BRITS may have a reputation for being uptight, but it wasn’t always that way. In days gone by, Ian Hislop, says, we wore our hearts on our sleeves and were actually far more touchy-feely as a nation. Visiting Dutch scholar Erasmus once wrote of Britain, “Wherever you move, there is nothing but kisses”. So when did our upper lip get so stiff?

All is revealed in the three-part series, Ian Hislop’s Stiff Upper Lip – An Emotional History Of Britain.

The presenter, broadcaster, Private Eye editor and Have I Got News for You? panellist, pictured above, charts how and why such stoicism emerged in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, in a country which was, until then, awash with sentimentality.

He presents the idea that it was the notion of politeness which first bore down on the public’s emoting. The diary of James Boswell, an aspirational young Scot, illustrates the point. Boswell’s candid journal paints a picture of a man plagued with anxieties about how far he should show his feelings in fashionable London, and so goes some way to explaining the people’s mood at the time.

Hislop also tells the story of early feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, who famously argued the point that women’s heads Northern Sinfonia The Sage Gateshead THE Northern Sinfonia under the baton of Thomas Zehetmair opened its new season with the first instalment of The Romantic Symphony.

The series will take in the symphonic journey of Brahms and Schumann, whose lives and music were inextricably linked. While Schumann raved about Brahms, he in turn venerated the older man.

Schumann’s Symphony 1 in B flat The Spring was sketched out in four days, but he agonised over the trumpets’ first phrase. The sinfonia’s brass section blasted it out like a fresh breeze, with Zehetmair going on to direct a thrilling first movement, finely gauging its dynamic ebb and flow.

The serene slow movement was played with affection and seamlessly flowed into a romping scherzo. Zehetmair kept ratcheting up the tension, with the sinfonia nimbly negotiating the tight twists and turns of the score, before roaring down the home straight.

Brahms’ Symphony No 1 in C minor was 20 years in gestation and is held up as one of the greatest works in the classical form. It is a work conventionally played by larger orchestral forces. But as Zehetmair said in a pre-concert talk, “size makes no difference, what matters is substance”.

And the sinfonia had plenty of that, generating an awesome sonic depth.

In the first movement, you had the sensation of giant waves building up and washing through the hall, with wonderful tones produced by oboist Adrian Wilson in his solo.

A highlight was the violin solo from Bradley Creswick, rounding off an eloquent slow movement.

Flautist Juliette Bausor was in top form, while there were lovely exchanges between clarinettist Jessica Lee and the horns. Zehetmair drove the whole to a heady climax.

The evening ended on a sober note, with a touching tribute paid to Northern Sinfonia founder Michael Hall, who died recently. The sinfonia performed the second movement of Mozart’s Prague – the first work he conducted with “The Sinfonia Orchestra”

in September 1958.

Gavin Engelbrecht should rule their hearts. However, she failed to practise what she preached when she fell in love with a dashing, but dastardly American.

This was all taking place during a time of profound transition for Britain, not only economically and socially, but also emotionally. He encapsulates this with the tales of two very different national heroes, Admiral Nelson and the Duke of Wellington.

It was Nelson whose dying plea for an embrace from his best friend was so shocking to the Victorians a generation later, that they changed his famous last words “kiss me, Hardy” to “Kismet, Hardy” in the annals of history.

Wellington, meanwhile, was every inch the cool, calm and collected type, so it was he, not Nelson, who became the preeminent role model for the Victorians.

During his journey, Hislop finds himself playing cricket on the Champs- Elysses, discovers some 200-year-old merchandising David Beckham would be proud of, and reveals why we have the great British Bulldog, and not the British Cock, as a national symbol.