a fallacy. But, but romantic literature thrives on fallacies. And the most famous of course is what's called the pathetic fallacy. The notion that nature, this is pantheistic of course, that nature cares about us.


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[Assistant] The idea that an untrammeled state of nature was recoverable, Coleridge's Edenic Pantistocracy, for example, was one example of this, along with certain other ways of writing about it, was another fallacy. But nonetheless, these were fallacies which were, as it were, sort of ideologically necessary.


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[Assistant] And, and they had, these fallacies had sort of sublime literary results. Take one of Wordsworth's most loved and famous poems, the poem which is also, I think, his greatest anthem to his pantheism, Tintin Abbey.


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[Assistant] The situation is this, this is the scenario. The poet is returned to the country around the river. Why? After five long years of absence, this return to nature is a homecoming, we apprehend.


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[Assistant] On his return, the poet Wordsworth has a moment of transcendent vision. He's standing by a ruined abbey. Romantics love ruins almost as much as they love nature. And he has an overpowering sense of what he calls a motion and a spirit that impels all thinking things, all objects of all thought, and rolls through all things.


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[Assistant] It's wonderful, but hold on a second. Wiseworth is too honest a poet not to notice something else in the landscape, although he doesn't press the point, leaving the reader to pick it up. Let me quote again.


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[Assistant] Once again I see these hedgerows, hardly hedgerows, little lines of sportive wood run wild, these pastoral farms green to the very door, and wreaths of smoke sent up in silence from among the trees.


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[Assistant] Are they hermits, the poet says? Are they dwellers in the houseless woods?


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[Assistant] Alone? Solitary people? Well no, as it happens they're not. They're charcoal burners.


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[Assistant] What they're doing is they're creating the fuel which would, as it were, kickstart the first wave of the industrial revolution.


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[Assistant] As we said, was first published in 1798. Now, it was in this first appearance, uhm,


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[Assistant] The poems and nothing else, including this poem, Tintin Abbey, the poems were offered without any kind of...


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[Assistant] Apparatus or surrounding explanation. It was offered also namelessly as, as indeed true ballads came from nowhere, came from the people without, as it were, authorial ownership.


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[Assistant] Later editions of lyrical ballads do carry authorial names, and they also carry Wordsworth's pugnacious poetic manifesto.


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[Assistant] And in that manifesto we find the three revolutionary elements I mentioned earlier. Resistance to oppression, populism, and utopianism.


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[Assistant] What then was the oppression that he and Coleridge were, were opposing?


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[Assistant] It was, as Wordsworth contemptuously puts it, gaudy and inane phraseology. The poetic diction of the Augustans, in other words.


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[Assistant] Wordsworth, in an appendix, gives an example of what he means by gaudy and inane phraseology. It's from a poem which we've examined, and speaking for myself, which we've admired, Johnson's The Vanity of Human Wishes. This is what, uhm,


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[Assistant] He displaces it, past to the original, in the King James Bible.


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[Assistant] It was pros incident we've also had in mind in an earlier lecture.


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[Assistant] This is what the Bible says and what Johnson is drawing on in that passage from The Vanity.


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[Assistant] Go to the aunt thou sluggard, consider her ways, and be wise, which having no guide, overseer, or ruler, provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest.


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[Assistant] Are Wordsworth's objections and insults against Johnson fair? No, they're not. But when did a revolutionary worry about being fair?


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[Assistant] Now, to draw a broad distinction, in the lyrical ballads, Wordsworth took on the political agenda and Coleridge explored the primitive supernaturalism associated with balladry.


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[Assistant] Were, as he said, this in fact was his, his, his, if you like, mission.


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[Assistant] To choose incidents and situations from common life and to relate or describe them throughout as far as was possible in a selection of language really used by men.


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[Assistant] It's a simple statement, but in literary terms it's dynamite.


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[Assistant] Arguably the, the above, the above example from the King James Bible, Go to the Antenna Slugger, is the language really used by men? But can poetry realistically straitjacket itself in this way?


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[Assistant] Are not compromises necessary. Now Wordsworth, when pressed, wriggles somewhat. He says that the poet is a man of more than usual organic sensibility. A man who's thought long and deeply.


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[Assistant] An unusual man. Now, would such a man really confine his poetic expression to the language of the streets of the rural village? Ballads might do this, but sophisticated poetry of the present age in the 1800s?


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[Assistant] The poet is a man speaking to men, but a man, as Wordsworth says, endowed with a more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature.


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[Assistant] A man that is who is both common and uncommon. Ordinary and extraordinary. Now gifted as he is with words.


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[Assistant] Wordsworth cannot entirely disentangle himself from this contradiction.


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[Assistant] Nor shall we expect him to. The value of what he's doing is not in his logic, but in the poetry which his illogical thinking produces. And at its best, in the lyrical ballads, it is a poetry of a stunning purity and power. I want to give just one example. It's from a group of poems included in one of the later reprints of lyrical ballads. They're called the Lucy Paras.


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[Assistant] We do not actually know who Lucy was anymore than we know, for example, who is the girl who runs away with the raggle-taggle gypsies in the traditional ballad. What we do know, however,


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[Assistant] Is that the balladeer, not Wordsworth of course, loved her and she is dead. This is the poem.


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[Assistant] I slumbered in my spirit seal. I had no human fears. She seemed a thing that could not feel the touch of earthly years.


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[Assistant] This is the whole poem. It's breathtakingly simple. And yet the emotion compressed within its eight lines has nuclear power, it seems to me. I can see what Wordsworth was looking for in ancient balladry, this primal energy by which the simplest words come alive. And yet, and yet,


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[Assistant] Was there, was there not one word which stood out as I read it? Diurnal.


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[Assistant] Now Wordsworth could very easily have used the term daily. It would have meant the same and it would have been the language of a man really talking to men.


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[Assistant] He did not. He used gaudy and inane phraseology. He wanted his cake and to eat it too. Now we forgive the contradiction in the face of the beauty of what is produced.


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[Assistant] Courage's agenda was different. The rhyme of the ancient mariner is the first work in the lyrical ballads. He got the prime spot.


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[Assistant] In it, coverage compacts into short line, four line.


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[Assistant] Stands as an amazingly pregnant and mystical narrative of the condition of man in an incomprehensible natural universe. A universe where there is a religious order, but an order which is baffling, enigmatic, beyond the, beyond reason's capacity to understand, although mysteriously meanings may be sensed.


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[Assistant] Coleridge drew on gothic fiction on an extraordinary range of reading on theology, philosophy, and travel books. And with reference to the last, let me just quote a couple of quatrains describing the mariner's voyage into the arctic regions.


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[Assistant] Listen stranger, mist and snow and it grew wondrous coal and ice-mast high came floating by as green as emerald.


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[Assistant] And through the drifts of snowy cliffs descended this machine. Nay, shapes of men, they beasts we ken, the ice was all between. The ice was here, the ice was there, the ice was all around. It cracked and growled and roared and howled, like noises of a swan.


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[Assistant] Swound is, it means swoon. Now the spelling's antique, cold, not cold, and there are archaisms like swound I just mentioned. But the vividness is, I think, not merely photographic, but verbal technicolor. This is the quality of the poem.


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[Assistant] The narrative of the rhyme is very simple.


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[Assistant] The poet is going to church. A happy wedding's in prospect. But what is this? He's stopped on the way.


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[Assistant] It is an ancient mariner who stops him and he stoppeth one of three and then there's a


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[Assistant] The description, or the exchange between the two of them, By thy long grey beard and thy glittering eye, Now wherefore stoppest me? asked the poet.


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[Assistant] Turns out he's being stopped to hear an amazing story. How on a voyage past the line from frozen north to the tropics a strange adventure occurred.


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[Assistant] He, the ancient mariner, shot an albatross, the sea bird which follows ships. With its huge wingspan, the albatross is often taken as a symbolic of the crucified Christ. It is also a superstition. Sailor's superstition has it, very bad luck to kill an albatross.


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[Assistant] Why the mariner shot the albatross with his crossbow, we never know. But it has terrible consequences. The ship finds itself marooned in a windless ocean. The sailors thirst horribly. The sun blazes. Even the sea seems to rot around them.


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[Assistant] Nay breath, nay motion, as idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean. Water, water everywhere, and all the boards did shrink. Water, water everywhere, nay any drop to drink.


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[Assistant] The sailors cursed the mariner. We never know his name or anything about him other than what happened on his voyage. He went on a trip, shot an albatross.


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[Assistant] And eventually all the sailors die except for the mariner. And of course the million slimy things in the ocean.


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[Assistant] Finally, after strange visitations from spirits beyond man's understanding, the mariner has himself a spiritual conversion. He finally blesses these slimy sea things around the vessel, and miraculously he's freed. The skeleton, the bones of the albatross, which his sailors, other sailors have put around his neck, they drop from him. And he is reborn.


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[Assistant] He's reborn as aged and wizened and older and a wiser man. On the point of death, we assume, when he has his exchange with the, with the wedding guest.


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[Assistant] But nonetheless, before he dies, he must pass on his vision.


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[Assistant] And here he becomes a kind of version of the romantic poet. No one will listen to him. That's why, in fact, he had to grab the wedding guest or what, by the lapels and hold him while he tells the story.


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[Assistant] And I don't know anyone who reads it that doesn't ask. If we ask, what does it mean? Well, the answer is...


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[Assistant] Rime of the Ancient Mariner means what it is. It's a thing of huge power, indicating the new kinds of directions which poetry could, and thanks to Wordsworth and Coleridge, would take over the next two centuries. A revolution had happened, arguably. It is still happening.


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[Assistant] Lyrical ballads changed English literature forever.


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[Assistant] Hunt? Animals also yawn? Absolutely.


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[Assistant] During yawning, which is also called oscillation, we take a deep breath of air. Hence, a theory suggested that it helps our body bring in more oxygen and give out carbon dioxide.


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[Assistant] However, it is incorrect. A prevailing research suggests that yawning regulates our brain's temperature. Our brain works best at certain temperatures. But when we perform various activities throughout the day. Our brain gets exhausted and sleep deprived.


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[Assistant] Both exhaustion and sleep deprivation increase our brain's temperature.


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[Assistant] Hence, to cool it down, we yawn. While yawning, we stretch our jaw and propel blood through blood vessels to the brain. Along with this, we inhale air through our mouth and nose. Air cools the blood going to the brain which in turn decreases our brain's temperature.


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[Assistant] Why is it so cold and... in here? Where did my blanket go?


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[Assistant] I'll even call, pull, pull. So rather than all be pulling at different times, we all bang, but we gotta keep the power on.


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[Assistant] We lost the tug award to the Kiwis, so now we're serving a time penalty and we're on the back foot. Team Australia, they're one up. We're gonna have to pull together.


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[Assistant] Our biggest worry at the moment is when and where we're going to be able to eat and what we're going to be able to eat.


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[Assistant] Alright, we've found the shortcut. We've just left the other two taxis in front.


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[Assistant] Anything you see, just ask the question straight away. We both have to, we, I didn't actually even see him, so you at least saw him. So we've just got to relax and not, not get flustered and too excited.


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[Assistant] We ended up in the wrong location because we didn't read the clue properly. So now we're probably coming last.


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[Assistant] Roadblock. Who's got better traction? It's gotta be me.


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[Assistant] When we arrived at the roadblock, there's no one there, so there's a good chance we're in last place.


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[Assistant] It's very close. She's doing extremely well.


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[Assistant] Corner it! I said to him as we ran past, uh, just try and corner the sheep. Set back to the car.


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[Assistant] Lisa is very clear. She has broken down all the elements on the plate individually. The team is in good hands.


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[Assistant] I'm working on the main element which is the lamb. We have to brush them in goat's yogurt, portion them, vacuum seal.


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[Assistant] Wow, that dish looks unbelievable. This one is perfect. You've outdone yourself with this one.


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[Assistant] We will find your place.


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[Assistant] Yesterday, we didn't get any negative feedback from the judges. It's just that the other team did better.


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[Assistant] It's hard being captain when your team goes into elimination. I don't want today to be my last day in the MasterChef kitchen. I think that I have a lot more to show the judges.


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[Assistant] And then I see one that I buy it for my husband and my sons all the time. And uhm, I'm pretty confident with it. I'm gonna go number two please.


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[Assistant] The challenge today is to really hero that piece of meat. So I'm going to do a pretty simple dish today. It's such a beautiful piece of meat and it's got so much flavour that it doesn't need all the bells and whistles. I'm just going to trim it up and I'm going to cook it as a large piece of steak. I really love a ribeye with the bone in.


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[Assistant] I'm absolutely gonna follow Curtis' advice.


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[Assistant] Such a good idea to double rest the meat. Just keeps more of that moisture inside the meat.


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[Assistant] With my ribeye, I've rested it and it's time to plate up. I check the firmness of the meat.


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[Assistant] I love the corn and I know the salsa verde tastes good. So hopefully they will see that in this dish.


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[Assistant] I'm proud of what I've done today because I feel like I did the meat justice. But I know my dish is simple. There's only three elements. So everything has to be impeccable. Impeccable. Impeccable. Impeccable.


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[Assistant] To Côte d'Ivoire, we have char-grilled corn and some salsa verde.


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[Assistant] No, I was really happy when I heard that it was, it was a protein today.


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[Assistant] But then, it sunk in. And it's protein. It's what you love to cook. If you screw it up, then you're gonna go out on something you love.


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[Assistant] Ah, it's pan- shut up, pan-shetter, not pork-etter. I said the wrong name.


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[Assistant] This week, we are in South Australia. It's very exciting. Coming back to Adelaide. Can't wait to cook cooking in my hometown today.


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[Assistant] I love Adelaide. So, I need to make South Australia proud.


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[Assistant] A snapper with sautéed mushrooms and a fish.


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[Assistant] So I've done a pan-fried snapper with parsnip puree and honey and butter mushroom and fish jus.


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[Assistant] Wow, this is gonna be exciting. I'm used to cooking for big numbers, for friends and family, but as a night market, selling to public, this is the first time.


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[Assistant] For the main, I'm gonna make a nice South Indian curry for $7.50 with some rice and raita.


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[Assistant] It's called Madurai Chicken Curry. It's a district in South India where my grandparents came from. So I'm trying to replicate that dish here.


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[Assistant] I'm looking at 80 to 100 grams of chicken for each customer. So based on 100 customers, I'm looking to break down at least 10 chickens.


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[Assistant] If there's 100 people buying from my store, that is enough.


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[Assistant] For the main, we are making an Indian curry with some rice and raita.


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[Assistant] For the dessert, we are doing Indian donuts with cardamom and rose water syrup.


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[Assistant] Less than an hour left. All the spices are in the wok. My chicken is cooking.


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[Assistant] So, things are looking very comfortable.


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[Assistant] Uh, I cook 10 kilos of chicken. So, uh. It looks scant. Okay. Matt is worried that I don't have enough chicken.


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[Assistant] But I have grouped for big groups in for my family and school events. Based on my calculation, this should be enough to serve easily 100 people.


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[Assistant] So, I'm gonna stick with the plan and this will keep me and Riz away from the border.


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[Assistant] I need to think of something else to set to get as many customers as possible until the last second. Me and Rhys, we are in danger.


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[Assistant] Uh, we have a lot of time. So, since there's a lot of customers, we're gonna cook up some banana fritters with the rose water syrup.


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[Assistant] We have decided to sell banana fritters for $5.


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[Assistant] If I can begin on a personal note, uhm, I've devoted my professional life to the study of English literature.


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[Assistant] And from time to time I ask myself, you know, why did I do it? But more important, was it worth doing? Is it worth, as it were, spending years and years and years looking at this effectively, this kind of entertainment?


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[Assistant] And it seems to me there is a justification in that literature expresses or, as it were, embodies.


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[Assistant] The noblest aspirations, the finest articulations of idealism which a culture, a society has, that, that for me justifies it.


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[Assistant] But in an earlier lecture on Afrobane, I noticed a large, in fact one could go further than that, say a shameful vacancy in English literature, as we've been looking at it over the centuries, and as it's canonized in our curricula, in our educational programs. Now that vacancy was the place where women authors should be.


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[Assistant] Now, as we move through the 18th century into the 19th century, that, that hole is gradually filling in.


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[Assistant] Women writers, thank heavens, are beginning to make their presence felt. One feels a certain kind of emancipation, long before political emancipation, long before social emancipation, long before professional emancipation, but nonetheless, women's voices are being heard.


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[Assistant] Is where writers of colour should be. Those multitudes who...


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[Assistant] Even at this early stage of imperial growth, our laboring, well, slaving, what, what, why mince our words, for the English crown, and the English state, and the English people, white people.


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[Assistant] Now, there've been glimpses of dark pigmentation in literature. We've actually seen them on the edges and sometimes near the front of stage. Othello, for example.


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[Assistant] Man Friday in, in, in Robinson Crusoe and Oro Nuku.


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[Assistant] But the first major author whose skin is black and whose background is that of the enslaved masses and who writes about them on an equal standing with any other writer of the period is the subject of this lecture. And his name is Olorda Equiano.


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[Assistant] Now, Equiano is, and I stress this point, an author who merits our attention primarily by virtue of his merits as a writer. Principally, an autobiographer.


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[Assistant] Equiano's story, his narrative, is himself. And that story is both gripping in its narrative outline


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[Assistant] In its plot, and it's wonderful. And it's wonderfully well told.


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[Assistant] Now, Ecoiano's account of his life and his experiences and his opinions


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[Assistant] I'm echoing Tristram Shandy of course, was widely circulated in the abolition movement which under William Wilberforce


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[Assistant] Successfully abolished the slave trade. I think there's a slight kind of dishonesty there because it abolished the trade, the movement of human cargo from Africa to the colonies, but not the use of slaves, principally in the West Indian colonies, which were very


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[Assistant] At this period. I'll say a bit more about that later. So in fact there were still slaves, but you couldn't move them across the ocean.


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[Assistant] Wilberforce's reform was carried through in 1807 and in 2007 there have been celebrations of that. Wilberforce was coming of course from the evangelical wing of English society.


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[Assistant] What, which in fact brought about numerous reforms throughout the 19th century belatedly, uh, as I say the abolition of, of the slave trade. Now,


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[Assistant] Equiano's major publications were not generally known to later generations, even in Britain.


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[Assistant] Until a company of pioneering academics, uh, in the 1960s, publicized and made them in fact sort of necessary reading for anyone who considers themselves well-read. I'm very proud of the fact that, uh, that was done primarily by colleagues of mine at the University of Edinburgh in the 1960s. I mean, sometimes you have to move.


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[Assistant] Uhm, it was done initially under the aegis of what in Britain was called Commonwealth studies. Commonwealth was the word that they used after Empire was no longer fashionable and is now termed post-colonial scholarship. He's saying a lot about that when we come to the modern period. Equiano's works, but principally his autobiography, are now regarded as classics.


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[Assistant] Olaudah Equiano, he was also known, uh, though it was not his birth name, as Gustavus Vassa.


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[Assistant] In his autobiography, in his narrative, he calls it Esaka.


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[Assistant] It was then a part of the Abyssinian Empire. Africa has been owned by external states ever since recorders history.


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[Assistant] Equiana's father was a village elder, a governor, a local dignitary, a chief.


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[Assistant] He was also a slave owner, but after the fashion of the country, a kind master. A kind of, as it were, not an oppressive or cruel slave owner, and certainly not a slave trader. Now, by his own account,


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[Assistant] And, uh, it does have a ring of authenticity, it seems very trustworthy. Equiana was brought up in a condition of rural simplicity and happiness, with numerous siblings. Now, as he described it, it wasn't quite Edenic, it wasn't Adam and Eve, but it was innocent.


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[Assistant] And is certainly innocent of the upheavals which were shaking Europe at this period and shaking the Indian subcontinent and North America. All this during the second half of the 18th century when what was called a civilized world, one can question that term, was reorganizing itself more drastically than ever before.


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[Assistant] This is part of Equiana's description of his early life, before in fact he was ripped out of it and plunged into horror and the hellish conditions of slavery.


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[Assistant] As we live in a country where nature is prodigal of her favors, are once a few and easily supplied.


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[Assistant] Of course we have few manufacturers. They consist for the most part of calicoes, earthenware, ornaments, and instruments of war and husbandry.


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[Assistant] But these make no part of our commerce, the principal articles of which, as I observed, are provisions. In such a state, money is of little use.


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[Assistant] It's quite interesting. He's obviously studied the work of the great economists and thinkers, philosophers of the 18th century.


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[Assistant] In the early description of his childhood, Equiano stresses the high standards of virtue, cleanliness, abstemiousness and general decency which, which obtained, uh, throughout that village society where he was born and in which he grew up, at least until he was 11 years old. What he's doing


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[Assistant] In this, rhetorically, is opposing conventional imagery of savagery. Such as one finds, for example, in Robinson Crusoe.


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[Assistant] Where the natives are the most bloodthirsty of cannibals and just waiting for the white man to come and civilise them, that's the best hope they have.


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[Assistant] There was an abolitionist medal, a very famous one, which put out, which was put out, which was circulated at the period, which had underneath the inscription the motto, Am I not a man and a brother, and a depiction of a slave in chains.


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[Assistant] Equiano's account, his early account, makes the Igbo seem nobler, brothers, even, than those who cast that medal and circulated it among the abolitionist movement.


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[Assistant] Well, to return to the narrative, still a child around 11 years old, Equiana was kidnapped while playing with his sister and carried off to be a slave.


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[Assistant] The description of how he was captured gives a good idea, I think, of the overlays of high Augustanism in his literary style and at the same time the extraordinarily powerful and moving tale he's telling us. This is the description of his capture.


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[Assistant] I was trained up from my earliest years in the art of war. My daily exercise was shooting and throwing javelins. And my mother adorned me with emblems after the manner of our greatest warriors.


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[Assistant] In this way, I grew up till I was turned the age of 11, when an end was put to my happiness in the following manner.


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[Assistant] Generally, when the grown people in the neighbourhood were gone far into the fields to labour, the children assembled together in some of the neighbour's premises to play.


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[Assistant] And commonly, some of us used to get up a tree to look out for any assailant or kidnapper that might come upon us. For they sometimes took those opportunities of our parents absence to attack and carry off as many as they could seize.


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[Assistant] One day, as I was watching at the top of a tree in our yard, I saw one of those people come into the yard of our next neighbor, but one, to kidnap. There being many stout young people in it. Immediately on this I gave the alarm of the rogue, and he was surrounded by the stoutest of them, who entangled him with cords so that he could not escape till some of the grown people came and secured him.


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[Assistant] But, alas, ere long it was my fate to be thus attacked and to be carried off when none of the grown people were nigh.


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[Assistant] Uh, initially, uhm, he's an African slave, four Africans among his own people. Like those his father owned. But...


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[Assistant] He, it was a slave at the coast that he first encountered white people and it inspires one of the most vivid sections of the narrative because these white people, these first, these first white faces he's seen strike him as monsters, demons, inhuman. This is how he describes it.


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[Assistant] The first object which saluted my eyes when I arrived on the coast was the sea and a slave ship which was then riding at anchor and waiting for its cargo, the cargo of human beings.


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[Assistant] These filled me with astonishment, which was soon converted into terror when I was carried on board. I was immediately handled and tossed up to see if I was sound by some of the crew. Treated like cattle in other words.


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[Assistant] And I was now persuaded that I'd gotten into a world of bad spirits and that they were going to kill me. Their complexions too differing so much from ours. Their long hair and the language they spoke, which was very different from any I'd ever heard, united to confirm me in this belief. Indeed, such were the horrors of my views and fears at the moment.


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[Assistant] If 10,000 worlds had been my own, I would have freely parted with them, all to have exchanged my condition with that of the meanest slave in my own country.


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[Assistant] He's going to a worse condition of slavery. These white devils with their red faces and loose hair must be cannibals, he assumes. They're going to eat him.


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[Assistant] It is they who are the inhuman savages. He is human, not they. He faints with shock, horror, fear and despair.


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[Assistant] The description of the middle passage is the most affecting and horrifying and it has to be said the most interesting section in the book. This is how he describes it.


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[Assistant] I was soon put down under the decks, and there I received such a salutation in my nostrils as I had never experienced in my life, so that, with the loathsome-ness of the stench and crying together, I became so sick and low that I was not able to eat, nor had I the least desire to taste anything.


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[Assistant] I now wished for the last friend, Death, to relieve me.


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[Assistant] For white slavers, white traders in black human cargo,


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[Assistant] Slavery was a profitable and very necessary in economic terms line of international commerce.


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[Assistant] To give a, to give some idea of how profitable it was, at the time of the American Revolution in the mid-1770s, British troops and forces, largely mercenaries, were moved to the West Indies.


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[Assistant] To protect the rich plantations there which were worked by black slaves away from the rebellious American colony. The French were threatening these West Indian possessions.


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[Assistant] The calculation was made in London that the plantations of these islands were more important, were worth more to the crown than what would eventually become the independent United States of America.


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[Assistant] And what made the West Indian colonial property so valuable, of course, was slave labour, which produced the sugar and other commodities, for which there was a huge demand in Europe, and which was unbelievably profitable. Building the Ameri-, building the, if you like, the financial base of the British Empire on, it has to be said, human exploitation.


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[Assistant] Well, initially taken captive and enslaved by fellow Africans, Equiano was sold on a number of times. Just like a piece of money he passed from hand to hand.


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[Assistant] Eventually he was purchased by white slavers and transported to Barbados.


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[Assistant] Work in the sugar plantations required muscle. It required a certain kind of physical development. And Equiano, and portraits confirm this, was physically slight. He was very, very clever, but he wasn't a big man.


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[Assistant] And work in the fields would probably have killed him very quickly and that would have meant a write-off of his value to his owner.


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[Assistant] He eventually, uh, found himself in, in a colony of, of Virginia. The slaves were among the most traveled people in the world at this time, passing around all over the globe, though in fact it was anything but tourism. And in the colony,


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[Assistant] Uh, in Barbados and Virginia, he, well, in Virginia principally, he was bought by a Royal Navy officer, Michael Pascal.


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[Assistant] Pascal renamed him Gustavus Vassa. You remember how Crusoe, in order to establish his ownership of Man Friday, gives him a name. Man Friday. Doesn't matter what the name is. The importance is that it is, it is Robinson Crusoe who christened him.


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[Assistant] And Equiana's new master, Pascal, called him Gustavus Vassa in honor, surreally enough, of Gustavus I, the much-admired King of Sweden, who seemed to some extent a liberator of that country. The irony seems to have escaped, uh, this, this, this naval officer. Now,


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[Assistant] Equiano was the personal slave of this man, Michael Pascal. He was in his, as he was part of his entourage.


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[Assistant] And with, and since, since Pascal was in the Navy, Equiano also traveled extensively and, and he became himself a trained able-bodied seaman. He was very quick at picking things up. Not least, of course, picking up eventually, uh, the skills of authorship.


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[Assistant] But, uh, initially he's now a mariner, he's now a sailor. Under the royal flag of England.


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[Assistant] Now, one of the intermittent wars with France was going on at the time. And Equiano fought the French, loyally, you know, for the King of England, manning his master's ship's guns. He was a powder monkey, if you can imagine it. Someone had to stick the powder down the barrels, and then the cannonball, and then you'd light the fuse, and, uh, you were away.


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[Assistant] Equiano endeared himself by loyal service to his master. He seems to be a particularly lovable and nice man, incidentally. That's by the way.


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[Assistant] And when they made port in England, uh, eh, Pascal sent him to school to learn how to, to read and write, in English of course.


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[Assistant] So in fact, Equiano, it'd be interesting to know what language he was thinking of. What language did he dream in at this period of his life? We'll never know. But he learned English very well. Better than most, as it happens, of the English population at the time.


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[Assistant] Now what Pascal was doing was highly unusual, and was generally reckoned by slave owners to be somewhat dangerous. Um, literacy was what was called at the time that edge tool, like a sword or a knife, it had a sharp edge. It rendered slaves restless, discontent with their lot, and potentially rebellious, which was a bad thing.


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[Assistant] In, in Bains' Orinuku, Afro-Bains' Orinuku, it is, it is the, the, the prince's superior mind and intellect, which inspires him to start an uprising. If, if in fact he'd been ignorant, he wouldn't have done it. So you keep them in ignorance, that's a way of some extent of, of keeping the, the population under control.


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[Assistant] Equiano at this period also became a devout Christian.


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[Assistant] Uhm, and he persuaded his master to let him be baptized so he might go to heaven.


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[Assistant] And, and church registers record that Equiano was duly baptized in a church near Westminster. Westminster, of course, the mother of parliaments and the epicenter of the English Empire and where there's poisonous.


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[Assistant] Slavery was authorized, if you like, another historical irony. He was baptized in February 1759.


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[Assistant] Now, heaven might be possible for Equiano when he died, but freedom in life wasn't.


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[Assistant] Nor was he given his share of the prize money, which Captain Pascal, he'd been promoted by this date, which Captain Pascal's ship had won in the war. Normally what happened was that if you took another ship, uh, you got a portion of the value of that ship and it was divided throughout the crew. But Equiano, being a slave, didn't get his share.


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[Assistant] Now, as was the fate of slaves, inevitably he was sold on yet again.


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[Assistant] This time into the Caribbean. Now, as I said earlier, this was the jewel in England's imperial crown.


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[Assistant] But Equiano was that remarkable thing. He was an African slave who could read and write English. And if necessary, he could navigate a ship. He had all sorts of skills which he'd picked up. Very, very, in a very adept fashion. Uhm, in what had been already a very remarkable life.


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[Assistant] And given his, his kind of abilities, he was too valuable to work under the overseer's whip in the sugar fields.


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[Assistant] Equiano gives a graphic and certainly first hand account of the extraordinary mixture, not merely of brutality and callousness but of calculation and commercial ruthlessness with which the slave trade was conducted, particularly in the British West Indies.


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[Assistant] As I say, that was the most profitable and the most extreme of the slave-driving colonies.


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[Assistant] And it, it, it embodied an extremity of inhumanity, which amazingly was actually written into law as the West India Code. And effectively what this meant was no plantation owner could be held guilty for whatever he chose to do to his slaves. He could do whatever he liked, and he was above the law. It was inevitably a he, I have to say. This is what Equiana writes.


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[Assistant] Shocking as this and many more acts of the bloody West India Code at first view appear, how is the iniquity of it heightened when we consider to whom it may be extended?


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[Assistant] Mr. James Tobin, a zealous labourer in the vineyard of slavery, that's ironic, gives an account of a French planter of his acquaintance in the island of Martinico who showed him many mulattoes working in the fields like beasts of burden and he told Mr. Tobin these were all the produce of his own loins and I myself have known similar instances


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[Assistant] Tray reader, are these sons and daughters of the French planter less his children by being begotten on a black woman?


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[Assistant] I've often seen slaves, particularly those who are meagre, that's thin, in different islands, put into scales and weighed, and then sold from throppence to sixpence or ninepence a pound.


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[Assistant] My master, however, whose humanity was shocked at this mode, used to sell such by the lump.


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[Assistant] And at or after a sale, it was not uncommon to see negroes taken from their wives, wives taken from their husbands, and children from their parents, and sent off to other islands, and wherever else their merciless lords chose, and probably never more during life to see each other.


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[Assistant] Oftentimes my heart has bled at these partings when the friends of the departed have been at the waterside and with sighs and tears have kept their eyes fixed on the vessel till it went out of sight. Beautifully written.


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[Assistant] Very poignant. And again, one feels that, that Equiano is so much more human than his owners, than the, as it were, the society which had been brutalized by slavery. Slavery, he intimates


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[Assistant] Brutalizes the slavers more than it brutalizes the slaves. I think he's right about that.


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[Assistant] Now, Equiano was luckier, if one can use that word in this context, uhm, than those he's describing here. He was eventually bought by a Quaker merchant, Robert King of Philadelphia. Now,


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[Assistant] King had a, a use, had many uses for Equiana's extremely unusual abilities, principally in matters of inventory. He was very good at counting, very good at keeping, keeping catalogues of, of, of property. And the Quakers were an enlightened sect.


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[Assistant] In England, they were leaders in the abolitionist movement. But in the colonies, you know, neither Philadelphian brotherly love nor the Quaker doctrine forbade the ownership and exploitation as property of fellow human beings. But King, who as I say was a


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[Assistant] A rather better, uh, owner than, than any with a possible exception of Pascal that Equiano had, had previous experience. King promised that if and when Equiano could repay his 40 pounds purchase price, just think of the impertinence of that 40 pounds for a human being. Anyway, if Equiano could repay that money, which King had paid out of course, he, he could receive his, his manumission or freedom.


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[Assistant] Now we've now reached some, we've now reached 1765 and Equiano is around 20 years old.


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[Assistant] A good master, by the standards of the time, King further educated Equiano, instructed him in, yet further into the Christian faith with his Quaker inflections, and enabled him, by trading, to earn the necessary sum for his freedom, forty pounds. And


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[Assistant] At this point, Equiana resolved it would be unwise to remain in the American colonies as a freed black man. They were at risk and generally resented. Uh, he was almost caught himself.


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[Assistant] And carried off again to be a slave in the southern regions of the colony.


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[Assistant] And there he could expect no owner as mild or as enlightened as Mr. King.


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[Assistant] Now, he was an accomplished merchant or trader in his own right.


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[Assistant] And Equiano traded for a number of years, he may even have traded in slaves, we don't know about that, before he allied himself wholeheartedly with the emergent abolitionist movement.


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[Assistant] Now this movement was sponsored by English evangelicals, non-conformists, and Quakers, uh, to a large part, whose idiom Equiano knew well.


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[Assistant] Women were also a major force in the abolitionist movement in Britain as well as in America. Equiano now in England.


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[Assistant] He must have been among the most traveled men, incidentally, of his century.


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[Assistant] Equiano gave speeches, he preached, and he married in 1792 an English woman, Susanna Cullen.


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[Assistant] And he became a leading figure in the abolitionist movement. Not by virtue of having suffered, but by virtue of being able to articulate and express and describe those sufferings.


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[Assistant] Uh, with an eloquence and a literary skill which was greater I think probably than almost anyone else at the time.


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[Assistant] It was Equiano who publicized the case of the, the slave ship called Zong in which 133 slaves were thrown overboard to drown in their chains for the insurance money.


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[Assistant] That was the kind of thing that went on. And the kind of thing that he...


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[Assistant] protested against. And he, he did in fact help change history. Very few writers can be said to have done that, but Equiano was one of them.


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[Assistant] In 1789, with the help of noble patrons, including two senior members of the royal household and rich philanthropists, Equiano published his great work, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olorda Equiano or Gustavus Vassa, the African.


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[Assistant] I think that last word was a proud affirmation of what he was.


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[Assistant] Now the book enjoyed a lively sale and set him up for life. It can claim to be, I think, the first important slave narrative in English literature.


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[Assistant] But the style, as the first paragraph makes clear, is Johnsonian, not for Johnsonian, to the core. Let me quote it.


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[Assistant] I believe it is difficult for those who publish their own memoirs to escape the imputation of vanity.


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[Assistant] Nor is this the only disadvantage under which they labor. It is also their misfortune that what is uncommon is rarely, if ever, believed. And what is obvious we are apt to turn from with disgust and to charge the writer with impertinence.


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[Assistant] I mean, the diction there is Latinate. There's a wonderful use of antithesis. He inserts the word vanity into that first sentence. As I say, this, this in fact is, is Augustan.


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[Assistant] Now, recent scholarship has rendered parts of Evett Quirano's autobiography dubious. It's been suggested, this is a matter of great dispute, that he might conceivably have been born in the American colonies in what's now South Carolina. As I say, there's debate about this.


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[Assistant] Uhm, in the context that in his first sentence, in his first sentence, he insists that his story is genuine, it's a debate which is worth conducting.


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[Assistant] But what is clear is that the principal section, from his becoming Pascal's slave onwards, that this can be authenticated by documentary record. In fact, he's telling the truth. It is a truth-telling memoir.


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[Assistant] And even if the early descriptions of his childhood are second hand.


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[Assistant] Those descriptions are true for thousands of others taken by force from Africa to work in the British colonies.


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[Assistant] Now moving to the last phase, uhm, Equiano's married life was evidently happy.


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[Assistant] And he was at last a free man, and a celebrated free man. He was a celebrity in England. And one's glad of that. It must have been some restitution, some compensation.


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[Assistant] The horrible experiences and sufferings which have been inflicted on him.


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[Assistant] Last phase of his life was unhappily short. There were two daughters to his, his marriage, but Susanna died in 1796, aged just 34, and Equiano followed his wife just one year later, aged probably about 52.


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[Assistant] It's not known where he's buried, although he did leave a sizeable fortune to his surviving daughter. Now, in conclusion,


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[Assistant] I'm conscious of a certain embarrassment in appropriating O Lord our Equiano for English literature.


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[Assistant] Many anthologies include him as an American writer by virtue of his long periods of enslavement in that country.


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[Assistant] And of course by, by origin, and as the early sections of his history make clear, he's a Nigerian writer. He belongs to his own continent, which is not Europe.


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[Assistant] The fact that we have this awkwardness about who owns him, this uncertainty, witnesses to one of the cruelest and most indelible and objectionable facts of slavery, which I stress and which he makes clear is one of the most horrible things man can do to man.


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[Assistant] It uproots you. It robs you of the basic fabrics of your identity.


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[Assistant] To, to, to, as it were, sort of, make us read his, his work by virtue of the quality of, of, of what he writes. And he does write, I would suggest, in, in the highest manner of, of literature current in, in the eighteenth century. He writes like the best of, of the Augustans.


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[Assistant] It creates a rather odd effect, but there's no question in my mind that Equiano handles his prose instrument, the English language and the devices of English prose narrative, like a master.


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[Assistant] In language and literary expression, no writer of the period is less the slave. And it has to be said, in the light cast by his true history on the fictions of Defoe and Bane, those works, Bromson Crusoe and Oro Nuku,


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[Assistant] Which we've looked at, fine as they are, they do look momentarily a little shabby.


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[Assistant] When one looks again at Man Friday, one thinks, not quite shame on you, Daniel the Foe.


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[Assistant] If Daniel Defoe, if only you'd lived to read Equiano's narrative, you would have changed that section of your novel. At least, we hope you would have done.


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[Assistant] The dish I'm gonna make today is a fig and goat's cheese tart. So the first thing I need to do is get on to making the pastry.


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[Assistant] Uh, had a bit of a disaster with my pastry. Look a little frozen.


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[Assistant] At this point in time, I'm thinking pastry perhaps wasn't the best way to go. I probably should have got my pastry into my individual moulds before I even got it in the fridge, but it's too far into the cook. I just have to keep going and put it together like patchwork.


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[Assistant] Once I've got my filling done, I get on to adding the figs. Pour in the mix and then I crumble some of the feta over.


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[Assistant] I've only got one, so fingers crossed that this works. Bad news everyone, only 20 minutes left, 20 minutes to go!


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[Assistant] Waiting on this tart to cook is killing me. Almost thinking I'm gonna need to get it out.


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[Assistant] I just have to quickly drizzle it with some of the beautiful Ligurian honey that we've been given. It's just going to give it a little bit more sweetness.


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[Assistant] The pantry is like a plague of locust is sweeping through it because there's going to be hundreds and hundreds of diners coming tonight and we're going to have to feed them all. Everything is going off the shelves at a hundred miles an hour.


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[Assistant] That's true. Okay. Gary's right. It's gonna take way too long to mince that meat. So we need to move on to plan B.


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[Assistant] So Chloe's now onto the coleslaw and I'm working on the nectarines for our sweet dish. The nectarines are going to be baked in the oven until they're nice and soft. But the penny drops.


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[Assistant] I'm just wondering whether we just completely change this because of the other new session. Yeah. Do we change it and do something else? Okay.


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[Assistant] I'm stressed to the max. We need to come up with the difference we dish, but I'm not thinking straight. Oh, Jesus. Think, think, think.


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[Assistant] This is all a blur for me. We're running out of time. I can't think of a thing.


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[Assistant] There's hundreds of diners going to come tonight. It's quite daunting, especially because the team consists of Chloe and I.


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[Assistant] It's been such a huge day already. There's just two of us having to cook for hundreds of people.


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[Assistant] We've got to get the coleslaw done, we've got to get the dressing on. I think that's going to have to do harm. The coleslaw could have been better, but we just had to keep moving so that we can get stuff out to these hungry people.


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[Assistant] Your mothers have taught you well. You had a stressful time getting this food prepared, but when I see the first sliders go out, it's actually a huge relief. There we go, sir. And a strawberry and cream. Enjoy.


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[Assistant] The bling boys. I've worked with actually quite a bit in these team challenges and I know we work really well together and we're both wearing the pins so it's gonna be a really great team today.


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[Assistant] We gotta keep it simple. And we need to be able to serve heats at once.


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[Assistant] Uhm, yeast. But it's my yeast. I've got a really good donut idea and I want to kind of flavour it with Indian flavours as well.


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[Assistant] I'm literally heartbroken because that's not a lot of time at all.


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[Assistant] So we need to start to think on our feet a bit and think of what we can do to get a bit more money coming in.


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[Assistant] Take its place, as you are heavier. Ha ha ha!


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[Assistant] I'm on some nice legs, let's go! I noticed a young fella there, and uh, he had some clues there. Roadblock. Who's ready to crack the code?


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[Assistant] So Johnny went straight for me. Us is the puzzles guy. I thought I'd better crack the code. Oh, I got up there and the girls were actually already up there.


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[Assistant] And then go down and there was a code wall, like with the symbols and letters. I had to write it down in Russian. And I thought I'd nailed it and I said to the old Capitan, Procrastine, I think of broken code, and he sort of gave me a nod and then he gave me a shake. Yeah. Correct? So he sort of gave me the yes no. The old yes no. I have to start again.


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[Assistant] After a couple more yes-no's, he finally gave me the yes-yes.


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[Assistant] I was at the hall where we had to perform this traditional Russian dance. We chose our instructor and uh, he stitched me up a beauty. We had to go and learn the dance. I looked like a giant tickle meow-mow who was about to come on the Muppet Show. I looked ridiculous.


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[Assistant] Don't know if they're gone, just they had to go and search coats. Did they? Okay, maybe.


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[Assistant] As far as teams ahead of us, we have no idea. We know there's three teams behind us for sure.


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[Assistant] What are we going to do now? One-Horned Buffalo stole all our weapons.


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[Assistant] I used to steal things, but I know now that stealing is wrong.


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[Assistant] However, I will steal that metal ring because I need to save the Tang Monk. You all wait here.


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[Assistant] Everything I know about Portugal is Nando's.


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[Assistant] The only time I really ever see Jarrah sing is about 10 to 15 beers deep at the pub. Do you wanna just go over there with us? Usually to cold chisel. Just quieter.


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[Assistant] It sounded like a Portuguese traditional song sung by an Australian bogan. We don't want to sound anything like that.


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[Assistant] Okay. We thought, this is our opportunity to get ahead. Let's nick over to dry and have a crack at that.


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[Assistant] So once we left the wet part of the detour, we went over to dry. Hey!


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[Assistant] We're still counting. We have to remember all these figures in our head and it was just like a big jumbled up mess. Oh my f-


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[Assistant] It's just so hard. We were getting frustrated. So we thought, let's give the locals another crack.


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[Assistant] Oh, they're alright. Search for the fisherman's beach for your next clue.


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[Assistant] Hopefully it's non-elimination or we catch up to a team who gets lost or something, who knows, but at the moment it's not looking great.


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[Assistant] I just would love more than anything for Grant to say it's a non-elimination and we get to stay another leg but I don't know, I don't want to get my hopes up about it.


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[Assistant] I don't believe it! One-Horned Buffalo stole our weapons again! What will we do now? Ask the Fire God.


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[Assistant] I need to ask Buddha for help. Wukong told the guard. It's about the Tang monk's journey.


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[Assistant] Lousy doesn't like me much, thought the monkey. He won't be happy to see me.


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[Assistant] The Tang Monk was captured by a demon called One-Horned Buffalo. Oh dear, said Lausa.


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[Assistant] Well, he did. Said Wukong, getting annoyed. And he's planning to eat the Tang Monk! Your buffalo also has a metal ring.


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[Assistant] Only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible.


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[Assistant] I learned this very same lesson miles away in a filthy, dirty barrack in an extermination camp in Poland.


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[Assistant] When I was six years old, my mother, my father, my sister and myself left Jew hating Germany and we went to Yugoslavia.


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[Assistant] And we were in Yugoslavia for seven happy years. And then Germany invaded Yugoslavia.


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[Assistant] And we suddenly were persecuted again and I had to go into hiding. And I was hiding for roughly two years with a couple who worked for the resistance movement and I developed films and I made enlargements. One day,


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[Assistant] When I was 15 years old, I was arrested by the Gestapo and beaten up.


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[Assistant] And for two months dragged through various prisons and eventually I ended up in a


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[Assistant] Old fortress, 150 year old fortress in Czechoslovakia, which the Nazis had converted into a concentration camp.


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[Assistant] I was there for 10 months. I laid railroad tracks. I exterminated vermin. I made baskets. And after 10 months, about 2000 of us were loaded into cattle cars. The doors were closed and we were shipped east.


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[Assistant] And we found ourselves in the Auschwitz extermination camp, a camp that by that time had murdered already over one million people and sent them through the chimney into the sky.


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[Assistant] We arrived, we were stripped of all of our properties, whatever we had, and ...


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[Assistant] We're given striped uniforms, we're given a tattoo on our arms, and we also were given the message that we would be there for exactly six months. And after that, we would leave the camp through the chimney.


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[Assistant] We were assigned two different barracks.


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[Assistant] And the barracks were filled with wooden bunks, six people on each level, three people sleeping in one direction and three in the other direction. So whichever way you slept, you always had a pair of feet in your face.


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[Assistant] The man next to me was an extremely nice gentleman, and he introduced himself as Mr. Herbert Levine.


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[Assistant] One day when I came back from a work assignment, I climbed up


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[Assistant] I was at the top level of the retail bank, and there was Mr. Levine with a deck of cards. And he was shuffling these cards.


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[Assistant] So I picked a card and he performed a card trick for me. He performed a miracle.


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[Assistant] I practiced that trick every day. Although I didn't have any cards.


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[Assistant] The entire camp with the exception of a couple hundred of us were sent to the gas chambers. I was sent to another camp.


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[Assistant] When the Nazis advanced, when the Russians advanced,


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[Assistant] And we found ourselves in a death camp in a concentration camp called Mauthausen, which again was built like a fortress. And at that point,


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[Assistant] And I hitchhiked back to Yugoslavia, and when I came back to Yugoslavia, there was communism there, there was no family there, and there were no friends there.


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[Assistant] I stayed there for two years, and after two years I managed to escape to England. And when I came to England, I couldn't speak English, I had no education, I had no skills.


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[Assistant] I started working and about a year after I arrived in England, I bought myself a deck of cards. And for the very first time,


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[Assistant] Between a hobby and insanity.


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[Assistant] That I had demanded from me to speak to small groups of people. And I managed it. I was very good at it.


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[Assistant] He worked in Germany, and when he came to Auschwitz, the SS knew who he was, so they gave him some cards, they gave him a piece of string, they gave him some dice, and he performed for them. And then he also taught some of them.


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[Assistant] He came to the United States and performed in various venues, but, uh, I never met him again.


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[Assistant] Whatever you're going to do, it's going to be hope for them. And if you do it at the right time,


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[Assistant] It will enter their heart and it will be with them wherever they go forever. Thank you.


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[Assistant] We're trying to reach the western paradise. I know where you're going.


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[Assistant] I remember you. The Jade Emperor might fear you, but I don't.


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[Assistant] And Kiwi team John and Murray were left out in the cold. Please listen to me.


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[Assistant] Located on the Baltic Sea, St Petersburg is the cultural capital of Russia and is famed for its diverse architecture.


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[Assistant] It's at the spectacular church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood that teams discovered that they were still racing. John and Murray, you haven't finished racing yet. Here is your next clue.


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[Assistant] Traveled by Trans-Siberian Railway. Teams must now travel overnight by Trans-Siberian Express to the historic city of Kestrama. Once there, they must make their way to the Museum of Wooden Architecture and search for their next clue.


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[Assistant] Daniel and Ryan, your team number three. Sally and Tyson, your team number four. But guys, race is still on. Here are your next clothes.


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[Assistant] You're still racing. I suggest you speed up. Here is your next clue. Run. Go!


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[Assistant] It's now a chance for Australia to even the score. But this time, nations will be tested on their attention to detail. Each team must choose a babushka or nesting doll and locate the rest of their set hidden among hundreds of dolls in five wooden houses.


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[Assistant] Only when all teams from their respective country have assembled their dolls will they receive their next clue.


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[Assistant] It is in the shadow of this 35 meter fire tower in the town square that teams will find their next clue.


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[Assistant] In this detour, teams must choose between two tasks that go hand in hand with Russia's native traditions. Their choice? Boil or build?


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[Assistant] In Boil, teams must fill an outdoor bathing kettle to the mark line and light a fire beneath it. Once the judge is satisfied, they must bathe in the water before receiving their next clue.


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[Assistant] In winter, the frozen Volga River near the Apache monastery is a popular ice fishing destination for locals. And it's the pit stop for the sixth leg of the race.


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[Assistant] Yes! We have been working very hard for that. Fellas, as the winners of this leg, you've won an incredible five-star package for two to Phuket in Thailand, courtesy of Virgin Australia Holidays.


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[Assistant] With this salvage pass, you can either have a one hour head start in the next leg, or save the last team to check in from elimination.


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[Assistant] Kat and Jesse, you're team number four.


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[Assistant] Welcome to Gazprom. Thank you. Jonathan Murray. Your last team to arrive. And this is an elimination leg.


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[Assistant] However, the first team to check in today won a salvage pass.


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[Assistant] Now a salvage pass gives that team the power to save the last team.


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[Assistant] We're Daniel and Ryan. Hi fellas. These are the guys who hold your future in their hands.


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[Assistant] Your last team to arrive, and this is an elimination leg.


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[Assistant] However, winners of this leg, Daniel and Ryan, won a salvage pass. These are the guys who hold your future in their hands.


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[Assistant] Caused by a massive tornado which swept through sectors 0, 1, and 2.


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[Assistant] To be top three for us means everything. Now that we're at the pointy end of the game.


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[Assistant] We will be concentrating more on ourselves and less on others. Our goal in this leg, we're gonna be stronger, we're gonna be more secretive and


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[Assistant] When we get to the airport, I noticed that there was a business lounge. Will you let us use the lounge? Yes, of course. She let us into the business lounge. Don't help any of the other teams, please.


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[Assistant] To dress a polo horse the traditional Argentinian way.


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[Assistant] I love animals because they give you unconditional love so I try to get to know them and to interact with them. Thanks my favourite colour.


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[Assistant] Oh, you've been a beautiful lady. I'm used to braiding my hair, so that wasn't too difficult for me. I've done a pretty good job here. Judge please.


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[Assistant] This is the landmark, our forecast stadium where Maradona used to play. We get to the stadium and there's several entrance-like places and we're really confused because we don't know where to go.


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[Assistant] We have no idea what he's saying. He gives us the clue, but he gives them to us in Spanish.


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[Assistant] He wrote down for us what is the name of the hospital that Maradona was born in.


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[Assistant] We didn't get the entire clue that the man in the red and yellow t-shirt was giving us.


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[Assistant] And to stop the locals from helping them as well.


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[Assistant] Daniel and Ryan are there with us. So at this point we are wanting to race as quickly as possible to get away from them.


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[Assistant] He gives us a picture of Evita, the president of Argentina many years ago.


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[Assistant] Where we left the boys were still there, but no doubt they would have found the clue fairly quickly after us.


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[Assistant] My only concern is again, that I didn't tell those two boys not to tell anyone else.


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[Assistant] Thanks. Say cheese! Sounds like you were having a good time.


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[Assistant] Hmm, Sephiroth. Ah, I did see him leave a little while ago.


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[Assistant] This is the entrance, yes? We got to the cemetery and got directions from someone at the front.


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[Assistant] On Friday, after three weeks in space, Keir and Rilla finished work and left ship OM-45 on a space plane to Kisangani.


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[Assistant] Kia phoned Adai, and Rilla phoned Commander Zadak in Australia.


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[Assistant] The next morning they took an aeroplane to Sydney.


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[Assistant] A taxi took them from the airport to Commander Zadak's office, some kilometres north of Sydney.


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[Assistant] Wait for us here, Kia said to the taxi driver. Kia and Rilla walked to the gate.


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[Assistant] About ten guards stood in front of the gate. Across the road a train waited.


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[Assistant] To see Commander Zadak at 4.30. Let me call the commander's office, the guard said.


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[Assistant] Kea and Rilla waited. It was hot, and Kea began to feel thirsty. The guard came back. I'm sorry, he said. The commander can't see you. But I talked to the commander yesterday, Rilla said. He wanted to see us at 4.30.


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[Assistant] The commander is leaving on the train in three minutes. The guard said. Can we wait and see him here? Kea asked. No. The guard shouted. Get out of here. Kea and Rilla walked back to the taxi. Where's the driver? Kea asked. Look.


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[Assistant] He's sitting by that wall, Rilla said. Just then, Commander Zadak came out of the gate. He was a very tall, big man with blue eyes and a lot of white hair.


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[Assistant] And she began to run along the road to him. Commander Zadak did not stop. A guard opened the door of the train and the commander got in. Slowly, the train began to move. Kia ran to the taxi and jumped in.


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[Assistant] Suddenly, Keir drove the taxi off the road.


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[Assistant] He drove in front of the train and stopped. The train came nearer. And then the train stopped. Very near the taxi. And some guards jumped off.


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[Assistant] Kia opened the door and got out of the taxi.


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[Assistant] Put up your hands, the guards shouted. Two of the guards began to hit Keir. Stop that, someone shouted. Bring him over here. It was Commander Zadak.


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[Assistant] Kea stood in front of the Commander. Just then, Rilla arrived. Oh, it's you, Commander Zadak said. He did not smile. Rilla, your father's going to be angry. We want to talk to you, Commander, Rilla said. It's very important. Very well.


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[Assistant] I'm listening. Keir began to talk. Two years ago.


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[Assistant] I told you about the holes in the AOL. Now they are worse. The AOL is breaking up over Europe.


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[Assistant] Please look at these numbers and this satellite picture. He gave his book to Commander Zadak, and the Commander looked at the numbers. It's important, Commander, Kia said. In ten years, Earth is going to die. You stopped my train because of this? Commander Zadak asked.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A die talked to me about the AOL. Then he talked to Earth Commander. And what happened? Where is a die now?


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[Assistant] Is the moon colony helping the AOL? We know about a die, Commander, Rilla said.


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[Assistant] But someone needs to talk to Earth Commander again. I'm going to talk to Gog about rain. I can tell you that. Earth needs rain. There was no rain last winter. Half of Australia has no water, and my trees here are dying. Without rain, many people are going to die. Is Gog going to understand that?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't know. Commander Zadak began to walk back to his train. Move that taxi, he called to his guards. Some guards moved the taxi back to the road and then they jumped onto the train again. The train began to move. Okay, the taxi driver shouted. What are you going to do next?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Drive my taxi into the river? Kia smiled. He took some money from his pocket and gave it to the taxi driver. The taxi driver looked at the money. Okay, okay, he said. Where now? Back to the airport? Kia took Rilla's hand. Yes, he said. Let's get back to Kisangani.


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[Assistant] I'll accompany him. I'm no stranger to caves


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[Assistant] I knew it was going to be something extravagant and it is. So now I'm quite petrified.


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[Assistant] Is always daunting, but the pressure's ramped up a bit more because it is a pressure test.


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[Assistant] The glucose is quite thick and I'm struggling to measure out how much I need.


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[Assistant] Don't stress me out. I'm really worried that it's set me back because everyone has now used the 3D printer except for me.


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[Assistant] I'm a little concerned at this point because


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[Assistant] But, I'm not ready to go home yet, so I just have to fight as hard as I can.


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[Assistant] So now I'm working on the candied ginger snow. So for the ginger snow I need to get some sugar and water into the saucepan. I just need to check my quantities.


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[Assistant] Bring that to the boil and then add in some chopped up, crystallised ginger.


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[Assistant] I know I'm missing some components on this dish.


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[Assistant] I'm really happy with my lemon curd parfait balls and coconut rocher. I just hope that it's going to be enough.


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[Assistant] Because it is very obvious that there are missing elements and it could send me home.


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[Assistant] Looking at this dish, it is very obvious that there are missing elements. I just hope that it's going to be enough.


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[Assistant] The fennel flowers, the ginger, and I didn't have enough time to pound the snow.


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[Assistant] And I've had a fabulous time. I've met some fabulous people. I've got to spend time with you guys cooking your beautiful kitchen.


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[Assistant] It's absolutely been a blast and I don't regret one minute.


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[Assistant] It's disappointing to leave, but I have no regrets. I've learnt a lot and the experience itself has given me more confidence. Thank you everybody.


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[Assistant] Pleasure to see you all again, and welcome to my humble ranch.


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[Assistant] Back in the day, we had republic fairies to get us from A to B, but now they're nothing but driftwoods, sadly. We got the next best thing though, chocobos. To them, a bottomless bog's no worse than a kiddie pool. Now ladies,


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[Assistant] You're probably wondering, what gives these birds the power to glide across swamps with ease?


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[Assistant] 160 studies. Unfortunately, the answer is not correct.


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[Assistant] Come on, all my stairs. How many stairs did you count to reach me?


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[Assistant] We've got to find the Enforio fountain.


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[Assistant] How did you get here so fast? What are you talking about?


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[Assistant] I'm going there right now. I'm going to destroy him. I'll go with you.


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[Assistant] Yes, said the other one. Use the tight headband spell. The spell will only work with my headband.


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[Assistant] We've been looking at many great writers in this course, but three in my judgement are


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[Assistant] Greater than great. Giants of literature. Giants of English literature.