In Our Time

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...

The Barbary Corsairs

07 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the North African privateers who, until their demise in the nineteenth century, were a source of great pride and wealt...

Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics

30 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aristotle's ideas on what happiness means and how to live a good life. Aristotle (384-322BC) explored these almost two...

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...

Julian of Norwich

16 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the anchoress and mystic who, in the late fourteenth century, wrote about her visions of Christ suffering, in a work s...

The Federalist Papers

09 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay's essays written in 1787/8 in support of the new US Constitution. They ...

Plankton

02 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the tiny drifting organisms in the oceans that sustain the food chain for all the lifeforms in the water and so for th...

The Economic Consequences of the Peace

26 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In an extended version of the programme that was broadcast, Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the influential book John Maynard Keynes wrote in 1919 aft...

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...

Melvyn Bragg talks to Mishal Husain

19 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

To mark his 1000th episode of In Our Time, Melvyn Bragg talks to Mishal Husain for Radio 4's Today programme.

Albert Einstein

12 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the man who, in 1905, produced several papers that were to change the world of physics and whose name went on to becom...

Jupiter

27 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system, and it’s hard to imagine a world more alien and different from Earth. It’s known as a Gas Giant...

Elizabeth Anscombe

20 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In 1956 Oxford University awarded an honorary degree to the former US president Harry S. Truman for his role in ending the Second World War. One philo...

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...

Mitochondria

29 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the power-packs within cells in all complex life on Earth. Inside each cell of every complex organism there are struct...

Louis XIV: The Sun King

22 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In 1661 the 23 year-old French king Louis the XIV had been on the throne for 18 years when his chief minister, Cardinal Mazarin, died. Louis is report...

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...

The Shimabara Rebellion

08 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Christian uprising in Japan and its profound and long-term consequences. In the 1630s, Japan was ruled by the Toka...

The Dead Sea Scrolls

01 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the revelatory collection of Biblical texts, legal documents, community rules and literary writings. In 1946 a Bedouin...

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...

Linnaeus

18 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, ideas and legacy of the pioneering Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus (1707 – 1778). The philosopher Jean-Jacq...

The Battle of Crécy

11 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the brutal events of 26 August 1346, when the armies of France and England met in a funnel-shaped valley outside the t...

Cnut

04 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Danish prince who became a very effective King of England in 1016. Cnut inherited a kingdom in a sorry state. The...

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...

Solon the Lawgiver

20 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Solon, who was elected archon or chief magistrate of Athens in 594 BC: some see him as the father of Athenian democrac...

Mercantilism

13 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how, between the 16th and 18th centuries, Europe was dominated by an economic way of thinking called mercantilism. Th...

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...

Megaliths

30 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss megaliths - huge stones placed in the landscape, often visually striking and highly prominent. Such stone monuments in...

Paul Erdős

23 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Paul Erdős (1913 – 1996) is one of the most celebrated mathematicians of the 20th century. During his long career, he made a number of impressive a...

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...

Chartism

09 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

On 21 May 1838 an estimated 150,000 people assembled on Glasgow Green for a mass demonstration. There they witnessed the launch of the People’s Char...

Tycho Brahe

02 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pioneering Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe (1546 – 1601) whose charts offered an unprecedented level of accuracy.I...

Superconductivity

23 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the discovery made in 1911 by the Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes (1853-1926). He came to call it Superconduct...

Rawls' Theory of Justice

16 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss A Theory of Justice by John Rawls (1921 - 2002) which has been called the most influential book in twentieth century p...

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 ...

The Great Stink

26 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the stench from the River Thames in the hot summer of 1858 and how it appalled and terrified Londoners living and work...

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 Irish Rebellion of 1798

05 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the momentum behind rebellion in Ireland in 1798, the people behind the rebellion and the impact over the next few yea...

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...

The Challenger Expedition 1872-1876

22 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the voyage of HMS Challenger which set out from Portsmouth in 1872 with a mission a to explore the ocean depths around...

Demosthenes' Philippics

15 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the speeches that became a byword for fierce attacks on political opponents. It was in the 4th century BC, in Athens, ...

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...

The Morant Bay Rebellion

01 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rebellion that broke out in Jamaica on 11th October 1865 when Paul Bogle (1822-65) led a protest march from Stony ...

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...

The Fish-Tetrapod Transition

17 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the greatest changes in the history of life on Earth. Around 400 million years ago some of our ancestors, the f...

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...

The Knights Templar

03 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the military order founded around 1119, twenty years after the Crusaders captured Jerusalem. For almost 200 years the ...

The Electron

27 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss an atomic particle that's become inseparable from modernity. JJ Thomson discovered the electron 125 years ago, so reve...

Plato's Atlantis

20 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Plato's account of the once great island of Atlantis out to the west, beyond the world known to his fellow Athenians, ...

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...

Angkor Wat

21 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the largest and arguably the most astonishing religious structure on Earth, built for Suryavarman II in the 12th Centu...

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...

The Death of Stars

07 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the abrupt transformation of stars after shining brightly for millions or billions of years, once they lack the fuel t...

Hegel's Philosophy of History

23 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss ideas of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770 - 1831) on history. Hegel, one of the most influential of the modern phi...

Comenius

16 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Czech educator Jan Amos Komenský (1592-1670) known throughout Europe in his lifetime under the Latin version of h...

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...

The Davidian Revolution

02 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the impact of David I of Scotland (c1084-1153) on his kingdom and on neighbouring lands. The youngest son of Malcolm ...

Early Christian Martyrdom

26 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the accounts by Eusebius of Caesarea (c260-339 AD) and others of the killings of Christians in the first three centur...

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 ...

Homo erectus

12 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of our ancestors, Homo erectus, who thrived on Earth for around two million years whereas we, Homo sapiens, emerge...

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...

Charisma

14 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the idea of charismatic authority developed by Max Weber (1864-1920) to explain why people welcome some as their legi...

Seismology

07 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the study of earthquakes. A massive earthquake in 1755 devastated Lisbon, and this disaster helped inspire a new scien...

The Arthashastra

31 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ancient Sanskrit text the Arthashastra, regarded as one of the major works of Indian literature. Written in the st...

Peter Kropotkin

24 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Russian prince who became a leading anarchist and famous scientist. Kropotkin (1842 - 1921) was born into privile...

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...

Walter Benjamin

10 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most celebrated thinkers of the twentieth century. Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) was a German Jewish philosop...

The Temperance Movement

03 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the momentum behind teetotalism in 19th Century Britain, when calls for moderation gave way to complete abstinence in ...

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...

The Gold Standard

20 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the system that flourished from 1870 when gold became dominant and more widely available, following gold rushes in Cal...

Thomas Hardy's Poetry

13 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

After 27 years, Melvyn Bragg has decided to step down from the In Our Time presenter’s chair. With over a thousand episodes to choose from, he has s...

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...

The Hittites

23 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the empire that flourished in the Late Bronze Age in what is now Turkey, and which, like others at that time, mysterio...

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 May Fourth Movement

09 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the violent protests in China on 4th May 1919 over the nation's humiliation in the Versailles Treaty after World War O...

The Battle of Trafalgar

02 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the events of 21st October 1805, in which the British fleet led by Nelson destroyed a combined Franco-Spanish fleet in...

Plato's Gorgias

25 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of Plato's most striking dialogues, in which he addresses the real nature of power and freedom, and the relationsh...

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...

William and Caroline Herschel

11 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss William Herschel (1738 – 1822) and his sister Caroline Herschel (1750 – 1848) who were born in Hanover and made th...

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...

Corals

28 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the simple animals which informed Charles Darwin's first book, The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs, publishe...

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 Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

14 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the republic that emerged from the union of the Kingdom of Poland and Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the 14th Century. At...

The Manhattan Project

07 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the race to build an atom bomb in the USA during World War Two. Before the war, scientists in Germany had discovered...

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 ...

The Evolution of Crocodiles

16 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the remarkable diversity of the animals that dominated life on land in the Triassic, before the rise of the dinosaurs ...

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...

Booth's Life and Labour Survey

10 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Charles Booth's survey, The Life and Labour of the People in London, published in 17 volumes from 1889 to 1903. Booth...

Kant's Copernican Revolution

03 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the insight into our relationship with the world that Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) shared in his book The Critique of Pur...

The Interregnum

27 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the period between the execution of Charles I in 1649 and the unexpected restoration of his son Charles II in 1660, kn...

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...

Longitude

13 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the search for Longitude while at sea. Following efforts by other maritime nations, the British Government passed the...

The Second Barons' War

06 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the years of bloody conflict that saw Simon de Montfort (1205-65) become the most powerful man in England, with Henry ...