During the post-Napoleonic years (1815-1832) there was a return to the unimpeded cross-border cultural traffic of earlier years between the European continent and Britain. In this recording of a live online lecture, Professor Diego Saglia, Director of the Department of Humanities and Culture at the University of Parma in Italy, shows how notions of British insularity have been misleading. Beaumarchais’ Figaro plays, Goethe’s 1774 novel Werther and the sonnets of the great medieval Italian poet Petrarch are among his chosen texts.