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Matthew Sweet talks to 21st-century novelists Sarah Perry and Carol Birch about why the 19th century illuminates their writing. And can the Victorians still make us laugh? Cultural historians Fern Riddell and Bob Nicholson, consider the question raised by a new exhibition. Plus neo-Victorians - historian Mark Llewellyn on the curiously enduring presence of the 19th century in contemporary culture.

Victorian Entertainments: There Will Be Fun at the British Library in London runs from Fri 14 October 2016 - Sun 12 March 2017.
There is a special Friday Night Late on November 25th.

Presenter: Matthew Sweet

Guests: Sarah Perry, The Essex Serpent
Carol Birch, Orphans of the Carnival
Mark Llewellyn (with Ann Heilmann), Neo-Victorianism: The Victorians in the Twenty-First Century
Fern Riddell, The Victorian Guide to Sex
Bob Nicholson from Edge Hill University is the author of many articles about Victorian literature and periodicals and he has been working with Dr Mark Hall (Computing) and the British Library on a digital humanities project that aims to create an online archive of one million Victorian jokes.
Producer: Jacqueline Smith

(Image: Detail from William Sanger's waxworks and Bostock and Wombwell's Menagerie at the Agricultural Hall poster (c) British Library Board).