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BBC Radio 4

Spanning history, religion, culture, science and philosophy, In Our Time from BBC Radio 4 is essential listening for the intellectually curious. In each episode, host Melvyn Bragg and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world. 
 
History fans can learn about pivotal wars and societal upheavals, such as the rise and fall of Napoleon, the Sack of Rome in 1527, and the political intrigue of the Russian Revolution. Those fascinated by the lives of kings and queens can journey to Versailles to meet Marie Antoinette and Louis XIV the Sun King, or to Ancient Egypt to meet Cleopatra and Nerfertiti. Or perhaps you’re looking to explore the history of religion, from Buddhism’s early teachings to the Protestant Reformation.
 
If you’re interested in the stories behind iconic works of art, music and literature, dive in to discussions on the artistic genius of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel and Van Gogh’s famous Sunflowers. From Gothic architecture to the works of Shakespeare, each episode of In Our Time offers new insight into humanity’s cultural achievements.
 
Those looking to enrich their scientific knowledge can hear episodes on black holes, the Periodic Table, and classical theories of gravity, motion, evolution and relativity. Learn how the discovery of penicillin revolutionised medicine, and how the death of stars can lead to the formation of new planets. 
 
Lovers of philosophy will find episodes on the big issues that define existence, from free will and ethics, to liberty and justice. In what ways did celebrated philosophers such as Mary Wollstonecraft and Karl Marx push forward radical new ideas? How has the concept of karma evolved from the ancient Sanskrit texts of Hinduism to today? What was Plato’s concept of an ideal republic, and how did he explore this through the legend of the lost city of Atlantis?
 
In Our Time celebrates the pursuit of knowledge and the enduring power of ideas.

In Our Time

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 a Scandinavian hero whose feats include battles with the fearsome monster Grendel and a fire-breathing dragon. It survives in a single manuscript dating from around 1000 AD, and was almost completely unknown until its rediscovery in the nineteenth century. Since then it has been translated into modern English by writers including William Morris, JRR Tolkien and Seamus Heaney, and inspired poems, novels and films.

With:

Laura Ashe
Associate Professor in English at the University of Oxford and Fellow of Worcester College

Clare Lees
Professor of Medieval English Literature and History of the Language at King's College London

Andy Orchard
Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at the University of Oxford

Producer: Thomas Morris.

Beowulf

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 2000-year-old device which transformed our understanding of astronomy in ancient Greece. In 1900 a group of sponge divers found the wreck of a ship off the coast of the Greek island of Antikythera. Among the items salvaged was a corroded bronze object, the purpose of which was not at first clear. It turned out to be one of the most important discoveries in marine archaeology. Over time, researchers worked out that it was some kind of astronomical analogue computer, the only one to survive from this period as bronze objects were so often melted down for other uses. In recent decades, detailed examination of the Antikythera Mechanism using the latest scientific techniques indicates that it is a particularly intricate tool for showing the positions of planets, the sun and moon, with a complexity and precision not surpassed for over a thousand years.

With 

Mike Edmunds 
Emeritus Professor of Astrophysics at Cardiff University

Jo Marchant 
Science journalist and author of 'Decoding the Heavens' on the Antikythera Mechanism

And 

Liba Taub 
Professor Emerita in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge and Visiting Scholar at the Deutsches Museum, Munich

Producer: Simon Tillotson
In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

Reading list:

Derek de Solla Price, Gears from the Greeks: The Antikythera Mechanism (American Philosophical Society Press, 1974)

M. G. Edmunds, ‘The Antikythera mechanism and the mechanical universe’ (Contemp. Phys. 55, 2014) 

M.G. Edmunds, ’The Mechanical Universe’ (Astronomy & Geophysics, 64, 2023)

James Evans and J. Lennart Berggren, Geminos's Introduction to the Phenomena: A Translation and Study of a Hellenistic Survey of Astronomy (Princeton University Press, 2006)

T. Freeth et al., ‘Calendars with Olympiad display and eclipse prediction on the Antikythera mechanism’ (Nature 454, 2008)

Alexander Jones, A Portable Cosmos: Revealing the Antikythera Mechanism, Scientific Wonder of the Ancient World (Oxford University Press, 2017)

Jo Marchant, Decoding the Heavens: Solving the Mystery of the World’s First Computer (Windmill Books, 2009)

J.H. Seiradakis and M.G. Edmunds, ‘Our current knowledge of the Antikythera Mechanism’ (Nature Astronomy 2, 2018)

Liba Taub, Ancient Greek and Roman Science: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2022)

The Antikythera Mechanism

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Italian author of Invisible Cities, If On A Winter's Night A Traveller, Cosmicomics and other celebrated novels, fables and short stories of the 20th Century. Calvino (1923 -1985) had a passionate belief that writing and art could make life better for everyone. Despite his parents being scientists, who dearly wanted him to be a scientist too, and his time fighting with the Partisans in Liguria in WWII during which his parents were held hostage by the Nazis, Calvino turned away from realism in his writing. Ideally, he said, he would have liked to be alive in the Enlightenment. He moved towards the fantastical, drawing on his childhood reading while collecting a huge number of the fables of Italy and translating them from dialect into Italian to enrich the shared culture of his fellow citizens. His fresh perspective on the novel continues to inspire writers and delight readers in Italian and in translations around the world.

With 

Guido Bonsaver
Professor of Italian Cultural History at the University of Oxford

Jennifer Burns
Professor of Italian Studies at the University of Warwick

And

Beatrice Sica
Associate Professor in Italian Studies at UCL

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Reading list: 

Elio Baldi, The Author in Criticism: Italo Calvino’s Authorial Image in Italy, the United States, and the United Kingdom (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2020)

Elio Baldi and Cecilia Schwartz, Circulation, Translation and Reception Across Borders: Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities Around the World (Routledge, 2024)

Peter Bondanella and Andrea Ciccarelli (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to the Italian Novel (Cambridge University Press, 2003), especially the chapter ‘Italo Calvino and Umberto Eco: Postmodern Masters’

James Butler, ‘Infinite Artichoke’ (London Review of Books, vol. 45, no. 12, 15 June 2023)

Italo Calvino (trans. Martin McLaughlin), The Path to the Spiders’ Nests (first published 1947; Penguin Classics, 2009)

Italo Calvino (trans. Mikki Taylor), The Baron in the Trees (first published 1957; Vintage Classics, 2021)

Italo Calvino, Marcovaldo (first published 1963; Vintage Classics, 2023) 

Italo Calvino (trans. William Weaver and Ann Goldstein), Difficult Loves and Other Stories (first published 1970; Vintage Classics, 2018)

Italo Calvino (trans. William Weaver), Invisible Cities (first published 1972; Vintage Classics, 1997)

Italo Calvino (trans. Patrick Creagh), The Uses of Literature (first published 1980; Houghton Mifflin, 1987)

Italo Calvino (trans. Geoffrey Brock), Six Memos for the Next Millennium (first published 1988; Penguin Classics, 2016) 

Italo Calvino (trans. Tim Parks), The Road to San Giovanni (first published 1990; HMH Books, 2014) 

Italo Calvino (trans. Ann Goldstein), The Written World and the Unwritten World: Essays (Mariner Books Classics, 2023)

Kathryn Hume, Calvino's Fictions: Cogito and Cosmos (Clarendon Press, 1992)

Martin McLaughlin, Italo Calvino (Edinburgh University Press, 1998)

In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

Italo Calvino

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the intense political activity at the turn of the 18th Century, when many politicians in London went to great lengths to find a Protestant successor to the throne of Great Britain and Ireland and others went to equal lengths to oppose them. Queen Anne had no surviving children and, following the old rules, there were at least 50 Catholic candidates ahead of any Protestant ones and among those by far the most obvious candidate was James, the only son of James II. Yet with the passing of the Act of Settlement in 1701 ahead of Anne's own succession, focus turned to Europe and to Princess Sophia, an Electress of the Holy Roman Empire in Hanover who, as a granddaughter of James I, thus became next in line to be crowned at Westminster Abbey. It was not clear that Hanover would want this role, given its own ambitions and the risks, in Europe, of siding with Protestants, and soon George I was minded to break the rules of succession so that he would be the last Hanoverian monarch as well as the first.

With

Andreas Gestrich
Professor Emeritus at Trier University and Former Director of the German Historical Institute in London

Elaine Chalus
Professor of British History at the University of Liverpool

And 

Mark Knights
Professor of History at the University of Warwick

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Reading list:

J.M. Beattie, The English Court in the Reign of George I (Cambridge University Press, 1967)

Jeremy Black, The Hanoverians: The History of a Dynasty (Hambledon Continuum, 2006)

Justin Champion, Republican Learning: John Toland and the Crisis of Christian Culture 1696-1722 (Manchester University Press, 2003), especially his chapter ‘Anglia libera: Protestant liberties and the Hanoverian succession, 1700–14’

Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707 – 1837 (Yale University Press, 2009)

Andreas Gestrich and Michael Schaich (eds), The Hanoverian Succession: Dynastic Politics and Monarchical Culture (‎Ashgate, 2015)

Ragnhild Hatton, George I: Elector and King (Thames & Hudson Ltd, 1979)

Mark Knights, Representation and Misrepresentation in Later Stuart Britain: Partisanship and Political Culture (Oxford University Press, 2005) 

Mark Knights, Faction Displayed: Reconsidering the Impeachment of Dr Henry Sacheverell (Blackwell, 2012)

Joanna Marschner, Queen Caroline: Cultural Politics at the Early Eighteenth-Century Court (Yale University Press, 2014)

Ashley Marshall, ‘Radical Steele: Popular Politics and the Limits of Authority’ (Journal of British Studies 58, 2019)

Paul Monod, Jacobitism and the English People, 1688-1788 (Cambridge University Press, 1989)

Hannah Smith, Georgian Monarchy: Politics and Culture 1714-1760 (Cambridge University Press, 2006)

Daniel Szechi, 1715: The Great Jacobite Rebellion (Yale University Press, 2006)

A.C. Thompson, George II : King and Elector (Yale University Press, 2011)

In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

The Hanoverian Succession

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the greatest romantic poets in Persian literature. Nizami Ganjavi (c1141–1209) is was born in the city of Ganja in what is now Azerbaijan and his popularity soon spread throughout the Persian-speaking lands and beyond. Nizami is best known for his Khamsa, a set of five epic poems that contains a famous retelling of the tragic love story of King Khosrow II (c570-628) and the Christian princess Shirin (unknown-628) and the legend of Layla and Majnun. Not only did he write romances: his poetry also displays a dazzling knowledge of philosophy, astronomy, botany and the life of Alexander the Great.

With 

Christine van Ruymbeke
Professor of Persian Literature and Culture at the University of Cambridge

Narguess Farzad
Senior Lecturer in Persian Studies at SOAS, University of London

And

Dominic Parviz Brookshaw
Professor of Persian Literature and Iranian Culture at the University of Oxford

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Reading list:

Laurence Binyon, The Poems of Nizami (The Studio Limited, 1928)

Barbara Brend, Treasures of Herat: Two Manuscripts of the Khamsah of Nizami in the British Library (Gingko, 2020)

Barbara Brend, The Emperor Akbar’s Khamsa of Nizami (British Library, 1995)

J-C. Burgel and C. van Ruymbeke, A Key to the Treasure of the Hakim: Artistic and Humanistic Aspects of Nizami Ganjavi’s Khamsa (Leiden University Press, 2011)

Nizami Ganjavi (trans. P.J. Chelkowski), Mirror of the Invisible World: Tales from the Khamseh of Nizami (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1975)

Nizami Ganjavi (trans. Dick Davis), Layli and Majnun (Penguin Books, 2021)

Nizami Ganjavi (trans. Rudolf Gelpke), The Story of Layla and Majnun (first published 1966: Omega Publications, 1997)

Nizami Ganjavi (trans. Rudolf Gelpke), The Story of the Seven Princesses (Bruno Cassirer Ltd, 1976)

Nizami Ganjavi (trans. Julie Scott Meisami, The Haft Paykar: A Medieval Persian Romance (Oxford University Press, 1995)

Nizami Ganjavi (trans. Colin Turner), Layla and Majnun (Blake Publishing, 1997)
 
Dominic Parviz Brookshaw, Hafiz and His Contemporaries: Poetry, Performance and Patronage in Fourteenth-Century Iran (Bloomsbury, 2019)

Julie Scott Meisami, Medieval Persian Court Poetry (Princeton University Press, 2014)

Asghar Seyed-Gohrab, Layli and Majnun: Love, Madness and Mystic Longing in Nizami’s Epic Romance (Brill, 2003)

Kamran Talattof, Jerome W. Clinton, and K. Allin Luther, The Poetry of Nizami Ganjavi: Knowledge, Love, and Rhetoric (Palgrave, 2000)

C. van Ruymbeke, Science and Poetry in Medieval Persia: The Botany of Nizami's Khamsa (Cambridge University Press, 2007) 

In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

Nizami Ganjavi

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss some of the great unanswered questions in science: how and where did life on Earth begin, what did it need to thrive and could it be found elsewhere? Charles Darwin speculated that we might look for the cradle of life here in 'some warm little pond'; more recently the focus moved to ocean depths, while new observations in outer space and in laboratories raise fresh questions about the potential for lifeforms to develop and thrive, or 'habitability' as it is termed. What was the chemistry needed for life to begin and is it different from the chemistry we have now? With that in mind, what signs of life should we be looking for in the universe to learn if we are alone?

With 

Jayne Birkby
Associate Professor of Exoplanetary Sciences at the University of Oxford and Tutorial Fellow in Physics at Brasenose College

Saidul Islam
Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Kings College, London

And 

Oliver Shorttle
Professor of Natural Philosophy at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Clare College

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Reading list: 

David Grinspoon, Venus Revealed: A New Look Below the Clouds of Our Mysterious Twin Planet (Basic Books, 1998)

Lisa Kaltenegger, Alien Earths: Planet Hunting in the Cosmos (Allen Lane, 2024)

Andrew H. Knoll, Life on a Young Planet: The First Three Billion Years of Evolution on Earth (‎Princeton University Press, 2004)

Charles H. Langmuir and Wallace Broecker, How to Build a Habitable Planet: The Story of Earth from the Big Bang to Humankind (Princeton University Press, 2012)

Joshua Winn, The Little Book of Exoplanets (Princeton University Press, 2023)

In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

The Habitability of Planets

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Greek biographer Plutarch (c46 AD-c120 AD) and especially his work 'Parallel Lives' which has shaped the way successive generations see the Classical world. Plutarch was clear that he was writing lives, not histories, and he wrote these very focussed accounts in pairs to contrast and compare the characters of famous Greeks and Romans, side by side, along with their virtues and vices. This focus on the inner lives of great men was to fascinate Shakespeare, who drew on Plutarch considerably when writing his Julius Caesar, Coriolanus, Timon of Athens and Antony and Cleopatra. While few followed his approach of setting lives in pairs, Plutarch's work was to influence countless biographers especially from the Enlightenment onwards.

With

Judith Mossman
Professor Emerita of Classics at Coventry University

Andrew Erskine
Professor of Ancient History at the University of Edinburgh

And 

Paul Cartledge
AG Leventis Senior Research Fellow of Clare College, University of Cambridge

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Reading list:

Mark Beck (ed.), A Companion to Plutarch (Wiley-Blackwell, 2014)

Colin Burrow, Shakespeare and Classical Antiquity (Oxford University Press, 2013), especially chapter 6

Raphaëla Dubreuil, Theater and Politics in Plutarch’s Parallel Lives (Brill, 2023)

Tim Duff, Plutarch’s Lives: Exploring Virtue and Vice (Oxford University Press, 1999)

Noreen Humble (ed.), Plutarch’s Lives: Parallelism and Purpose (Classical Press of Wales, 2010)

Robert Lamberton, Plutarch (Yale University Press, 2002)

Hugh Liebert, Plutarch's Politics: Between City and Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2016)

Christopher Pelling, Plutarch and History (Classical Press of Wales, 2002)

Plutarch (trans. Robin Waterfield), Greek Lives (Oxford University Press, 2008) 

Plutarch (trans. Robin Waterfield), Roman Lives (Oxford University Press, 2008) 

Plutarch (trans. Robin Waterfield), Hellenistic Lives (Oxford University Press, 2016)

Plutarch (trans. Ian Scott-Kilvert), The Rise and Fall of Athens: Nine Greek Lives (Penguin, 2023) 

Plutarch (trans. Ian Scott-Kilvert), The Age of Alexander: Nine Greek Lives (Penguin, 2011) 

Plutarch (trans. Richard Talbert), On Sparta (Penguin, 2005)

Plutarch (trans. Christopher Pelling), The Rise of Rome (Penguin, 2013) 

Plutarch (trans. Christopher Pelling), Rome in Crisis: Nine Lives (Penguin, 2010)

Plutarch (trans. Rex Warner), The Fall of the Roman Republic: Six Lives (Penguin, 2006)

Plutarch (trans. Thomas North, ed. Judith Mossman), The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans (Wordsworth, 1998)

Geert Roskam, Plutarch (Cambridge University Press, 2021)

D. A. Russell, Plutarch (2nd ed., Bristol Classical Press, 2001)

Philip A. Stadter, Plutarch and his Roman Readers (Oxford University Press, 2014)

Frances B. Titchener and Alexei V. Zadorojnyi (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Plutarch (Cambridge University Press, 2023)

In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

Plutarch's Parallel Lives

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss eighteenth century 'vase-mania'. In the second half of the century, inspired by archaeological discoveries, the Grand Tour and the founding of the British Museum, parts of the British public developed a huge enthusiasm for vases modelled on the ancient versions recently dug up in Greece. This enthusiasm amounted to a kind of ‘vase-mania’. Initially acquired by the aristocracy, Josiah Wedgwood made these vases commercially available to an emerging aspiring middle class eager to display a piece of the Classical past in their drawing rooms. In the midst of a rapidly changing Britain, these vases came to symbolise the birth of European Civilisation, the epitome of good taste and the timelessness that would later be celebrated by John Keats in his Ode on a Grecian Urn.

With

Jenny Uglow
Writer and Biographer 

Rosemary Sweet
Professor of Urban History at the University of Leicester

And

Caroline McCaffrey-Howarth
Lecturer in the History of Art at the University of Edinburgh

Producer: Eliane Glaser

Reading list:

Viccy Coltman, Fabricating the Antique: Neoclassicism in Britain 1760–1800 (University of Chicago Press, 2006)

David Constantine, Fields of Fire: A Life of Sir William Hamilton (Phoenix, 2002)

Tristram Hunt, The Radical Potter: Josiah Wedgwood and the Transformation of Britain (Allen Lane, 2021)

Ian Jenkins and Kim Sloan (eds), Vases and Volcanoes: Sir William Hamilton and his Collection (British Museum Press, 1996)

Berg Maxine, Luxury and Pleasure in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Oxford University Press, 2005)

Iris Moon, Melancholy Wedgwood (MIT Press, 2024)

Rosemary Sweet, Grand Tour: The British in Italy, c.1690–1820 (Cambridge University Press, 2012)

Jenny Uglow, The Lunar Men: The Friends who Made the Future (Faber and Faber, 2003)

In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio production

Vase-mania

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss slime mould, a basic organism that grows on logs, cowpats and compost heaps. Scientists have found difficult to categorise slime mould: in 1868, the biologist Thomas Huxley asked: ‘Is this a plant, or is it an animal? Is it both or is it neither?’ and there is a great deal scientists still don’t know about it.
 
But despite not having a brain, slime mould can solve complex problems: it can find the most efficient way round a maze and has been used to map Tokyo’s rail network. Researchers are using it to help find treatments for cancer, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease, and computer scientists have designed an algorithm based on slime mould behaviour to learn about dark matter. It’s even been sent to the international space station to help study the effects of weightlessness.
 
With

Jonathan Chubb
Professor of Quantitative Cell Biology at University College, London

Elinor Thompson
Reader in microbiology and plant science at the University of Greenwich

And

Merlin Sheldrake
Biologist and writer

Producer: Eliane Glaser 

In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio production

Slime Moulds

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most consequential battles of recent centuries. On 20th September 1792 at Valmy, 120 miles to the east of Paris, the army of the French Revolution faced Prussians, Austrians and French royalists heading for Paris to free Louis XVI and restore his power and end the Revolution. The professional soldiers in the French army were joined by citizens singing the Marseillaise and their refusal to give ground prompted their opponents to retreat when they might have stayed and won. The French success was transformative. The next day, back in Paris, the National Convention abolished the monarchy and declared the new Republic. Goethe, who was at Valmy, was to write that from that day forth began a new era in the history of the world.

With 

Michael Rowe
Reader in European History at King’s College London

Heidi Mehrkens
Lecturer in Modern European History at the University of Aberdeen

And

Colin Jones
Professor Emeritus of History at Queen Mary, University of London

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Reading list

T. C. W. Blanning, The French Revolutionary Wars, 1787-1802 (Hodder Education, 1996)

Elizabeth Cross, ‘The Myth of the Foreign Enemy? The Brunswick Manifesto and the Radicalization of the French Revolution’ (French History 25/2, 2011)

Charles J. Esdaile, The Wars of the French Revolution, 1792-1801 (Routledge, 2018)

John A. Lynn, ‘Valmy’ (MHQ: Quarterly Journal of Military History, Fall 1992)

Munro Price, The Fall of the French Monarchy: Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette and the
baron de Breteuil (Macmillan, 2002)

Simon Schama, Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution (Penguin Books, 1989)

Samuel F. Scott, From Yorktown to Valmy: The Transformation of the French Army in an Age of Revolution (University Press of Colorado, 1998)

Marie-Cécile Thoral, From Valmy to Waterloo: France at War, 1792–1815 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011)

In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

The Battle of Valmy

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, in poems to the mysterious Lesbia, married and elusive, and he influenced Virgil and Ovid and others, yet his explicit poems were to blight his reputation for a thousand years. Once the one surviving manuscript was discovered in the Middle Ages, though, anecdotally as a plug in a wine butt, he inspired Petrarch and the Elizabethan poets, as he continues to inspire many today.

The image above is of Lesbia and her Sparrow, 1860, artist unknown

With

Gail Trimble
Brown Fellow and Tutor in Classics at Trinity College at the University of Oxford

Simon Smith
Reader in Creative Writing at the University of Kent, poet and translator of Catullus

and

Maria Wyke
Professor of Latin at University College London

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Catullus

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