Between the Ears: Diorama Drama
BBC Radio 3

This fascinating piece of reimagined history, and much else besides, began behind a Nash facade in Regent’s Park. Here, as Roxy Music thumped out “Do the Strand”, presenter Lance Dann tracked down the site of London’s only surviving diorama, the invention of M. Louis Daguerre, first opened in 1823 and a magnet for patrons anxious to view approximations of Vesuvius in spate, the Battle of Trafalgar or the search for the Northwest Passage.

Daguerre (1787-1851) is best remembered as one of the founding fathers of photography, as in the daguerreotype, but he made his early reputation as an artist and theatrical designer. The diorama, which debuted in Paris in 1823, brought all these interests together in sensational exercises in make-believe: static images of Alpine scenery or bygone battlegrounds coaxed into life by way of sound effects, music, smoke, mirrors and shifting apertures.