In Our Time: History

The Poor Laws

20 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how, from 1834, poor people across England and Wales faced new obstacles when they could no longer feed or clothe them...

The Thirty Years War

06 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the war in Europe which begain in 1618 and continued on such a scale and with such devastation that its like was not s...

The Long March

29 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss a foundation story for China as it was reshaped under Mao Zedong. In October 1934, around ninety thousand soldiers of...

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 ...

Marie Antoinette

08 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In a programme first broadcast in November 2018, Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Austrian princess Maria Antonia, child bride of the future French...

The Fable of the Bees

25 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Bernard Mandeville (1670-1733) and his critique of the economy as he found it in London, where private vices were cond...

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...

The Mexican-American War

28 Jun 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn and guests discuss the 1846-48 conflict after which the United States of Mexico lost half its territory to the United States of America. The US...

Montesquieu

14 Jun 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu (1689-1755) whose works on liberty, monar...

Persepolis

07 Jun 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the role of the great 'City of the Persians' founded by Darius I as the ceremonial capital of the Achaemenid Empire th...

Margaret of Anjou

24 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most remarkable queens of the Middle Ages who took control when her husband, Henry VI, was incapable. Marga...

The Emancipation of the Serfs

17 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 1861 declaration by Tsar Alexander II that serfs were now legally free of their landlords. Until then, over a thir...

The Almoravid Empire

03 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Berber people who grew to dominate the western Maghreb, founded Marrakesh and took control of Al-Andalus. They wer...

Roman Slavery

05 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the role of slavery in the Roman world, from its early conquests to the fall of the Western Empire. The system became ...

Tocqueville: Democracy in America

22 Mar 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) and his examination of the American democratic system. He wrote De La Démocratie en...

The Highland Clearances

08 Mar 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how and why Highlanders and Islanders were cleared from their homes in waves in C18th and C19th, following the break u...

Sun Tzu and The Art of War

01 Mar 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas attributed to Sun Tzu (544-496BC, according to tradition), a legendary figure from the beginning of the Iron...

Frederick Douglass

08 Feb 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In a programme first broadcast in 2018, Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of Frederick Douglass, who was born into slavery in Marylan...

The Siege of Malta, 1565

11 Jan 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the event of which Voltaire, two hundred years later, said 'nothing was more well known'. In 1565, Suleiman the Magnif...

Thomas Becket

14 Dec 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the man who was Henry II's Chancellor and then Archbishop of Canterbury and who was murdered by knights in Canterbury ...

Thebes

23 Nov 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the myths and history of the ancient Greek city of Thebes and its depiction in Athenian drama. In myths it was said to...

The Picts

09 Nov 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss The Picts and, to mark our twentieth season, that discussion takes place in front of a student audience at the Univers...

Picasso's Guernica

02 Nov 2017

Contributed by Lukas

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 oblitera...

The Congress of Vienna

19 Oct 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the conference convened by the victorious powers of the Napoleonic Wars and the earlier French Revolutionary Wars, whi...

Constantine the Great

05 Oct 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, reputation and impact of Constantine I, known as Constantine the Great (c280s -337AD). Born in modern day Se...

The American Populists

15 Jun 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss what, in C19th America's Gilded Age, was one of the most significant protest movements since the Civil War with reperc...

The Battle of Lincoln 1217

04 May 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss The Battle of Lincoln on 20th May 1217, when two armies fought to keep, or to win, the English crown. This was a strug...

The Egyptian Book of the Dead

27 Apr 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the text and context of The Book of the Dead, also known as the Book of Coming Forth by Day, the ancient Egyptian coll...

Roger Bacon

20 Apr 2017

Contributed by Lukas

The 13th-century English philosopher Roger Bacon is perhaps best known for his major work the Opus Maius. Commissioned by Pope Clement IV, this extens...

Rosa Luxemburg

13 Apr 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and times of Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919), 'Red Rosa', who was born in Poland under the Russian Empire and became one of...

The Battle of Salamis

23 Mar 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss what is often called one of the most significant battles in history. In 480BC in the Saronic Gulf near Athens, between...

Seneca the Younger

23 Feb 2017

Contributed by Lukas

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 empir...

Mary, Queen of Scots

19 Jan 2017

Contributed by Lukas

In a programme first broadcast in 2017, Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of Mary, Queen of Scots, who had potential to be one of the most p...

Johannes Kepler

29 Dec 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the German astronomer Johannes Kepler (1571 - 1630). Although he is overshadowed today by Isaac Newton and Galileo, he...

The Gin Craze

15 Dec 2016

Contributed by Lukas

In a programme first broadcast in December 2016, Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the craze for gin in Britain in the mid-18th century and the attempts...

Harriet Martineau

08 Dec 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Harriet Martineau who, from a non-conformist background in Norwich, became one of the best known writers in the C19th....

Garibaldi and the Risorgimento

01 Dec 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Giuseppe Garibaldi and the Italian Risorgimento. According to the historian AJP Taylor, Garibaldi was the only wholly ...

Baltic Crusades

24 Nov 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Baltic Crusades, the name given to a series of overlapping attempts to convert the pagans of North East Europe to ...

Justinian's Legal Code

17 Nov 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas brought together under Justinian I, Byzantine emperor in the 6th century AD, which were rediscovered in West...

The Fighting Temeraire

10 Nov 2016

Contributed by Lukas

This image: Joseph Mallord William Turner, The Fighting Temeraire, 1839 (c) The National Gallery, LondonMelvyn Bragg and guests discuss "The Fighting ...

Epic of Gilgamesh

03 Nov 2016

Contributed by Lukas

"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 hi...

John Dalton

27 Oct 2016

Contributed by Lukas

The scientist John Dalton was born in North England in 1766. Although he came from a relatively poor Quaker family, he managed to become one of the mo...

The 12th Century Renaissance

20 Oct 2016

Contributed by Lukas

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 Cru...

The Bronze Age Collapse

16 Jun 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss The Bronze Age Collapse, the name given by many historians to what appears to have been a sudden, uncontrolled destruc...

Margery Kempe and English Mysticism

02 Jun 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the English mystic Margery Kempe (1373-1438) whose extraordinary life is recorded in a book she dictated, The Book of ...

The Gettysburg Address

26 May 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, ten sentences long, delivered at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemete...

Titus Oates and his 'Popish Plot'

12 May 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Titus Oates (1649-1705) who, with Israel Tonge, spread rumours of a Catholic plot to assassinate Charles II. From 1678...

1816, the Year Without a Summer

21 Apr 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the impact of the eruption of Mt Tambora, in 1815, on the Indonesian island of Sambawa. This was the largest volcanic ...

The Sikh Empire

07 Apr 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rise of the Sikh Empire at the end of the 18th Century under Ranjit Singh, pictured above, who unified most of the...

Agrippina the Younger

31 Mar 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Agrippina the Younger was one of the most notorious and influential of the Roman empresses in the 1st century AD. She was the sister of the Emperor Ca...

Bedlam

17 Mar 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the early years of Bedlam, the name commonly used for the London hospital of St Mary of Bethlehem outside Bishopsgate,...

The Maya Civilization

10 Mar 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Maya Civilization, developed by the Maya people, which flourished in central America from around 250 AD in great c...

The Dutch East India Company

03 Mar 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie or VOC, known in English as the Dutch East India Company. The VOC dominated the...

Eleanor of Aquitaine

28 Jan 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, times and influence of Eleanor of Aquitaine (c1122-1204) who was one of the most powerful women in Twelfth C...

Thomas Paine's Common Sense

21 Jan 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Paine and his pamphlet "Common Sense" which was published in Philadelphia in January 1776 and promoted the argu...

The Salem Witch Trials

26 Nov 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the outbreak of witch trials in Massachusetts in 1692-3, centred on Salem, which led to the execution of twenty people...

The Battle of Lepanto

12 Nov 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss The Battle of Lepanto, 1571, the last great sea battle between galleys, in which the Catholic fleet of the Holy League...

The Empire of Mali

29 Oct 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Empire of Mali which flourished from 1200 to 1600 and was famous in the wider world for the wealth of rulers such ...

Holbein at the Tudor Court

15 Oct 2015

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

Alexander the Great

01 Oct 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Alexander the Great is one of the most celebrated military commanders in history. Born into the Macedonian royal family in 356 BC, he gained control o...

Frederick the Great

02 Jul 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Frederick the Great ruled Prussia from 1740 until his death in 1786. Born in 1712, he increased the power of the state, he made Prussia the leading mi...

Prester John

04 Jun 2015

Contributed by Lukas

In the Middle Ages, Prester John was seen as the great hope for Crusaders struggling to hold on to, then regain, Jerusalem. He was thought to rule a l...

Josephus

21 May 2015

Contributed by Lukas

It is said that, in Britain from the 18th Century, copies of Josephus' works were as widespread and as well read as The Bible. Christians valued "The ...

The Lancashire Cotton Famine

14 May 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Cotton Famine in Lancashire from 1861-65. The Famine followed the blockade of Confederate Southern ports during th...

Tagore

07 May 2015

Contributed by Lukas

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 cen...

Matteo Ricci and the Ming Dynasty

16 Apr 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life of Matteo Ricci, a Jesuit priest who in the 16th century led a Christian mission to China. An accomplishe...

The California Gold Rush

02 Apr 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the California Gold Rush. In 1849 the recent discovery of gold at Coloma, near Sacramento in California, led to a ...

The Curies

26 Mar 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the scientific achievements of the Curie family. In 1903 Marie and Pierre Curie shared a Nobel Prize in Physics wi...

The Eunuch

26 Feb 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the history and significance of eunuchs, castrated men who were a common feature of many civilisations for at leas...

The Wealth of Nations

19 Feb 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Adam Smith's celebrated economic treatise The Wealth of Nations. Smith was one of Scotland's greatest thinkers, a ...

Ashoka the Great

05 Feb 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Indian Emperor Ashoka. Active in the 3rd century BC, Ashoka conquered almost all of the landmass covered by mo...

Thucydides

29 Jan 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the ancient Greek historian Thucydides. In the fifth century BC Thucydides wrote The History of the Peloponnesian ...

Brunel

13 Nov 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the Victorian engineer responsible for bridges, tunnels and railways still in use today more ...

Hatshepsut

06 Nov 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Egyptian pharaoh Hatshepsut, whose name means 'foremost of noble ladies'. She ruled Egypt from about 1479 - 1458 B...

The Haitian Revolution

23 Oct 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Haitian Revolution. In 1791 an uprising began in the French colonial territory of St Domingue. Partly a conseq...

The Battle of Talas

09 Oct 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Battle of Talas, a significant encounter between Arab and Chinese forces which took place in central Asia in 7...

Julius Caesar

02 Oct 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life, work and reputation of Julius Caesar. Famously assassinated as he entered the Roman senate on the Ides o...

Hildegard of Bingen

26 Jun 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss one of the most remarkable figures of the Middle Ages, Hildegard of Bingen. The abbess of a Benedictine convent, H...

The Bluestockings

05 Jun 2014

Contributed by Lukas

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

The Sino-Japanese War

08 May 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-45. After several years of rising tension, and the Japanese occupation of Manchuria,...

The Domesday Book

17 Apr 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Domesday Book, a vast survey of the land and property of much of England and Wales completed in 1086. Twenty y...

Strabo's Geographica

10 Apr 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Strabo's Geographica. Written almost exactly two thousand years ago by a Greek scholar living in Rome, the Geograp...

Weber's The Protestant Ethic

27 Mar 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Max Weber's book the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Published in 1905, Weber's essay proposed that...

Spartacus

06 Mar 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life of Spartacus, the gladiator who led a major slave rebellion against the Roman Republic in the 1st century...

Chivalry

13 Feb 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss chivalry, the moral code observed by knights of the Middle Ages. Chivalry originated in the military practices of ...

The Phoenicians

06 Feb 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Phoenicians. The Greek historian Herodotus wrote about a people from the Levant who were accomplished sailors ...

Sources of Early Chinese History

23 Jan 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the sources for early Chinese history. The first attempts to make a record of historical events in China date from...

The Battle of Tours

16 Jan 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Battle of Tours. In 732 a large Arab army invaded Gaul from northern Spain, and travelled as far north as Poit...

Plato's Symposium

02 Jan 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Plato's Symposium, one of the Greek philosopher's most celebrated works. Written in the 4th century BC, it is a di...

The Medici

26 Dec 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Medici family, who dominated Florence's political and cultural life for three centuries. The House of Medici c...

Pliny the Younger

12 Dec 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Pliny the Younger, famous for his letters. A prominent lawyer in Rome in the first century AD...

Pocahontas

21 Nov 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life of Pocahontas, the Native American woman who to English eyes became a symbol of the New World. During the...

The Berlin Conference

31 Oct 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Berlin Conference of 1884. In the 1880s, as colonial powers attempted to increase their spheres of influence i...

The Corn Laws

24 Oct 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Corn Laws. In 1815 the British Government passed legislation which artificially inflated the price of corn. Th...

The Mamluks

26 Sep 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Mamluks, who ruled Egypt and Syria from about 1250 to 1517. Originally slave soldiers who managed to depose th...

The Physiocrats

20 Jun 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Physiocrats, an important group of economic thinkers in eighteenth-century France. The Physiocrats believed th...

Queen Zenobia

30 May 2013

Contributed by Lukas

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 Pa...

The Putney Debates

18 Apr 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Putney Debates. For several weeks in late 1647, after the defeat of King Charles I in the first hostilities of...

Alfred Russel Wallace

21 Mar 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of Alfred Russel Wallace, a pioneer of evolutionary theory. Born in 1823, Wallace travelled extensively, ...