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Lyt når som helst, hvor som helst 

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 Misha Glenny 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 Nefertiti. 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

To the frustration of many, a lot of women’s clothes don’t have pockets. But why on Earth is that the case? Especially when men’s clothing seems to be full of pockets.

On Here For The History, Alice Loxton and Ben Henderson track the tumultuous and muddy history of women’s pockets. From capacious beginnings, through many fashion changes, to suffragette campaigning and societal expectations.

Alice and Ben unpick the surprising moments of pocket history that have contributed to the inconsistency of these sewn-in marvels today.

If you enjoy this episode, you can find more episodes of Here For The History on BBC Sounds. If you’re outside the UK, you can listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

KEY SOURCES:
Pockets: An Intimate History of How We Keep Things Close by Hannah Carlson
The Pocket: A Hidden History of Women's Lives by Arianne Fennetaux and Barbara Burman

Pockets (from Here For The History)

Widely regarded as the first professional woman writer in English literature, Aphra Behn (1640-1689) is best known for her plays and her novel Oroonoko, she's been an inspiration to countless writers across the ages.

This archive episode, first released in October 2017, was selected as part of a ten-episode series by Misha Glenny. In the episode, Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and times of Behn, who made her name and her living as a playwright, poet and writer of fiction during the Restoration. Virginia Woolf wrote of her: 'All women together, ought to let flowers fall upon the grave of Aphra Behn... for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds'. Behn may well have spent some of her early life in Surinam, the setting for her novel Oroonoko, and there are records of her working in the Netherlands as a spy for Charles II. She was loyal to the Stuart kings and refused to write a poem on the coronation of William of Orange. She was regarded as an important writer in her lifetime and inspired others to write but fell out of favour for two centuries after her death when her work was seen as too bawdy, the product of a disreputable age.

With 

Janet Todd

Former President of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge University

Ros Ballaster

Professor of 18th Century Literature at Mansfield College, University of Oxford

and

Claire Bowditch 

Post-doctoral Research Associate in English and Drama at Loughborough University 
 
Producer: Simon Tillotson. 
 
Reading list: 
 
Kate Aughterson, Aphra Behn: The Comedies (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003) 
 
Ros Ballaster, Seductive Forms: Women’s Amatory Fiction 1684-1740 (Oxford Clarendon Press, 1991) 
 
Aphra Behn (ed. Joanna Lipking), Oroonoko (Norton and Co, 1997) 
 
Aphra Behn (ed. Paul Salzman), Oroonoko and Other Writings (Oxford University Press, 2009) 
 
Aphra Behn (ed. Jane Spencer), The Rover and Other Plays (Oxford University Press, 2008) 
 
Aphra Behn (ed. Janet Todd), Oroonoko (Penguin Classics, 2003) 
 
Aphra Behn (ed. Janet Todd), Oroonoko, the Rover and Other Works (Penguin Classics, 1999) 
 
Aphra Behn (ed. Janet Todd), The Complete Works of Aphra Behn:7 vols. (Pickering and Chatto, 1992-6) 
 
Claire Bowditch, The Works of Aphra Behn (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming) 
 
W. J. Cameron, New Light on Aphra Behn (University of Auckland Press, 1961) 
 
Maureen Duffy, The Passionate Shepherdess: Aphra Behn, 1640-89 (Jonathan Cape, 1977) 
 
Derek Hughes, The Theatre of Aphra Behn (Palgrave Macmillan, 2001) 
 
Derek Hughes (ed.), Versions of Blackness: Oroonoko, Race and Slavery (Cambridge University Press, 2007) 
 
Jane Spencer, Aphra Behn’s Afterlife (Oxford University Press, 2000) 
 
Janet Todd (ed.), Aphra Behn Studies (Cambridge University Press, 1996) 
 
Janet Todd, Aphra Behn: A Secret Life (Fentum Press, 2017) 
 
Janet Todd and Derek Hughes (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Aphra Behn (Cambridge University Press, 2004) 
 
S. J. Wiseman, Aphra Behn (Northcote House, 1996) 
 
In Our Time is a BBC Studios production 
 
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 Misha Glenny and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.

Archive: Aphra Behn

Misha Glenny and guests discuss a familiar feature of our beaches: seashells, from their astonishing shapes and patterns that teach us about Earth’s oceans, to the ways that humans have treasured shells throughout history. Seashells appear in the mythologies of countless cultures across the world - think of Botticelli’s Venus emerging from a giant scallop shell, Vishnu's sacred horn panchajanya, or the Aztec god Quetzalcōātl’s talisman cut from a conch shell. The urge to collect shells seems to be as old as our species. We’ve used them as decoration, currency, and musical instruments. But shells aren’t just beautiful objects washed up on our beaches. Many belong to one of the most diverse groups of the animal kingdom, Mollusca, and the remarkable morphology of forms and structures they grow in offer insight into the past, present, and future of the marine world.

With 

Suzanne Williams
Merit Researcher at the Natural History Museum 

Liz Harper
Professor of Evolutionary Malacology in the Department of Earth Sciences and Fellow at Gonville and Caius College, University of Cambridge 

Helen Scales
Marine biologist and Author. 

Producer: Martha Owen

Reading list:

S. Peter Dance, Shells (DK, 2022)

A.R. Irwin, S.T. Williams, D.I. Speiser and N.W. Roberts, ‘The marine gastropod Conomurex luhuanus (Strombidae) has high-resolution spatial vision and eyes with complex retinas’ (Journal of Experimental Biology 225:16, 2022)

Michael F. Land and Dan-Eric Nilsson, Animal Eyes (Oxford University Press, 2012) 

Andreia Salvador, Interesting Shells (The Natural History Museum, 2022)

Helen Scales, Shell Day: A Story of 24 Hours and 24 Molluscan Lives (University of Chicago Press, 2026)

Helen Scales, The Shell Spotter's Guide (National Trust Books, 2024)

Helen Scales, What a Shell Can Tell: Where They Live, What They Eat, How They Move, and More (Phaidon Press, 2022)

Helen Scales, Spirals in Time: The Secret Life and Curious Afterlife of Seashells (Bloomsbury Sigma, 2015)

Paul D. Taylor, Fossils: The Essential Guide (University of Chicago Press, 2025)

Suzanne Williams, ‘Molluscan shell colour’ (Biological Reviews, 2017) 

In Our Time is a BBC Studios production

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 Misha Glenny and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.

Seashells

Misha Glenny and guests discuss the French portrait painter Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun (1755 - 1842). From her teens she delighted her high society subjects in and around Paris, notably Marie Antoinette who she painted around 30 times, and she invariably found ways to show her sitters at their best. Some critics were affronted that she, a young woman, dared paint at all and, when they saw how good her portraits were, some spread a rumour that surely this could not really be her work and she must have had a secret male lover finishing her portraits in a studio. The French Revolution forced Vigée Le Brun out of France and so she set off from one European court to another to find more success from Naples to Vienna to St Petersburg and to London, eventually settling back in France. Today her works are on show in major galleries around the world.

With

Rosalind Polly Blakesley
Master of Pembroke College and Professor of Russian and European Art at the University of Cambridge

Robert Wenley
Deputy Director of Collections and Research at the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham

And 

Francesca Whitlum-Cooper
Curator of Later Italian, Spanish and French Paintings at The National Gallery, London.

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Reading list:

Joseph Baillio, Katharine Baetjer and Paul Lang (eds), Vigée Le Brun (exhibition catalogue in English, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2016)

Joseph Baillio et al., Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun: 1755-1842 (exhibition catalogue in French, Grand Palais, Paris, 2015/16)

Rosalind P. Blakesley, Women Artists in the Reign of Catherine the Great (Lund Humphries Publishers Ltd, 2023), especially chapter 8 ‘The Triumphant Refugee’

Lucy Davies, Vigée Le Brun: Self Portrait in a Straw Hat (National Gallery Global, 2025)

Angelica Goodden, The Sweetness of Life: A Biography of Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun (Andre Deutsch Ltd, 1997)

Franny Moyle, Mrs Kauffman and Madame Le Brun: The Entwined Lives of Two Great Eighteenth-Century Women Artists (Apollo, 2025)

Jordana Pomeroy, Daring: The Life and Art of Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun (Getty Publications, 2025)

Mary D. Sheriff, The Exceptional Woman: Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun and the Cultural Politics of Art (University of Chicago Press, 1997)

Paris Spies-Gans, A Revolution on Canvas: The Rise of Women Artists in Britain and France, 1760-1830 (Paul Mellon Centre, Yale University Press London, 2022)

Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun (trans. Sian Evans), The Memoirs of Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun (Camden Press, 1989)

Louise-Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, Souvenirs de Madame Louise-Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun (first published 1869; Tredition Classics, 2012)

In Our Time is a BBC Studios production

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 Misha Glenny and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.

Vigée Le Brun

Misha Glenny and guests discuss the origins and evolution of an alliance which transformed the geopolitics of the classical world: the Delian League. Since the start of the 5th Century BCE, city states across Greece had been fighting a series of armed conflicts in the Greco-Persian Wars. After the defeat of a second Persian invasion in 478 BCE, a league of cities across Greece came together and formed a new alliance led by Athens. That alliance is now known as the Delian League, after the island of Delos where it was established. In the following decades, Athens used the Delian League to grow its own wealth and formidable naval power. Cities which tried to leave the alliance found themselves violently put down and their lands confiscated by the Athenians. What had begun as a cooperative alliance sworn to resist the Persian Empire gradually started to seem like it may have created another imperial power: the Athenian Empire.

With

Leah Lazar
Lecturer in Hellenistic Culture at the University of Manchester

Polly Low
Professor in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Durham

And

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

Producer: Martha Owen

Aristophanes (trans. David Barrett and Alan H. Sommerstein), The Birds and Other Plays (Penguin Classics, 2003)

Mary Beard, The Parthenon (Profile Books, 2010)

M. Canevaro and D. M. Lewis, 'Between ‘The Character of the Athenian Empire’ and The Origins of the Peloponnesian War (and beyond): The Popularity of the Athenian Empire Revisited' (Polis 41:1, 2024)

Paul Cartledge, Ancient Greece: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2011)

Lisa Kallet and John H. Kroll, The Athenian Empire: Using Coins as Sources (Cambridge University Press, 2020)

Leah Lazar, Athenian Power in the Fifth Century BC (Oxford University Press, 2024)

Polly Low (ed.), The Athenian Empire (Edinburgh University Press, 2008)

Malcolm F. McGregor, The Athenians and their Empire (UBC Press, 1987)

Robin Osborne (ed. and trans.), The Athenian Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2023)

P. J. Rhodes, The Athenian Empire (Clarendon Press, 1985)

Thucydides (trans. Robin Waterfield, introduced by Polly Low), The History of the Peloponnesian War (Basic Books, 2025)

Thucydides (ed. Robert B Strassler), The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War (Free Press, 1998)

Thucydides (trans. Rex Warner), History of the Peloponnesian War (Penguin Books, 2000)

Thucydides (trans. Martin Hammond), The Peloponnesian War (Oxford University Press, 2009)

In Our Time is a BBC Studios production

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 Misha Glenny and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.

The Delian League

Misha Glenny and guests discuss one of the towering figures of Brazilian and world literature, Machado de Assis (1839 - 1908). He was the descendant of slaves and built his career while slavery was still in place in Brazil (abolished 1888) and many of his characters were from the slave-owning class who were also the readers of his books. At the time, those readers were delighted to see themselves represented and it was only later in the 20th Century that critics realized just how much Machado was satirising them. While he brings 19th Century Brazil vividly to life, Machado's works transcend time and place and, according to Salman Rushdie, they seem to have been written yesterday not 100 years ago.

With 

Ana Cláudia Suriani da Silva
Associate Professor in Brazilian Studies at University College London

Claire Williams
Professor of Brazilian Literature and Culture at the Faculty of Modern Languages at the University of Oxford, fellow of St. Peter's College

And 

Viviane Carvalho da Annunciação
Affiliated Lecturer at the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics at the University of Cambridge

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Reading list:

Lamonte Aidoo and Daniel F. Silva (eds.), Emerging Dialogues on Machado de Assis (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016)

Helen Caldwell, The Brazilian Othello of Machado de Assis: A Study of Dom Casmurro (University of California Press, 1960)

Viviane Carvalho da Annunciação, The Contradictions of Science in Machado de Assis (Liverpool University Press, 2025)

Machado de Assis (trans. Daniel Hahn), The Looking-Glass: Essential Stories (Pushkin Press, 2022)

Machado de Assis (trans. Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson), 26 Stories (Liveright, 2019)

Machado de Assis (trans. Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson), The Collected Stories of Machado de Assis (Liveright, 2018)
 
Machado de Assis (trans. Flora Thomson-Deveaux), The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (Penguin, 2020)

Machado de Assis (trans. Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson), The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (Liveright, 2020)

Machado de Assis (trans. Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson), Quincas Borba (WW Norton & Co, 2024)

Machado de Assis (trans. Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson), Dom Casmurro (WW Norton & Co, 2024)

Machado de Assis (trans. Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson), Memorial de Ayres (Liveright, August 2026)

John Gledson, Machado de Assis: Fiction and History (Francis Cairns, 1984)

Richard Graham (ed.), Machado de Assis: Reflections on a Brazilian Master Writer (University of Texas Press, 1999)

James N. Green, Victoria Langland and Lilia Moritz Schwarcz (eds.), The Brazil Reader: History, Culture, Politics (Duke University Press, 2019)

Daniel Hahn and Padma Viswanathan (eds.), The Penguin Book of Brazilian Short Stories (Penguin, January 2027)

Mario Higa (ed.), A History of the Brazilian Novel (Cambridge University Press, August 2026), especially the chapter on Machado de Assis

K. David Jackson, Machado de Assis: A Literary Life (Yale University Press, 2015)

Anthony W. Pereira, Modern Brazil: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2020)

Roberto Schwarz (trans. John Gledson), A Master on the Periphery of Capitalism: Machado de Assis (Duke University Press, 2001)
 
Lilia M. Schwarcz and Heloisa M. Starling (eds.), Brazil: A Biography (Allen Lane, 2018)

Ana Cláudia Suriani da Silva, Machado De Assis's Philosopher or Dog?: From Serial to Book Form (Routledge, 2010)

Ana Cláudia Suriani da Silva and Sandra Guardini Vasconcelos (eds.), Comparative Perspectives on the Rise of the Brazilian Novel (UCL Press, 2020), especially the chapters “Capitu against the Elegiac Narrator” by Ana Cláudia Suriani da Silva and “Machado de Assis and the Novel” by Sandra Guardini Vasconcelos

Marcus Wood, The Black Butterfly: Brazilian Slavery and the Literary Imagination (West Virginia University Press, 2019)

In Our Time is a BBC Studios Production

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 Misha Glenny and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.

Machado de Assis

Misha Glenny and guests discuss the earliest evidence we have of the existence of trees and how even plants we might have on windowsills or as vegetables in gardens can and do, in the right conditions, evolve into trees. Since their emergence around 400 million years ago after low lying plants started to develop stronger stems and grow taller and more upright, trees have transformed our planet, so creating ecosystems, altering the atmosphere and setting the stage for the world as we know it today. 

With 

Jenny McElwain
1711 Chair of Botany at Trinity College Dublin and Director of Trinity Botanic Gardens

Christopher Berry
Senior Lecturer in Earth and Environmental Sciences at Cardiff University

And

Bill Baker
Senior Researcher at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

Produced by Conor Garrett

Reading list:

David Beerling: The Emerald Planet: How Plants Changed Earth's History (Oxford University Press, 2008)

C.M. Berry, ‘Palaeobotany: The Rise of the Earth’s Early Forests’ (Current Biology 29, 2019)

Christopher M. Berry and John E.A. Marshall, ‘Lycopsid forests in the early Late Devonian paleoequatorial zone of Svalbard’ (Geology 43:12, 2015)

N.S. Davies, W.J. McMahon and C.M. Berry, ‘Earth’s earliest forest: fossilized trees and vegetation-induced sedimentary structures from the Middle Devonian (Eifelian) Hangman Sandstone Formation, Somerset and Devon, SW England’ (J. Geol. Soc. 181, 2024)

P. Geisen and C.M. Berry, ‘Reconstruction and Growth of the Early Tree Calamophyton (Pseudosporochnales, Cladoxylopsida) Based on Exceptionally Complete Specimens from Lindlar, Germany (Mid-Devonian): Organic Connection of Calamophyton Branches and Duisbergia Trunks’ (International Journal of Plant Sciences 174 (4), 2013) 

A. Groover and Q. Cronk (eds), Comparative and Evolutionary Genomics of Angiosperm Trees: Plant Genetics and Genomics (Crops and Models, vol 21. Springer, 2017), especially ‘The Evolution of Angiosperm Trees: From Palaeobotany to Genomics’ by Q.C.B. Cronk and F. Forest

Jennifer McElwain, Marlene Hill Donnelly, and Ian Glasspool, Tropical Arctic: Lost Plants, Future Climates, and the Discovery of Ancient Greenland (University of Chicago Press, 2021)

Harriet Rix, The Genius of Trees: How Trees Mastered the Elements and Shaped the World (Vintage, 2026)

W.E. Stein et al., ‘Mid-Devonian Archaeopteris roots signal revolutionary change in earliest fossil forests’ (Current biology, 30:3, 2020) pp.421-431

William E. Stein, Christopher Mark Berry, Linda VanAller Hernick and Frank Mannolini ‘Surprisingly complex community discovered in the mid-Devonian fossil forest at Gilboa’ (Nature 483, 7387, 2012) 

Max Telford, The Tree of Life: Solving Science's Greatest Puzzle (John Murray, 2026)

K.J. Willis, J.C. McElwain, The Evolution of Plants (Oxford University Press, 2014)

James Woodford, The Wollemi Pine: The Incredible Discovery of a Living Fossil from the Age of the Dinosaurs (The Text Publishing Company, 2005)

Alexandre R. Zuntini et al, ‘Phylogenomics and the rise of the angiosperms’ (Nature vol. 629, April 2024) 

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 Misha Glenny and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.

The Evolution of Trees

At the Hay Festival, Misha Glenny and guests discuss the impact of the Norman invasion on the people and land of Wales and across the modern border with England in what became known as The Welsh Marches, march being a term for a militarized borderland. Hay was one of the first Marcher lordships. Even before 1066, William the Conqueror knew that he would have to subdue the Welsh if he were to control the English and he allowed more and more Norman warlords to establish virtually their own private kingdoms in these Marches. Later some of the Lords were to use these bases to invade Ireland rather than conquer the rest of Wales. Marcher Lords built numerous castles such as the one at Hay and many new towns would then grow up alongside these where there was one law for the English and another for the Welsh and, though the Acts of Union under the Tudors brought an end to much of the Marcher Lords' powers, the distinct identity of these Welsh Marches continued.

With 

Rhun Emlyn
Lecturer in the Department of History and Welsh History at Aberystwyth University

Helen Fulton
Professor of Medieval Literature at the University of Bristol

And 

Huw Pryce
Emeritus Professor of Welsh History at Bangor University

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Reading list:

R. R. Davies, The Age of Conquest: Wales 1063-1415 (Oxford University Press, 2001)

R.R. Davies, Lordship and Society in the March of Wales 1282-1400 (Oxford University Press, 1978)

John Fleming, The Welsh Marcher Lordships II: South-West (Logaston Press, 2023)

Ben Giles, The Welsh Marches: 40 Town and Country Walks (Pocket Mountains, 2012)

Philip Hume, The Welsh Marcher Lordships I: Central & North (Logaston Press, 2021)

Max Lieberman, The March of Wales, 1067–1300: A Borderland of Medieval Britain (University of Wales Press, 2018)

Max Lieberman, The Medieval March of Wales: The Creation and Perception of a Frontier, 1066-1283 (Cambridge University Press, 2010)

D. Huw Owen, The Lordship of Denbigh 1282-1543 (University of Wales Press, 2024)

Mike Parker, All the Wide Border: Wales, England and the Places Between (HarperNorth, 2024)

Dewi Roberts, Both Sides of the Border: An Anthology of Writing on the Welsh Border Region (Gwasg Carreg Gwalch/Eagle Rock Press, 1998)

Christopher Somerville, The Welsh Borders (Philips, 1991)

David Stephenson, Patronage and Power in the Medieval Welsh March: One Family's Story (University of Wales Press, 2021)

David Walker, Medieval Wales (Cambridge University Press, 2008)

In Our Time is a BBC Studios Production

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 Misha Glenny and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.

The Welsh Marches

Misha Glenny and guests discuss the group which came to be known as the Levellers and emerged during what would become arguably one of the bloodiest and most turbulent periods of English history. After the First English Civil War, the Levellers started calling for reforms to achieve legal and social equality. They pushed for a new constitution, extended franchise, popular sovereignty, and religious toleration. To do this, the Levellers pioneered the use of pamphlets and petitions, as well as taking to the streets in their thousands to demonstrate wearing their signature sea-green ribbons and sprigs of rosemary. To some they were radical, and to others not radical enough. Though the Leveller movement itself may have been short-lived, the arguments that they made have both inspired and challenged generations since.

With

Teresa Bejan
Professor of Political Theory and Fellow of Oriel College, University of Oxford

Ted Vallance
Professor of History and Dean of Research and Doctoral Study at the University of Roehampton

And

Clare Jackson
Honorary Professor of Early Modern History and Walter Grant Scott Fellow in History at Trinity Hall, University of Cambridge

Producer: Martha Owen

Reading list:

Teresa M. Bejan, First Among Equals: Visions of Equality before Egalitarianism (Belknap Press, forthcoming in 2026)

Michael Braddick, The Common Freedom of the People: John Lilburne and the English Revolution (Oxford University Press, 2018)

Rachel Foxley, The Levellers; Radical Political Thought in the English Revolution (Manchester University Press, 2013)

Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down (Penguin, 1972)

Ann Hughes, Gender and the English Revolution (Routledge, 2011)

John Rees, The Leveller Revolution: Radical Political Organisation in England, 1640-1650 (Verso Books, 2016)

John Rees (ed.), John Lilburne and the Levellers: Reappraising the Roots of English Radicalism 400 years on (Routledge, 2017), including 'Reborn John: The Eighteenth-Century Afterlife of John Lilburne' by Edward Vallance

Andrew Sharp (ed.), The English Levellers (Cambridge University Press, 1998)

Edward Vallance, A Radical History of Britain: Visionaries, Rebels and Revolutionaries - the men and women who fought for our freedoms (Abacus, 2010)

Blair Worden, Roundhead Reputations: The English Civil Wars and The Passions of Posterity (Penguin, 2002)

In Our Time is a BBC Studios production

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 Misha Glenny and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.

The Levellers

Misha Glenny and guests discuss an ancient civilisation who lived over 2000 years ago in the southwest of modern-day Libya. During prehistoric times, the Sahara Desert was greener and even had large lakes, but for the last 5000 years it has been a hyperarid environment. Extreme swings of temperature and limited surface water might make the Sahara seem like an inhospitable place to live, but an ancient people in North Africa known to us as the Garamantes thrived there. Following descriptions of the Garamantes in Roman and Greek texts, the Garamantes have often been seen as pastoral nomads, or as tribal barbarians on the periphery of the Mediterranean world. But the work of archaeologists in recent decades has revealed something different. Evidence suggests a society with flourishing towns and cities, complex underground irrigation systems, a key role in trade routes across the Sahara – and may give us a broader view of ancient history.

With

David Mattingly
Emeritus Professor of Roman Archaeology at the University of Leicester

Farès Moussa
Visiting Fellow at the University of Southampton and Cultural Heritage Consultant

And

Josephine Quinn
Professor of Ancient History and Fellow of St John’s College, University of Cambridge

Producer: Martha Owen

Reading list:

C.M. Daniels, The Garamantes of Southern Libya (Oleander Press, 1970)

C. Duckworth, A. Cuénod and D.J. Mattingly (eds), Mobile Technologies in the Ancient Sahara and Beyond (Trans-Saharan Archaeology Volume 4, Cambridge University Press, 2020)

M.C. Gatto, D.J. Mattingly, N. Ray and M. Sterry (eds), Burials, Migration and Identity in the Ancient Sahara and Beyond (Trans-Saharan Archaeology Volume 2, Cambridge University Press, 2019)

R.B. Hitchner (ed.), A Companion to North Africa in Antiquity (Wiley-Blackwell, 2020), especially ‘Beyond barbarians: the Garamantes of the Libyan Sahara’ by D.J. Mattingly

D.J. Mattingly, Between Sahara and Sea: Africa in the Roman Empire (Michigan University Press, 2023)

D.J. Mattingly (ed.), The Archaeology of Fazzan, Volume 1, Synthesis (Society for Libyan Studies, 2003) 

D.J. Mattingly (ed.), The Archaeology of Fazzan, Volume 2, Site Gazetteer, Pottery and other Survey Finds (Society for Libyan Studies, 2007) 

D.J. Mattingly (ed.), The Archaeology of Fazzan, Volume 3, Excavations Carried out by C.M. Daniels (Society for Libyan Studies, 2010) 

D.J. Mattingly (ed.), The Archaeology of Fazzan, Volume 4, Survey and Excavations at Old Jarma (Ancient Garama) Carried out by C. M. Daniels (1962–69) and the Fazzan Project (1997–2001) (Society for Libyan Studies, 2013)

D.J. Mattingly, V. Leitch, C.N. Duckworth, A. Cuénod, M. Sterry and F. Cole (eds), Trade in the Ancient Sahara and Beyond (Trans-Saharan Archaeology Volume 1, Cambridge University Press, 2017)

D. Mattingly, S. McLaren, E. Savage, Y. Fasatwi and K. Gadgood (eds), The Libyan Desert: Natural Resources and Cultural Heritage (Society for Libyan Studies, 2006), especially ‘The Garamantes: The First Libyan state’ by D. Mattingly 

P. Mitchell and P. Lane (eds), The Oxford Handbook of African Archaeology (Oxford University Press, 2013), especially ‘Roman Africa and the Sahara’ by A. Leone and F. Moussa 

M. Sterry and D.J. Mattingly (eds), State Formation and Urbanisation in the Ancient Sahara and Beyond (Cambridge University Press, 2020)

Some of these books are available for free from Open Access Books: British Institute for Libyan & Northern African Studies

In Our Time is a BBC Studios production

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 Misha Glenny and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.

Pockets (from Here For The History)

Lyt når som helst, hvor som helst

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