The Rococo was the art movement that followed the Baroque,and the common reaction to it today is to see it as a decline in seriousness: adescent into frippery, decoration and corruption. In 19th century Britain, before the term Rococo achieved global usage, it was known as the French style, and looked down as a slide into mindless ornamentality and absurd foreign pretention. Waldemar Januszczak disagrees. As the follow-up to his award-winning series on the Baroque, Waldemar will argue that the Rococo age was actually the age in which the modern world was born. Picking three key territories of Rococo achievement Travel, Pleasure and Madness Waldemar will celebrate the finest cultural achievements of the period and examine the drives and underlying meanings which make them so prescient.