In Our Time: Culture

John Keats

19 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Misha Glenny and guests discuss the short life and lasting works of Keats (1795-1821), who in one year wrote some of the most loved poems in English. ...

Henry IV Part 1

05 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Misha Glenny and guests discuss one of the most successful of Shakespeare's plays in his own time. Written with no Part 2 in mind as 'Henry the Fourth...

On Liberty

12 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Journalist, author and historian Misha Glenny presents his first edition of In Our Time, succeeding Melvyn Bragg who retired from this role last summe...

Barbour's 'Brus'

17 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss John Barbour's epic poem The Brus, or Bruce, which he wrote c1375. The Brus is the earliest surviving poem in Older Sc...

The Vienna Secession

03 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In 1897, Gustav Klimt led a group of radical artists to break free from the cultural establishment of Vienna and found a movement that became known as...

Molière

22 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the great figures in world literature. The French playwright Molière (1622-1673) began as an actor, aiming to ...

Thomas Middleton

17 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most energetic, varied and innovative playwrights of his time. Thomas Middleton (1580-1627) worked across t...

Oliver Goldsmith

20 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the renowned and versatile Irish writer Oliver Goldsmith (1728 - 1774). There is a memorial to him in Westminster Abbe...

Sir John Soane

06 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the architect Sir John Soane (1753 -1837), the son of a bricklayer. He rose up the ranks of his profession as an archi...

Vase-mania

23 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss eighteenth century 'vase-mania'. In the second half of the century, inspired by archaeological discoveries, the Grand ...

Plutarch's Parallel Lives

16 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Greek biographer Plutarch (c46 AD-c120 AD) and especially his work 'Parallel Lives' which has shaped the way succe...

Nizami Ganjavi

02 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 Ga...

Italo Calvino

19 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Italian author of Invisible Cities, If On A Winter's Night A Traveller, Cosmicomics and other celebrated novels, f...

George Herbert

05 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poet George Herbert (1593-1633) who, according to the French philosopher Simone Weil, wrote ‘the most beautiful ...

Little Women

21 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Louisa May Alcott's 1868 novel, credited with starting the new genre of young adult fiction. When Alcott (1832-88) wro...

Robert Graves

07 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the author of 'I, Claudius' who was also one of the finest poets of the twentieth century. Robert Graves (1895 -1985) ...

Monet in England

25 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of the great French Impressionist Claude Monet (1840-1926) in London, initially in 1870 and then from 1899. H...

Fielding's Tom Jones

11 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss "The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling" (1749) by Henry Fielding (1707-1754), one of the most influential of the early...

Sir Thomas Wyatt

06 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss 'the greatest poet of his age', Thomas Wyatt (1503 -1542), who brought the poetry of the Italian Renaissance into the...

Bertolt Brecht

23 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the greatest European playwrights of the twentieth century. The aim of Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) was to make t...

Lysistrata

09 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aristophanes' comedy in which the women of Athens and Sparta, led by Lysistrata, secure peace in the long-running war ...

The Kalevala

25 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Finnish epic poem that first appeared in print in 1835 in what was then the Grand Duchy of Finland, part of the Ru...

The Waltz

11 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the dance which, from when it reached Britain in the early nineteenth century, revolutionised the relationship between...

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

14 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Lewis Carroll's book which first appeared in print in 1865 with illustrations by John Tenniel. It has since become one...

Twelfth Night, or What You Will

25 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of Shakespeare’s great comedies, which plays in the space between marriage, love and desire. By convention a wed...

Vincent van Gogh

18 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Dutch artist famous for starry nights and sunflowers, self portraits and simple chairs. These are images known the...

Edgar Allan Poe

28 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Poe (1809-1849), the American author who is famous for his Gothic tales of horror, madness and the dark interiors of t...

Marguerite de Navarre

21 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Marguerite, Queen of Navarre (1492 – 1549), author of the Heptaméron, a major literary landmark in the French Renai...

The Theory of the Leisure Class

14 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the most influential work of Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929). In 1899, during America’s Gilded Age, Veblen wrote The Th...

Germinal

23 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Emile Zola's greatest literary success, his thirteenth novel in a series exploring the extended Rougon-Macquart family...

The Seventh Seal

19 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In the 1000th edition of In Our Time, Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss arguably the most celebrated film of the Swedish director Ingmar Bergman (1918-2...

Death in Venice

13 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

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...

Oedipus Rex

06 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

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 st...

Virgil's Georgics

15 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

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...

Walt Whitman

25 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the highly influential American poet Walt Whitman. In 1855 Whitman was working as a printer, journalist and property d...

A Room of One's Own

27 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

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

The Ramayana

06 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Ramayana, the ancient Hindu epic which is regarded as one of the greatest works of world literature. Its importanc...

Stevie Smith

16 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

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 langua...

John Donne

09 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

Persuasion

19 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jane Austen’s last complete novel, which was published just before Christmas in 1817, five months after her death. ...

Citizen Kane

12 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

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...

The Nibelungenlied

29 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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 foun...

Bauhaus

08 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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...

Wilfred Owen

24 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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 w...

Berthe Morisot

10 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the influential painters at the heart of the French Impressionist movement: Berthe Morisot (1841-1895). The me...

Nineteen Eighty-Four

13 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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 O...

John Bull

28 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the origin of this personification of the English everyman and his development as both British and Britain in the foll...

Dylan Thomas

14 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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 fir...

Tang Era Poetry

09 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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...

Olympe de Gouges

19 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

Polidori's The Vampyre

05 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the influential novella of John Polidori (1795-1821) published in 1819 and attributed first to Lord Byron (1788-1824) ...

The Sistine Chapel

28 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the astonishing work of Michelangelo (1477-1564) in this great chapel in the Vatican, firstly the ceiling with images ...

Antigone

21 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss what is reputedly the most performed of all Greek tragedies. Antigone, by Sophocles (c496-c406 BC), is powerfully ambi...

Romeo and Juliet

17 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss William Shakespeare's famous tragedy, written in the early 1590s after a series of histories and comedies. His audien...

Colette

27 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the outstanding French writers of the twentieth century. The novels of Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (1873 - 1954...

Thomas Hardy's Poetry

13 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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 h...

Fritz Lang

30 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 cen...

A Christmas Carol

16 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Charles Dickens' novella, written in 1843 when he was 31, which has become intertwined with his reputation and with Ch...

The Decadent Movement

18 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 Char...

The Song of Roland

04 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 Spa...

Iris Murdoch

21 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 Tenant of Wildfell Hall

30 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Anne Bronte's second novel, published in 1848, which is now celebrated alongside those of her sisters but which Charlo...

Herodotus

23 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

Shakespeare's Sonnets

24 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the collection of poems published in 1609 by Thomas Thorpe: Shakespeare’s Sonnets, “never before imprinted”. Ye...

Edward Gibbon

17 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 Emp...

Journey to the West

20 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 celebrate...

Ovid

29 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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...

The Bacchae

18 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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...

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

04 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 moveme...

The Rosetta Stone

11 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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...

The Great Gatsby

14 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

Fernando Pessoa

03 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

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...

Albrecht Dürer

12 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great German artist Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) who achieved fame throughout Europe for the power of his images. T...

Piers Plowman

29 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

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...

Macbeth

01 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

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 pr...

Frankenstein

19 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

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, Vi...

George Sand

06 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

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...

Catullus

09 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

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 obsce...

Auden

19 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

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 perso...

Crime and Punishment

14 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the novel written by Dostoevsky and published in 1866, in which Raskolnikov, a struggling student, justifies his murde...

Robert Burns

24 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

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 ar...

The Time Machine

17 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

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. T...

Lorca

04 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Spanish poet and playwright Federico Garcia Lorca (1898-1936), author of Blood Wedding, Yerma and The House of Ber...

Sir Thomas Browne

06 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

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 h...

A Midsummer Night's Dream

18 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

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 de...

Gerard Manley Hopkins

21 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

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 sho...

Antarah ibn Shaddad

28 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

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 b...

Judith beheading Holofernes

14 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

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 gen...

Samuel Beckett

17 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

13 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

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 unkn...

Horace

15 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

Is Shakespeare History? The Romans

18 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

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 hist...

Is Shakespeare History? The Plantagenets

11 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

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 hist...

Edith Wharton

04 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

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 w...

The Iliad

13 Sep 2018

Contributed by Lukas

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 th...

William Morris

05 Jul 2018

Contributed by Lukas

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 mov...

Henrik Ibsen

31 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

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...

The Mabinogion

10 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the eleven stories of Celtic mythology and Arthurian romance known as The Mabinogion, most of which were told and reto...

Middlemarch

19 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

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...

Anna Akhmatova

18 Jan 2018

Contributed by Lukas

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 r...