Podcasts by In Our Time: Culture

In Our Time: Culture

Popular culture, poetry, music and visual arts and the roles they play in our society.

Further podcasts by BBC Radio 4

Podcast on the topic Geschichte

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In Our Time: Culture
Germinal from 2023-11-23T10:15

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Emile Zola's greatest literary success, his thirteenth novel in a series exploring the extended Rougon-Macquart family. The relative here is Etienne Lantier, alre...

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In Our Time: Culture
The Seventh Seal from 2023-10-19T09:15

In the 1000th edition of In Our Time, Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss arguably the most celebrated film of the Swedish director Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007). It begins with an image that, once se...

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In Our Time: Culture
Death in Venice from 2023-07-13T09:15

Death in Venice is Thomas Mann’s most famous – and infamous - novella. Published in 1912, it’s about the fall of the repressed writer Gustav von Aschenbach, when his supposedly objective appreci...

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In Our Time: Culture
Oedipus Rex from 2023-07-06T09:15

Sophocles’ play Oedipus Rex begins with a warning: the murderer of the old king of Thebes, Laius, has never been identified or caught, and he’s still at large in the city. Oedipus is the current...

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In Our Time: Culture
Virgil's Georgics from 2023-06-15T09:15

In the year 29 BC the great Roman poet Virgil published these lines: Blessed is he who has succeeded in learning the laws of nature’s working, has cast beneath his feet all fear and fate’s imp...

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In Our Time: Culture
A Room of One's Own from 2023-04-27T09:15

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Virginia Woolf's highly influential essay on women and literature, which considers both literary history and future opportunity.

In 1928 Woolf gave two le...

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In Our Time: Culture
Stevie Smith from 2023-03-16T10:15

In 1957 Stevie Smith published a poetry collection called Not Waving But Drowning – and its title poem gave us a phrase which has entered the language.

Its success has overshadowed her wi...

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In Our Time: Culture
John Donne from 2023-02-09T10:15

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Donne (1573-1631), known now as one of England’s finest poets of love and notable in his own time as an astonishing preacher. He was born a Catholic in a Protest...

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In Our Time: Culture
Persuasion from 2023-01-19T10:15

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jane Austen’s last complete novel, which was published just before Christmas in 1817, five months after her death. It is the story of Anne Elliot, now 27 and (so...

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In Our Time: Culture
Citizen Kane from 2023-01-12T10:15

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Orson Welles' film, released in 1941, which is widely acclaimed as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, films yet made. Welles plays the lead role of Charle...

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In Our Time: Culture
The Nibelungenlied from 2022-12-29T10:15

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss The Song of the Nibelungs, a twelfth century German epic, full of blood, violence, fantasy and bleakness. It is a foundational work of medieval literature, drawin...

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In Our Time: Culture
Bauhaus from 2022-12-08T10:15

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Bauhaus which began in 1919 in Weimar, Germany, as a school for arts and crafts combined, and went on to be famous around the world. Under its first director,...

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In Our Time: Culture
Wilfred Owen from 2022-11-24T10:15

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the celebrated British poet of World War One. Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) had published only a handful of poems when he was killed a week before the end of the war, ...

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In Our Time: Culture
Berthe Morisot from 2022-11-10T10:15

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the influential painters at the heart of the French Impressionist movement: Berthe Morisot (1841-1895). The men in her circle could freely paint in busy b...

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In Our Time: Culture
Nineteen Eighty-Four from 2022-10-13T09:15

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss George Orwell's (1903-1950) final novel, published in 1949, set in a dystopian London which is now found in Airstrip One, part of the totalitarian superstate of O...

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In Our Time: Culture
John Bull from 2022-07-28T09:15

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the origin of this personification of the English everyman and his development as both British and Britain in the following centuries. He first appeared along wit...

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In Our Time: Culture
Dylan Thomas from 2022-07-14T09:15

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the celebrated Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas (1914 - 1953). He wrote some of his best poems before he was twenty in the first half of his short, remarkable life, and w...

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In Our Time: Culture
Tang Era Poetry from 2022-06-09T09:15

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss two of China’s greatest poets, Li Bai and Du Fu, who wrote in the 8th century in the Tang Era. Li Bai (701-762AD) is known for personal poems, many of them about ...

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In Our Time: Culture
Olympe de Gouges from 2022-05-19T09:15

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the French playwright who, in 1791, wrote The Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen. This was Olympe de Gouges (1748-93) and she was respo...

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In Our Time: Culture
Polidori's The Vampyre from 2022-05-05T09:15

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the influential novella of John Polidori (1795-1821) published in 1819 and attributed first to Lord Byron (1788-1824) who had started a version of it in 1816 at t...

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In Our Time: Culture
The Sistine Chapel from 2022-04-28T09:15

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the astonishing work of Michelangelo (1477-1564) in this great chapel in the Vatican, firstly the ceiling with images from Genesis (of which the image above is a ...

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In Our Time: Culture
Antigone from 2022-04-21T09:15

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss what is reputedly the most performed of all Greek tragedies. Antigone, by Sophocles (c496-c406 BC), is powerfully ambiguous, inviting the audience to reassess its...

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In Our Time: Culture
In Our Time is now first on BBC Sounds from 2022-03-04T04:00

Looking for the latest episode? New episodes of In Our Time will now be available first on BBC Sounds for four weeks before other podcast apps.

If you haven’t already, you can download the...

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In Our Time: Culture
Romeo and Juliet from 2022-02-17T10:15

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss William Shakespeare's famous tragedy, written in the early 1590s after a series of histories and comedies. His audience already knew the story of the feuding Cap...

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In Our Time: Culture
Colette from 2022-01-27T10:15

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the outstanding French writers of the twentieth century. The novels of Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (1873 - 1954) always had women at their centre, from you...

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In Our Time: Culture
Thomas Hardy's Poetry from 2022-01-13T10:15

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Hardy (1840 -1928) and his commitment to poetry, which he prized far above his novels. In the 1890s, once he had earned enough from his fiction, Hardy sto...

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In Our Time: Culture
Fritz Lang from 2021-12-30T10:15

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Austrian-born film director Fritz Lang (1890-1976), who was one of the most celebrated film-makers of the 20th century. He worked first in Weimar Germany, cre...

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In Our Time: Culture
A Christmas Carol from 2021-12-16T10:15

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Charles Dickens' novella, written in 1843 when he was 31, which has become intertwined with his reputation and with Christmas itself. Ebenezer Scrooge is the mise...

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In Our Time: Culture
The Decadent Movement from 2021-11-18T10:15

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the British phase of a movement that spread across Europe in the mid-19th and early 20th centuries. Influenced by Charles Baudelaire and by Walter Pater, these De...

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In Our Time: Culture
The Song of Roland from 2021-11-04T10:15

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss an early masterpiece of French epic poetry, from the 12th Century. It is a reimagining of Charlemagne’s wars in Spain in the 8th Century in which Roland, his mos...

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In Our Time: Culture
Iris Murdoch from 2021-10-21T09:15

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the author and philosopher Iris Murdoch (1919 - 1999). In her lifetime she was most celebrated for her novels such as The Bell and The Black Prince, but these ar...

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In Our Time: Culture
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall from 2021-09-30T09:15

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Anne Bronte's second novel, published in 1848, which is now celebrated alongside those of her sisters but which Charlotte Bronte tried to suppress as a 'mistake'....

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In Our Time: Culture
Herodotus from 2021-09-23T09:15

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Greek writer known as the father of histories, dubbed by his detractors as the father of lies. Herodotus (c484 to 425 BC or later) was raised in Halicarnassus...

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In Our Time: Culture
Shakespeare's Sonnets from 2021-06-24T09:15

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the collection of poems published in 1609 by Thomas Thorpe: Shakespeare’s Sonnets, “never before imprinted”. Yet, while some of Shakespeare's other poems and man...

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In Our Time: Culture
Edward Gibbon from 2021-06-17T09:15

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of one of the great historians, best known for his History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (published 1776-89). According to Gibbon...

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In Our Time: Culture
Journey to the West from 2021-05-20T09:15

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the great novels of China’s Ming era, and perhaps the most loved. Written in 1592, it draws on the celebrated travels of a real monk from China to India a...

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In Our Time: Culture
Ovid from 2021-04-29T09:15

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Roman poet Publius Ovidius Naso (43BC-17/18AD) who, as he described it, was destroyed by 'carmen et error', a poem and a mistake. His works have been preserv...

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In Our Time: Culture
The Bacchae from 2021-03-18T10:15

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Euripides' great tragedy, which was first performed in Athens in 405 BC when the Athenians were on the point of defeat and humiliation in a long war with Sparta. ...

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In Our Time: Culture
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner from 2021-03-04T10:15

In this 900th edition of the programme, Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the best known and most influential of the poems of the Romantic movement. Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) wro...

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In Our Time: Culture
The Rosetta Stone from 2021-02-11T10:15

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most famous museum objects in the world, shown in the image above in replica, and dating from around 196 BC. It is a damaged, dark granite block on w...

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In Our Time: Culture
The Great Gatsby from 2021-01-14T10:15

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss F Scott Fitzgerald’s finest novel, published in 1925, one of the great American novels of the twentieth century. It is told by Nick Carraway, neighbour and friend...

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In Our Time: Culture
Fernando Pessoa from 2020-12-03T10:15

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Portuguese poet Pessoa (1888-1935) who was largely unknown in his lifetime but who, in 1994, Harold Bloom included in his list of the 26 most significant west...

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In Our Time: Culture
Albrecht Dürer from 2020-11-12T10:15

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great German artist Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) who achieved fame throughout Europe for the power of his images. These range from his woodcut of a rhinoceros, ...

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In Our Time: Culture
Piers Plowman from 2020-10-29T10:15

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss William Langland's poem, written around 1370, about a man called Will who fell asleep on the Malvern Hills and dreamed of Piers the Plowman. This was a time betwe...

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In Our Time: Culture
Macbeth from 2020-10-01T09:15

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies. When three witches prophesy that Macbeth will be king one day, he is not prepared to wait and almost the next day he murd...

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In Our Time: Culture
Frankenstein from 2020-03-19T10:15

In a programme first broadcast in May 2019, Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Mary Shelley's (1797-1851) Gothic story of a Swiss natural philosopher, Victor Frankenstein, and the creature he makes...

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In Our Time: Culture
George Sand from 2020-02-06T10:15

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the works and life of one of the most popular writers in Europe in C19th, Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin (1804-1876) who wrote under the name George Sand. When she ...

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In Our Time: Culture
Catullus from 2020-01-09T10:15

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Catullus (c84-c54 BC) who wrote some of the most sublime poetry in the late Roman Republic, and some of the most obscene. He found a new way to write about love,...

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In Our Time: Culture
Auden from 2019-12-19T10:15

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and poetry of WH Auden (1907-1973) up to his departure from Europe for the USA in 1939. As well as his personal life, he addressed suffering and confusi...

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In Our Time: Culture
Crime and Punishment from 2019-11-14T10:15

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the novel written by Dostoevsky and published in 1866, in which Raskolnikov, a struggling student, justifies his murder of two women, as his future is more valuab...

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In Our Time: Culture
Robert Burns from 2019-10-24T09:15

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of the man who, in his lifetime, was called The Caledonian Bard and whose fame and influence was to spread around the world. Burns (1759-1796) was born i...

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In Our Time: Culture
The Time Machine from 2019-10-17T09:15

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas explored in HG Wells' novella, published in 1895, in which the Time Traveller moves forward to 802,701 AD. There he finds humanity has evolved into the ...

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In Our Time: Culture
Lorca from 2019-07-04T09:15

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Spanish poet and playwright Federico Garcia Lorca (1898-1936), author of Blood Wedding, Yerma and The House of Bernarda Alba, who mixed the traditions of Anda...

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In Our Time: Culture
Sir Thomas Browne from 2019-06-06T09:15

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the range, depth and style of Browne (1605-82) , a medical doctor whose curious mind drew him to explore and confess his own religious views, challenge myths and ...

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In Our Time: Culture
A Midsummer Night's Dream from 2019-04-18T09:15

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of Shakespeare's most popular works, written c1595 in the last years of Elizabeth I. It is a comedy of love and desire and their many complications as well as...

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In Our Time: Culture
Gerard Manley Hopkins from 2019-03-21T10:15

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and works of Hopkins (1844-89), a Jesuit priest who at times burned his poems and at others insisted they should not be published. His main themes are h...

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In Our Time: Culture
Antarah ibn Shaddad from 2019-02-28T10:23

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, works, context and legacy of Antarah (525-608AD), the great poet and warrior. According to legend, he was born a slave; his mother was an Ethiopian sla...

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In Our Time: Culture
Judith beheading Holofernes from 2019-02-14T10:17

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how artists from the Middle Ages onwards have been inspired by the Bible story of the widow who killed an Assyrian general who was besieging her village, and so s...

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In Our Time: Culture
Samuel Beckett from 2019-01-17T10:15

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Samuel Beckett (1906 - 1989), who lived in Paris and wrote his plays and novels in French, not because his French was better than his English, but because it was ...

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In Our Time: Culture
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight from 2018-12-13T10:15

In a programme first broadcast in 2018, Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the jewels of medieval English poetry. It was written c1400 by an unknown poet and then was left hidden in private...

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In Our Time: Culture
Horace from 2018-11-15T10:57

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Horace (65-8BC), who flourished under the Emperor Augustus. He was one of the greatest poets of his age and is one of the most quoted of any age. Carpe diem, nil ...

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In Our Time: Culture
Is Shakespeare History? The Romans from 2018-10-18T09:57

In the second of two programmes marking In Our Time's 20th anniversary on 15th October, Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Shakespeare's versions of history, continuing with the Roman plays. Rome w...

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In Our Time: Culture
Is Shakespeare History? The Plantagenets from 2018-10-11T09:57

In the first of two programmes marking In Our Time's 20th anniversary on 15th October, Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Shakespeare's versions of history, starting with the English Plantagenets....

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In Our Time: Culture
Edith Wharton from 2018-10-04T10:18

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the works of Wharton (1862-1937) such as The Age of Innocence for which she won the Pulitzer Prize and was the first woman to do so, The House of Mirth, and The C...

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In Our Time: Culture
The Iliad from 2018-09-13T10:24

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great epic poem attributed to Homer, telling the story of an intense episode in the Trojan War. It is framed by the wrath of the Greek hero Achilles, insulted...

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In Our Time: Culture
William Morris from 2018-07-05T10:24

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of William Morris, known in his lifetime for his poetry and then his contribution to the Arts and Crafts movement, and increasingly for his political ac...

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In Our Time: Culture
Henrik Ibsen from 2018-05-31T10:20

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great Norwegian playwright and poet, best known for his middle class tragedies such as The Wild Duck, Hedda Gabler, A Doll's House and An Enemy of the People....

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In Our Time: Culture
The Mabinogion from 2018-05-10T09:48

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the eleven stories of Celtic mythology and Arthurian romance known as The Mabinogion, most of which were told and retold for generations before being written down...

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In Our Time: Culture
Middlemarch from 2018-04-19T10:07

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss what Virginia Woolf called 'one of the few English novels written for grown-up people'. It was written by George Eliot, the pen name of Mary Anne Evans (1819-80),...

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In Our Time: Culture
Anna Akhmatova from 2018-01-18T12:47

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work, ideas and life of the Russian poet whose work was celebrated in C20th both for its quality and for what it represented, written under censorship in the ...

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In Our Time: Culture
Hamlet from 2017-12-28T11:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Shakespeare's best known, most quoted and longest play, written c1599 - 1602 and rewritten throughout his lifetime. It is the story of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, ...

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In Our Time: Culture
Beethoven from 2017-12-21T11:30

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the great composers, who was born into a family of musicians in Bonn. His grandfather was an eminent musician and also called Ludwig van Beethoven. His fat...

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In Our Time: Culture
Moby Dick from 2017-12-07T12:33

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Herman Melville's (1819-1891) epic novel, published in London in 1851, the story of Captain Ahab's pursuit of a great white sperm whale that had bitten off his le...

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In Our Time: Culture
Germaine de Stael from 2017-11-16T10:56

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and impact of Germaine de Staël (1766-1817) who Byron praised as Europe's greatest living writer, and was at the heart of intellectual and literary life ...

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In Our Time: Culture
Picasso's Guernica from 2017-11-02T11:07

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the context and impact of Pablo Picasso's iconic work, created soon after the bombing on 26th April 1937 that obliterated much of the Basque town of Guernica, and...

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In Our Time: Culture
Aphra Behn from 2017-10-12T10:26

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aphra Behn (1640-1689), who made her name and her living as a playwright, poet and writer of fiction under the Restoration. Virginia Woolf wrote of her: ' All wom...

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In Our Time: Culture
Wuthering Heights from 2017-09-28T09:59

In a programme first broadcast in 2017, Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Emily Bronte (1818-1848) and her only novel, published in 1847 under the name 'Ellis Bell' just a year before her death. I...

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In Our Time: Culture
Wuthering Heights from 2017-09-28T09:59

In a programme first broadcast in 2017, Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Emily Bronte (1818-1848) and her only novel, published in 1847 under the name 'Ellis Bell' just a year before her death. It i...

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In Our Time: Culture
al-Biruni from 2017-08-31T11:02

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Central Asian polymath al-Biruni and his eleventh-century book the India.Born in around 973 in the central Asian region of Chorasmia, al-Biruni became an ...

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In Our Time: Culture
Eugene Onegin from 2017-06-22T10:18

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Alexander Pushkin's verse novel, the story of Eugene Onegin, widely regarded as his masterpiece. Pushkin (pictured above) began this in 1823 and worked on it over...

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In Our Time: Culture
Christine de Pizan from 2017-06-08T10:30

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and works of Christine de Pizan, who wrote at the French Court in the late Middle Ages and was celebrated by Simone de Beauvoir as the first woman to 'ta...

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In Our Time: Culture
Emily Dickinson from 2017-05-11T10:35

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and works of Emily Dickinson, arguably the most startling and original poet in America in the C19th. According to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, her corresp...

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In Our Time: Culture
Hokusai from 2017-03-30T11:40

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849), the Japanese artist whose views of Mt Fuji such as The Great Wave off Kanagawa (pictured) are some of the most iconic in world art...

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In Our Time: Culture
North and South from 2017-03-09T10:57

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Elizabeth Gaskell's novel North and South, published in 1855 after serialisation in Dickens' Household Words magazine. It is the story of Margaret Hale, who was r...

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In Our Time: Culture
Seneca the Younger from 2017-02-23T11:30

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Seneca the Younger, who was one of the first great writers to live his entire life in the world of the new Roman empire, after the fall of the Republic. He was a ...

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In Our Time: Culture
John Clare from 2017-02-09T11:10

In a programme first broadcast in 2017, Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Northamptonshire poet John Clare who, according to one of Melvyn's guests Jonathan Bate, was 'the greatest labouring-c...

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In Our Time: Culture
Four Quartets from 2016-12-22T11:24

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Four Quartets, TS Eliot's last great work which he composed, against a background of imminent and actual world war, as meditations on the relationship between tim...

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In Our Time: Culture
The Fighting Temeraire from 2016-11-10T11:28

This image: Joseph Mallord William Turner, The Fighting Temeraire, 1839 (c) The National Gallery, London

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss "The Fighting Temeraire", one of Turner's greatest ...

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In Our Time: Culture
Epic of Gilgamesh from 2016-11-03T11:37

"He who saw the Deep" are the first words of the standard version of The Epic of Gilgamesh, the subject of this discussion between Melvyn Bragg and his guests. Gilgamesh is often said to be the ...

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In Our Time: Culture
The 12th Century Renaissance from 2016-10-20T11:23

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the changes in the intellectual world of Western Europe in the 12th Century, and their origins. This was a time of Crusades, the formation of states, the start of...

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In Our Time: Culture
In Our Time - Animal Farm from 2016-09-29T11:15

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Animal Farm, which Eric Blair published under his pen name George Orwell in 1945.

A biting critique of totalitarianism, particularly Stalinism, the essay s...

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In Our Time: Culture
In Our Time - Animal Farm from 2016-09-29T11:15

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Animal Farm, which Eric Blair published under his pen name George Orwell in 1945.

A biting critique of totalitarianism, particularly Stalinism, the essay s...

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In Our Time: Culture
Songs of Innocence and of Experience from 2016-06-23T10:20

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss William Blake's collection of illustrated poems "Songs of Innocence and of Experience." He published Songs of Innocence first in 1789 with five hand-coloured copi...

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In Our Time: Culture
The Muses from 2016-05-19T10:53

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Muses and their role in Greek mythology, when they were goddesses of poetry, song, music and dance: what the Greeks called mousike, 'the art of the Muses' fro...

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In Our Time: Culture
Tess of the d'Urbervilles from 2016-05-05T10:39

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy, originally serialised in The Graphic in 1891 and, with some significant changes, published as a complete novel in 1892....

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In Our Time: Culture
Aurora Leigh from 2016-03-24T11:18

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Elizabeth Barrett Browning's epic "Aurora Leigh" which was published in 1856. It is the story of an orphan, Aurora, born in Italy to an English father and Tuscan ...

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In Our Time: Culture
Rumi's Poetry from 2016-02-11T12:53

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poetry of Rumi, the Persian scholar and Sufi mystic of the 13th Century. His great poetic works are the Masnavi or "spiritual couplets" and the Divan, a colle...

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In Our Time: Culture
Tristan and Iseult from 2015-12-31T11:30

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Tristan and Iseult, one of the most popular stories of the Middle Ages. From roots in Celtic myth, it passed into written form in Britain a century after the Norm...

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In Our Time: Culture
Emma from 2015-11-19T11:50

"Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the ...

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In Our Time: Culture
Holbein at the Tudor Court from 2015-10-15T10:48

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Hans Holbein the Younger (1497-1543) during his two extended stays in England, when he worked at the Tudor Court and became the King's painte...

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In Our Time: Culture
Frida Kahlo from 2015-07-09T10:39

Born near Mexico City in 1907, Frida Kahlo is considered one of Mexico's greatest artists. She took up painting after a bus accident left her severely injured, was a Communist, married Diego Riv...

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In Our Time: Culture
Jane Eyre from 2015-06-18T15:29

The story of Jane Eyre is one of the best-known in English fiction. Jane is the orphan who survives a miserable early life, first with her aunt at Gateshead Hall and then at Lowood School. She l...

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In Our Time: Culture
Tagore from 2015-05-07T11:05

Rabindranath Tagore was the first non-European to win a Nobel Prize for Literature. He has been called one of the outstanding thinkers of the 20th century and the greatest poet India has ever pr...

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In Our Time: Culture
Fanny Burney from 2015-04-23T10:50

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the 18th-century novelist, playwright and diarist Fanny Burney, also known as Madame D'Arblay and Frances Burney. Her first novel, Evelin...

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In Our Time: Culture
Sappho from 2015-04-09T10:45

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Greek poet Sappho. Born in the late seventh century BC, Sappho spent much of her life on the island of Lesbos. In antiquity she was famed as one of the gr...

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In Our Time: Culture
Beowulf from 2015-03-05T11:20

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the epic poem Beowulf, one of the masterpieces of Anglo-Saxon literature. Composed in the early Middle Ages by an anonymous poet, the work tells the story of ...

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In Our Time: Culture
Bruegel's The Fight Between Carnival and Lent from 2015-01-15T11:30

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Pieter Bruegel the Elder's painting of 1559, 'The Fight Between Carnival And Lent'. Created in Antwerp at a time of religious tension between Catholics and Protes...

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In Our Time: Culture
Kafka's The Trial from 2014-11-27T12:55

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Franz Kafka's novel of power and alienation 'The Trial', in which readers follow the protagonist Joseph K into a bizarre, nightmarish world in which he stands acc...

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Aesop from 2014-11-20T12:30

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aesop. According to some accounts, Aesop was a strikingly ugly slave who was dumb until granted the power of speech by the goddess Isis. In stories of his life he...

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Rudyard Kipling from 2014-10-16T11:55

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Rudyard Kipling. Born in Bombay in 1865, Kipling has been described as the poet of Empire, celebrated for fictional works including Kim a...

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Mrs Dalloway from 2014-07-03T11:05

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs Dalloway. First published in 1925, it charts a single day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, a prosperous member of London society, ...

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The Bluestockings from 2014-06-05T10:50

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Bluestockings. Around the middle of the eighteenth century a small group of intellectual women began to meet regularly to discuss literature and other mat...

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The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam from 2014-05-22T10:45

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. In 1859 the poet Edward FitzGerald published a long poem based on the verses of the 11th-century Persian scholar Omar Khayyam. N...

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The Tale of Sinuhe from 2014-05-01T10:30

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss The Tale of Sinuhe, one of the most celebrated works of ancient Egyptian literature. Written around four thousand years ago, the poem narrates the story of an...

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Tristram Shandy from 2014-04-24T11:15

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Laurence Sterne's novel Tristram Shandy. Sterne's comic masterpiece is an extravagantly inventive work which was hugely popular when first published in 1759. ...

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The Tempest from 2013-11-14T11:00

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Shakespeare's play The Tempest. Written in around 1610, it is thought to be one of the playwright's final works and contains some of the most poetic and memor...

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Pascal from 2013-09-19T09:30

Melvyn Bragg and his guests begin a new series of the programme with a discussion of the French polymath Blaise Pascal. Born in 1623, Pascal was a brilliant mathematician and scientist, inventin...

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The Invention of Radio from 2013-07-04T10:20

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the invention of radio. In the early 1860s the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell derived four equations which together describe the behaviour of electric...

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Romance of the Three Kingdoms from 2013-06-27T10:00

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, widely regarded as one of the greatest works of Chinese literature. Written 600 years ago, it is an historical novel that t...

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Queen Zenobia from 2013-05-30T10:00

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Queen Zenobia, a famous military leader of the ancient world. Born in around 240 AD, Zenobia was Empress of the Palmyrene Empire in the Middle East. A highly ...

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Lévi-Strauss from 2013-05-23T09:45

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss. One of twentieth-century France's most celebrated intellectuals, Lévi-Strauss attempted to show in his wor...

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Icelandic Sagas from 2013-05-09T09:45

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Icelandic Sagas. First written down in the 13th century, the sagas tell the stories of the Norse settlers of Iceland, who began to arrive on the island in...

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Montaigne from 2013-04-25T09:45

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Essays of Michel de Montaigne. Born near Bordeaux in 1533, Montaigne retired from a life of public service aged 38 and began to write. He called these sho...

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The Amazons from 2013-04-11T10:30

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Amazons, a tribe of formidable female warriors first described in Greek literature. They appear in the Homeric epics and were described by Herodotus, and ...

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Chekhov from 2013-03-14T11:30

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Anton Chekhov. Born in 1860, Chekhov trained as a doctor and for most of his adult life divided his time between medicine and writing. ...

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Decline and Fall from 2013-02-21T11:30

David Bradshaw, John Bowen and Ann Pasternak Slater join Melvyn Bragg to discuss Evelyn Waugh's comic novel Decline and Fall. Set partly in a substandard boys' public school, the novel is a vivi...

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Le Morte d'Arthur from 2013-01-10T11:30

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Thomas Malory's "Le Morte Darthur", the epic tale of King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table. Sir Thomas Malory was a knight from Warwickshire, a respe...

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Shahnameh of Ferdowsi from 2012-12-13T11:30

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the epic poem the Shahnameh of Ferdowsi, the 'Book of Kings', which has been at the heart of Persian culture for the past thousand years. The poem recounts a ...

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The Anarchy from 2012-11-01T11:30

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss The Anarchy, the civil war that took place in mid-twelfth century England. The war began as a succession dispute between the Empress Matilda, daughter of Henr...

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Caxton and the Printing Press from 2012-10-18T10:30

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and influence of William Caxton, the merchant who brought the printing press to the British Isles. After spending several years working as a printer ...

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Gerald of Wales from 2012-10-04T10:30

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the medieval scholar Gerald of Wales. Born around the middle of the twelfth century, Gerald was a cleric and courtier. For much of his life he was close to He...

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The Druids from 2012-09-20T10:30

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Druids, the priests of ancient Europe. Active in Ireland, Britain and Gaul, the Druids were first written about by Roman authors including Julius Caesar a...

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Annie Besant from 2012-06-21T10:45

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life of the prominent 19th-century social reformer Annie Besant. Born in 1847, Annie Besant espoused a range of causes including secularism, women's right...

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James Joyce's Ulysses from 2012-06-14T10:30

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss James Joyce's novel Ulysses. First published ninety years ago in Paris, Joyce's masterpiece is a sprawling and startlingly original work charting a single day...

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Voltaire's Candide from 2012-05-03T10:30

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Voltaire's novel Candide. First published in 1759, the novel follows the adventures of a young man, Candide, and his mentor, the philosopher Pangloss. Candide...

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Moses Mendelssohn from 2012-03-22T11:00

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work and influence of the eighteenth-century philosopher Moses Mendelssohn. A prominent figure at the court of Frederick the Great, Mendelssohn was one of...

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Benjamin Franklin from 2012-03-01T11:30

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Benjamin Franklin. A printer, statesman, diplomat, writer and scientist, Franklin was one of the most remarkable individuals of the eight...

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The Kama Sutra from 2012-02-02T12:45

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Kama Sutra, one of the most celebrated and often misunderstood texts of Indian literature. Probably composed during the reign of the Gupta dynasty around ...

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The Safavid Dynasty from 2012-01-12T12:30

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Safavid Dynasty, rulers of the Persian empire between the 16th and 18th centuries.In 1501 Shah Ismail, a boy of fifteen, declared himself ruler of Azerbai...

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Robinson Crusoe from 2011-12-22T12:15

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Daniel Defoe's novel Robinson Crusoe. Published in 1719, it was an immediate success and is considered the classic adventure story. There are several incident...

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Christina Rossetti from 2011-12-01T11:30

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the Victorian poet Christina Rossetti. Rossetti was born into an artistic family and her siblings included Dante Gabriel, one of the lead...

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Tennyson's In Memoriam from 2011-06-29T15:27

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Alfred, Lord Tennyson's long poem In Memoriam.In 1850, shortly before his appointment as Poet Laureate, Tennyson published a work which many critics regard as...

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The Anatomy of Melancholy from 2011-05-12T12:30

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Robert Burton's masterpiece The Anatomy of Melancholy.In 1621 the priest and scholar Robert Burton published a book quite unlike any other. The Anatomy of Mel...

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The Medieval University from 2011-03-17T11:00

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the medieval universities.In the 11th and 12th centuries a new type of institution started to appear in the major cities of Europe. The first universities wer...

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Aristotle's Poetics from 2011-01-27T07:46

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Aristotle's Poetics. The Poetics is, as far as we know, the first ever work of literary theory. Written in the 4th century BC, it is the work of a scholar who...

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Childe Harold's Pilgrimage from 2011-01-06T07:36

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Byron's poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage.In 1812 the 24-year-old Lord Byron published the first part of a long narrative poem. It caused an instant sensation. ...

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History of Metaphor from 2010-11-25T10:50

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the history of metaphor. In Shakespeare's As You Like It, the melancholy Jaques declares: "All the world's a stage/And all the men and women merely players." ...

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The Unicorn from 2010-10-28T06:39

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the unicorn. In the 5th century BC a Greek historian, Ctesias, described a strange one-horned beast which he believed to live in a remote area of India. Later...

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Sturm und Drang from 2010-10-14T09:31

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the artistic movement known as Sturm und Drang.In the 1770s a small group of German writers started to produce plays, poetry and novels which were radically d...

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Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Artists from 2010-05-27T08:00

Melvyn Bragg discusses 'Lives of the Artists' - the great biographer Giorgio Vasari's study of Renaissance painters, sculptors and architects. In 1550 a little known Italian artist, Giorgio Vasa...

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Roman Satire from 2010-04-22T08:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Roman Satire. Much of Roman culture was a development of their rich inheritance from the Greeks. But satire was a form the Romans could claim to have invented. Th...

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Munch and The Scream from 2010-03-18T09:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests David Jackson, Dorothy Rowe and Alastair Wright discuss the work of the Norwegian artist Edvard Munch, focusing on his most famous painting, The Scream.First exhibited in...

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Silas Marner from 2010-01-28T09:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests Rosemary Ashton, Dinah Birch and Valentine Cunningham discuss George Eliot's novel Silas Marner.Published in 1861, Silas Marner is by far Eliot's shortest and seemingly s...

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The Samurai from 2009-12-24T09:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests Gregory Irvine, Nicola Liscutin and Angus Lockyer discuss the history of the Samurai and the role of their myth in Japanese national identity.The Samurai have a fearsome ...

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Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man from 2009-11-26T09:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests Roy Foster, Jeri Johnson and Katherine Mullin discuss A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce's groundbreaking 1916 novel about growing up in Catholic Irelan...

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Elizabethan Revenge from 2009-06-18T08:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests Jonathan Bate, Julie Sanders and Janet Clare discuss Elizabethan and Jacobean revenge tragedy. From Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy to Shakespeare's Hamlet, the Elizabet...

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The Whale - A History from 2009-05-21T08:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests Steve Jones, Bill Amos and Eleanor Weston discuss the evolutionary history of the whale. The ancestor of all whales alive today was a small, land-based mammal with cloven...

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Aldous Huxley's Brave New World from 2009-04-09T08:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests David Bradshaw, Daniel Pick and Michele Barrett discuss Aldous Huxley's dystopian 1932 novel, Brave New World.

In Act V Scene I of Shakespeare's The Tempest, the c...

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The School of Athens from 2009-03-26T09:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss The School of Athens – the fresco painted by the Italian Renaissance painter, Raphael, for Pope Julius II’s private library in the Vatican. The fresco depicts so...

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The Waste Land and Modernity from 2009-02-26T09:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests, including Steve Connor and Lawrence Rainey, discuss TS Eliot's seminal poem The Waste Land and its ambivalence to the modern world of technology, democracy and capitalis...

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The Brothers Grimm from 2009-02-05T09:00

Melvyn Bragg discusses the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm with Juliette Wood, Marina Warner and Tony Phelan. The German siblings who in 1812 published a collection of fairy tales including Ra...

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Swift's A Modest Proposal from 2009-01-29T09:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most brilliant and shocking satires ever written in English – Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal. Masquerading as an attempt to end poverty in Ireland ...

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The Baroque Movement from 2008-10-23T08:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the culture of the Baroque. What do the music of Bach, the Colonnades of St Peter’s, the paintings of Caravaggio and the rebuilding of Prague have in common? The ...

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Dante's Inferno from 2008-07-03T08:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Dante’s ‘Inferno’ - a medieval journey through the nine circles of Hell. “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here”. This famous phrase is written above the gate of He...

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The Music of the Spheres from 2008-06-19T09:07

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the music of the spheres, the elegant and poetic idea that the revolution of the planets generates a celestial harmony of profound and transcendent beauty. In Sha...

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The Metaphysical Poets from 2008-06-19T09:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Metaphysical poets, a diffuse group of 17th century writers including John Donne, Andrew Marvell and George Herbert. Mourning the death of a good friend in 16...

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The Riddle of the Sands from 2008-06-12T08:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discusses the prescient thriller ‘The Riddle of the Sands’ about the decline Anglo-German relations before the First World War. In 1903 an Englishman called Charles Carut...

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The Library at Nineveh from 2008-05-15T08:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Library at Nineveh, a treasure house of Assyrian ideas from the 7th Century BC. In 1849 a young English adventurer called Henry Layard started digging into a ...

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Yeats and Irish Politics from 2008-04-17T08:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poet W.B. Yeats and Irish politics. Yeats lived through a period of great change in Ireland from the collapse of the home rule bill through to the Easter Risi...

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The Greek Myths from 2008-03-13T09:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Greek myths from Achilles to Zeus. Are you a touch narcissistic? Do you have the body of an Adonis? Are you willing to undertake Herculean tasks or Promethean...

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Lear from 2008-02-28T09:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss King Lear. Around the turn of 1606, a group of London theatre-goers braved the plague to take in a new play by the well-known impresario, Mr William Shakespeare....

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Rudolph II from 2008-01-31T09:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the coterie of brilliant thinkers gathered in 16th century Prague by the melancholic emperor Rudolph II. In 1606 the Archdukes of Vienna declared: “His majesty i...

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The Fisher King from 2008-01-17T09:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests will be delving into the world of medieval legend in pursuit of the powerful and enigmatic Fisher King. In the world of medieval romance there are many weird and wonderfu...

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Camus from 2008-01-03T09:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Algerian-French writer and Existentialist philosopher Albert Camus. Shortly after the new year of 1960, a powerful sports car crashed in the French town of Vi...

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The Prelude from 2007-11-22T09:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the greatest long poems in the English language – The Prelude. Begun in Northern Germany during the terrible winter of 1798 by a young and dreadfully home...

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Taste from 2007-10-25T08:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 18th century obsession with taste. In the mid 18th century the social commentator, George Coleman, decried the great fashion of his time: “Taste is at present...

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The Arabian Nights from 2007-10-18T08:00

Melvyn Bragg discusses the myths, tales and legends of the Arabian Nights.Once upon a time a wealthy merchant grew hot in the sun and sat down under a tree. Having eaten a date, he threw aside t...

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Madame Bovary from 2007-07-12T08:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the literary sensation caused by Gustave Flaubert's novel Madame Bovary. In January 1857 a man called Ernest Pinard stood up in a crowded courtroom and declared,...

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Siegfried Sassoon from 2007-06-07T08:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the war poet Siegfried Sassoon. In 1916 the Military Cross was awarded to a captain in the Royal Welch Fusiliers for "conspicuous gallantry during a raid on the e...

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Victorian Pessimism from 2007-05-10T08:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Victorian Pessimism. On 1 September 1851 the poet Matthew Arnold was on his honeymoon. Catching a ferry from Dover to Calais, he sat down and worked on a poem tha...

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Greek and Roman Love Poetry from 2007-04-26T08:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Greek and Roman love poetry, from the Greek poet Sappho and her erotic descriptions of romance on Lesbos, to the love-hate poems of the Roman writer Catullus. The...

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Epistolary Literature from 2007-03-15T09:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great 18th Century fashion for epistolary literature. From its first appearance in the 17th Century with writers like Aphra Behn, epistolary fiction, fiction ...

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Heart of Darkness from 2007-02-15T09:00

Melvyn Bragg will be discussing Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Written in 1899, Heart of Darkness is a fascinating fin de siecle critique of colonialism and man's greed. Conrad draws on his ...

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Jorge Luis Borges from 2007-01-04T09:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Argentinian master of the short story, Jorge Luis Borges. Borges is one of the greatest writers of the 20th Century, best known for his i...

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Hell from 2006-12-21T09:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss hell and its representation in literature and the visual arts, through the ages from Ancient Egypt to modern Christianity. Why do certain religions have a Satan f...

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Pope from 2006-11-09T09:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Alexander Pope. His enemies – who were numerous - described him as a hunchbacked toad, twisted in body, twisted in mind, but Alexander Pope i...

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The Encyclopédie from 2006-10-26T08:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the French encyclopédie, the European Enlightenment in book form. One of its editors, D’Alembert, described its mission as giving an overview of knowledge, as if ...

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Comedy in Ancient Greek Theatre from 2006-07-13T08:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss comedy in Ancient Greek theatre including Aristophanes and Menander. In The Birds, written by Aristophanes, two Athenians seek a Utopian refuge from the madness o...

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Pastoral Literature from 2006-07-06T08:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss pastoral literature.Come live with me and be my love, And we will all the pleasures prove That valleys, groves, hills, and fields, Woods or steepy mountain yields...

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Uncle Tom's Cabin from 2006-06-08T08:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the anti slavery novel, 'Uncle Tom's Cabin'. When Abraham Lincoln met the writer Harriet Beecher Stowe after the start of the American Civil War, he reportedly sa...

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Mathematics and Music from 2006-05-25T08:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the mathematical structures that lie within the heart of music. The seventeenth century philosopher Gottfried Leibniz wrote: 'Music is the pleasure the human mind...

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Fairies from 2006-05-11T08:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the literary and visual depiction of fairies, supernatural creatures that inhabit a half-way world between this one and the next.'They stole little Bridget for se...

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Goethe from 2006-04-06T08:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Johann Wolfgang Goethe, the great German polymath. 'I had the great advantage of being born at a time that was ripe for earth-shaking events which continued thro...

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The Carolingian Renaissance from 2006-03-30T08:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne and the Carolingian Renaissance. In 800 AD on Christmas Day in Rome, Pope Leo III proclaimed Charlemagne Emperor. According to ...

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Don Quixote from 2006-03-16T09:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Miguel de Cervantes’ 17th century novel, Don Quixote. Published four hundred years ago in Madrid, the book was an immediate success and recognised as one of the c...

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Friendship from 2006-03-02T09:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the concept of friendship. In Greek and Roman times, friendship was thought of as being an essential constituent of both a good society and a good life; a good so...

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Chaucer from 2006-02-09T09:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Geoffrey Chaucer, often called the father of English literature."In Southwark at the Tabard as I lay Redy to wenden on my pilgrymage To Canterbury with ful devout...

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Seventeenth Century Print Culture from 2006-01-26T09:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss 17th century print culture."Away ungodly Vulgars, far away, Fly ye profane, that dare not view the day, Nor speak to men but shadows, nor would hear Of any news, ...

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The Oresteia from 2005-12-29T09:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ‘Oresteia’, the seminal trilogy of tragedies by Aeschylus. The composer Richard Wagner recalled the visceral sensations of reading Aeschylus' great trilogy fo...

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Johnson from 2005-10-27T08:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Samuel Johnson, a giant of 18th century literature. “There is no arguing with Johnson, for when his pistol misses fire, he knocks you down with the butt of it." T...

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Marlowe from 2005-07-07T08:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Christopher Marlowe. In the prologue to The Jew of Malta Christopher Marlowe has Machiavel say:"I count religion but a childish toy, And hold there is no sin but ...

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Merlin from 2005-06-30T08:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the legendary wizard Merlin. He was sired by an incubus and born of a virgin; he was a prophet, a shape-shifter, a king-maker and a mad man of the woods. Before G...

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The Scriblerus Club from 2005-06-09T08:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Scriblerus Club. The 18th century Club included some of the most extraordinary and vivid satirists ever to have written in the English language. We are given ...

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Abelard and Heloise from 2005-05-05T08:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the story of Abelard and Heloise, a tale of literature and philosophy, theology and scandal, and above all love in the high Middle Ages. They were two of the grea...

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The Aeneid from 2005-04-21T08:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss 'The Aeneid'. Out of the tragedy and destruction of the Trojan wars came a man heading West, his father on his back and his small son holding his hand. This isn't...

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John Ruskin from 2005-03-31T08:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of John Ruskin. He was the most brilliant art critic of his age, perhaps the most brilliant that Britain has ever produced, but he was much more...

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Angels from 2005-03-24T09:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the heavenly host of Angels. George Bernard Shaw made the observation that "in heaven an angel is nobody in particular", but there is nothing commonplace about th...

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Modernist Utopias from 2005-03-11T09:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the mad, bad world of modern utopias. "I want to gather together about twenty souls," wrote D H Lawrence in 1915, "and sail away from this world of war and squalo...

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Faust from 2004-12-23T09:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the myth of Faustus." Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships,And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss!Her lips su...

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Sartre from 2004-10-07T08:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jean-Paul Sartre, the French novelist, playwright, and philosopher who became the king of intellectual Paris and a focus of post war politics and morals. Sartre'...

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Politeness from 2004-09-30T08:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the idea of Politeness. A new idea that stalked the land at the start of the eighteenth century in Britain, Politeness soon acquired a philosophy, a literature an...

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The Odyssey from 2004-09-09T08:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss The Odyssey by Homer, often claimed as the great founding work of Western Literature. It's an epic that has entertained its audience for nearly three thousand yea...

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The Later Romantics from 2004-04-15T08:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poetry, the tragedy and the idealism of the Later Romantics. There must have been something extraordinary about the early 19th century, when six of the greate...

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The Norse Gods from 2004-03-11T09:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Vikings’ myths. Thor’s huge hammer, the wailing Valkyrie, howling wolves and fierce elemental giants give a rowdy impression of the Norse myths. But at the ce...

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The Sublime from 2004-02-12T09:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss a transcendental idea that took hold on the Age of Enlightenment. When the English essayist John Hall translated the work of an obscure Roman thinker into English...

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Sensation from 2003-11-06T09:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss sensation, a Victorian literary phenomenon. The Archbishop of York fulminated against them in his sermons, they spread panic through the pages of The Times and in...

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Robin Hood from 2003-10-30T09:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the centuries old myth of the most romantic noble outlaw. The first printed version of the Robin Hood story begins like this:“Lithe and Lysten, gentylmen/That be ...

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In Our Time: Culture
Bohemianism from 2003-10-09T08:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 19th century Parisian philosophy of life lived for art. In 1848 the young Parisian Henri Murger wrote of his bohemian friends: Their daily existence is a work...

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In Our Time: Culture
Youth from 2003-04-17T08:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the idea of youth. In 1898 Joseph Conrad wrote, “I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more – the feeling that I could last for ever, ...

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In Our Time: Culture
Proust from 2003-04-10T08:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work Marcel Proust whose novel À La Recherche du Temps Perdu, or In Search of Lost Time, has been called the definitive modern novel. His stylistic ...

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In Our Time: Culture
Originality from 2003-03-20T09:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests explore the creative force of originality. How far is it to do with origins, how far with the combination of the discoveries of others, which were themselves based on the...

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In Our Time: Culture
The Epic from 2003-02-06T09:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of the epic. In his essay 'Why the novel matters', DH Lawrence argued that the novel contained all aspects of life. Perhaps better placed to make that...

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In Our Time: Culture
Victorian Realism from 2002-11-14T09:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Victorian realism. Henry James said “Realism is what in some shape or form we might encounter, whereas romanticism is something we will never encounter”. A react...

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In Our Time: Culture
Cultural Imperialism from 2002-06-27T08:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how a dominant power can exert a cultural influence on its empire. An empire rests on many things: powerful armies, good administration and strong leadership, but...

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In Our Time: Culture
Wagner from 2002-06-20T08:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Richard Wagner who, perhaps more than any other composer, would seem to capture the greatest triumphs and most terrifying excesses of the German spirit. He lived ...

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In Our Time: Culture
The Grand Tour from 2002-05-30T08:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the origins and cultural impact of 18th century tourism. Samuel Johnson observed in 1776 that "A man who has not been in Italy, is always conscious of an inferior...

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In Our Time: Culture
Tolstoy from 2002-04-25T08:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the 19th century Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy.The Russian novel has been acclaimed as one of the outstanding genres of literature alongside G...

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In Our Time: Culture
The Artist from 2002-03-28T09:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of the artist. The sculptors who created the statues of ancient Greece were treated with disdain by their contemporaries, who saw the menial task of c...

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In Our Time: Culture
Marriage from 2002-03-21T09:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of marriage.‘To have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish...

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In Our Time: Culture
Milton from 2002-03-07T09:00

Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the poet John Milton. If it wasn't for the poet Andrew Marvell we wouldn't have his later works; Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained and S...

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In Our Time: Culture
Yeats and Mysticism from 2002-01-31T09:00

Melvyn Bragg explores the strange and mystical world of the poet W B Yeats. Celtic folklore, the Theosophical society, the Golden Dawn group, seances and a wife who communicated with the spirit ...

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In Our Time: Culture
Sensibility from 2002-01-03T09:00

Melvyn Bragg examines the 18th century idea of Sensibility. In Laurence Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey, the lead character Yorick comforts a young woman who has been abandoned by a little pet go...

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In Our Time: Culture
Food from 2001-12-27T09:00

Melvyn Bragg explores the history of food in Modern Europe. The French philosopher of food Brillat-Savarin wrote in his Physiology of Taste, 'The pleasures of the table belong to all times and a...

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In Our Time: Culture
Oscar Wilde from 2001-12-06T09:00

Melvyn Bragg examines Oscar Wilde and the Aesthetes. In February 1895 Oscar Wilde was at the height of his powers, he was known on both sides of the Atlantic, he was feted in London society and ...

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In Our Time: Culture
Surrealism from 2001-11-15T09:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss surrealism. ‘Si vous aimez L’amour, vous aimerez Surrealisme!’. If you like Love, you’ll love Surrealism! Thus was the launch of the surrealist manifesto publici...

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In Our Time: Culture
Dickens from 2001-07-12T08:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the achievements of the 19th century literary giant, Charles Dickens. George Bernard Shaw said of Little Dorrit that it was “more seditious than Das Kapital”. We ...

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In Our Time: Culture
Existentialism from 2001-06-28T08:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss existentialism. Imagine being back inside the bustling cafes on the Left Bank of Paris in the 1930s, cigarette smoke, strong coffee and the buzz of continental vo...

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In Our Time: Culture
The Sonnet from 2001-06-21T08:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Sonnet, the most enduring form in the poet’s armoury. For over five hundred years its fourteen lines have exercised poetic minds from Petrarch and Shakespeare...

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In Our Time: Culture
Literary Modernism from 2001-04-26T08:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss literary modernism. In James Joyce’s Ulysses he writes, “Greater love than this, he said, no man hath that a man may lay down his wife for a friend. Go thou and d...

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In Our Time: Culture
Shakespeare's Life from 2001-03-15T09:00

Melvyn Bragg examines what we know about the life of William Shakespeare. Charles Dickens said of the deeply enigmatic Shakespeare, “It is a great comfort…that so little is known concerning the ...

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In Our Time: Culture
Gothic from 2001-01-04T09:00

Horace Walpole and then Anne Radcliffe appeared to have triggered an anti-enlightenment movement: the Gothic that swept in Coleridge, two Shelleys, Byron, the Brontés, Walter Scott and Dickens, ...

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In Our Time: Culture
Psychoanalysis and Literature from 2000-11-09T09:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss role of Freudian analysis in understanding the great works of literature. Freud said, “The poets and philosophers before me discovered the unconscious. What I dis...

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In Our Time: Culture
The Romantics from 2000-10-12T08:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideals, exponents and legacy of Romanticism. In the space of a few years around the start of the nineteenth century the Romantic period gave us: Wordsworth, C...

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In Our Time: Culture
London from 2000-09-28T08:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of London. To T.S.Eliot it was the “Unreal City”, to Wordsworth “Earth has not anything to show more fair” but to Shelley, “Hell is a city much like L...

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In Our Time: Culture
Biography from 2000-06-22T08:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss biography which sells more books now than ever before; last year people in this country spent 115 million pounds on 12 and a half million copies of biographies. A...

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In Our Time: Culture
Inspiration and Genius from 2000-06-15T08:00

Melvyn Bragg explores genius and inspiration. “When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him”. So said Jonathon Swift...

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In Our Time: Culture
The Renaissance from 2000-06-08T08:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Renaissance, which was first given its role as the birth place of modern man by the nineteenth century historian Jacob Burckhardt. At the start of his immens...

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In Our Time: Culture
The American Ideal from 2000-06-01T08:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the American Ideal. The Twentieth Century has been called the American Century, and you don’t have to look very far to see the evidence of its enormous success. I...

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In Our Time: Culture
Shakespeare's Work from 2000-05-11T08:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of William Shakespeare. He was nominated as the Man of the last Millennium and he steps into this one - on film, on stage, in academia, in schools, in pr...

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In Our Time: Culture
Death from 2000-05-04T08:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Death, what the 16th century philosopher Frances Bacon called, ‘the least of all evils’. A subject which has provoked thousands of reflections which live on: How ...

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In Our Time: Culture
Englishness from 2000-04-20T08:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the characteristics of the English identity. “An Englishman’s word is his bond”, “An Englishman’s home is his castle”. “England is a nation of shopkeepers”, but ...

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In Our Time: Culture
Materialism and the Consumer from 2000-03-23T09:00

Melvyn Bragg examines materialism and the consumer. Does consumerism - as a cult, a fact, a need, a religion - threaten culture as we have known it, individuality as we desire it, life as we asp...

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In Our Time: Culture
Metamorphosis from 2000-03-02T09:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Roman poet Ovid and explore the theme of metamorphosis from the transformation of Narcissus to the bug of Kafka’s story, and beyond. Ovid wrote at the beginni...

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In Our Time: Culture
Reading from 2000-02-17T09:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of the politics and practice of reading. Gustave Flaubert’s sage advice to us was: “Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambiti...

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In Our Time: Culture
Masculinity in Literature from 2000-01-20T09:00

Melvyn Bragg investigates masculinity in literature. Ernest Hemingway wrote in The Old Man and the Sea, “A man can be destroyed but not defeated”. In a time when traditional male roles have been...

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In Our Time: Culture
Tragedy from 1999-12-02T09:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of the ancient genre of tragedy and examines whether we have a psychological need for it, either as catharsis or Schadenfreude. You could be forgiven ...

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In Our Time: Culture
The Novel from 1999-11-11T09:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the development and the future of the novel. D.H. Lawrence was proud of his job, he said: “I am a man, and alive…for this reason I am a novelist. And being a nove...

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In Our Time: Culture
Maths and Storytelling from 1999-09-30T08:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the relationship between maths and storytelling. Is there a hidden mathematical logic in stories? The American mathematician John Allen Paulos thinks so. It’s an ...

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In Our Time: Culture
Truth, Lies and Fiction from 1999-07-15T08:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss truth, lies and fiction. In 1995 a book appeared which brought its author great acclaim from serious critics, won prizes, stunned its readers and was thought to a...

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In Our Time: Culture
Capitalism from 1999-06-24T08:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss capitalism throughout the last two centuries. In 1848 Karl Marx in The Communist Manifesto described the dynamic force of capitalism as it swept through the 19th ...

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In Our Time: Culture
The Monarchy from 1999-06-10T08:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the British monarchy. In the last two hundred and fifty years, we’ve beheaded one king, exiled another, hired a distant German-speaking dynasty to fill the monarc...

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In Our Time: Culture
Memory and Culture from 1999-05-27T08:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss memory. At the start of the twentieth century Freud put memory at the centre of our psychology, and as the century has worn on what a nation remembers and what it...

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In Our Time: Culture
Multiculturalism from 1999-05-13T08:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss multiculturalism. The divisions between people provoked and exploited because of differences in religion, culture, nationality and race seem to beset the planet t...

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In Our Time: Culture
Writing and Political Oppression from 1999-04-08T08:00

Melvyn Bragg examines how two writers’ work have been shaped by political oppression and explores whether writers have a political role in modern society. The connection between writers and poli...

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In Our Time: Culture
Architecture in the 20th Century from 1999-03-25T09:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rise in so-called spectacular architecture at the end of the 20th century. Is architecture to do with what we live in, where it’s located, the buildings that ...

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In Our Time: Culture
Shakespeare and Literary Criticism from 1999-03-04T09:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the enduring popular and academic appeal of Shakespeare. Did he invent the human personality as we inhabit it now? Professor Harold Bloom claims:“Shakespeare is u...

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In Our Time: Culture
The Avant Garde's Decline and Fall in the 20th Century from 1999-02-25T09:00

Melvyn Bragg examines the social and aesthetic impact of the Avant Garde and discusses whether it has failed in making painting relevant in the 20th century.Avant-garde is in the dictionary as '...

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In Our Time: Culture
Language and the Mind from 1999-02-11T09:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of our ideas about the formation of language. The psychologist George Miller worked out that in English there are potentially a hundred million trilli...

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In Our Time: Culture
Modern Culture from 1999-01-28T09:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests debate the state of Modern Culture in the 20th century. Culture used to be a word we mocked, a concept too foreign for the stout empiricists of Britain, a species of fore...

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In Our Time: Culture
Feminism from 1999-01-07T09:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most important events of the 20th century - the rise of Feminism and the subsequent empowerment of women. What have been the most important and lasting...

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In Our Time: Culture
The American Century from 1998-12-17T09:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how legitimate it is to call the 20th century the American century. Just how benevolent has America’s impact on the world been? And how durable has American’s ini...

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In Our Time: Culture
Cultural Rights in the 20th Century from 1998-12-10T09:00

On the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Human Rights at the United Nations in New York, Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the current status of that original declaration. ...

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In Our Time: Culture
Work in the 20th Century from 1998-11-26T09:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the changing nature of work practices and the work ethic as it pertains at the end of the 20th century. Has our understanding of the nature and function of work r...

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In Our Time: Culture
The City in the 20th Century from 1998-11-12T09:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the artistic, cultural and innovative developments of the city in the 20th century and is joined by two practitioners of the geographer’s art; Professor Doreen Ma...

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