In Our Time
Episodes
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 Franco-American Alliance 1778
22 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the treaties France entered into with the United States of America in 1778, to give open support to the USA in its rev...
Arianism
15 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the form of Christianity adopted by Ostrogoths in the 4th century AD, which they learned from Roman missionaries and f...
Pierre-Simon Laplace
08 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Laplace (1749-1827) who was a giant in the world of mathematics both before and after the French Revolution. He addres...
The Russo-Japanese War
01 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the conflict between Russia and Japan from February 1904 to September 1905, which gripped the world and had a profound...
David Ricardo
25 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most influential economists from the age of Adam Smith and Thomas Malthus. Ricardo (1772 -1823) reputedly ...
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 Late Devonian Extinction
11 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the devastating mass extinctions of the Late Devonian Period, roughly 370 million years ago, when around 70 percent of...
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...
Marcus Aurelius
25 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the man who, according to Machiavelli, was the last of the Five Good Emperors. Marcus Aurelius, 121 to 180 AD, has lon...
Medieval Pilgrimage
18 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the idea and experience of Christian pilgrimage in Europe from the 12th to the 15th centuries, which figured so strong...
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...
Emilie du Châtelet
04 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the outstanding French mathematicians and natural philosophers of the 18th Century, celebrated across Europe. ...
Saint Cuthbert
28 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Northumbrian man who, for 500 years, was the pre-eminent English saint, to be matched only by Thomas Becket after ...
The Plague of Justinian
21 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the plague that broke out in Constantinople 541AD, in the reign of Emperor Justinian. According to the historian Proc...
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 ...
Eclipses
31 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
To celebrate Melvyn Bragg’s 27 years presenting In Our Time, five well-known fans of the programme have chosen their favourite episodes. Guy Garvey,...
The Cultural Revolution
17 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Chairman Mao and the revolt he led within his own party from 1966, setting communists against each other, to renew the...
John Wesley and Methodism
10 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss John Wesley (1703 - 1791) and the movement he was to lead and inspire. As a student, he was mocked for approaching re...
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...
The Zong Massacre
26 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the notorious events off Jamaica in 1781 and their background. The British slave ship Zong, having sailed across the ...
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...
Mary Astell
05 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The philosopher Mary Astell (1666 – 1731) has been described as “the first English feminist”. Born in Newcastle in relatively poor circumstances...
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...
Maria Theresa
22 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Maria Theresa (1717-1780) who inherited the Austrian throne in 1740 at the age of 23. Her neighbours circled like wol...
Alan Turing
15 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Alan Turing (1912-1954) whose 1936 paper On Computable Numbers effectively founded computer science. Immediately reco...
Deism
08 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the idea that God created the universe and then left it for humans to understand by reason not revelation. Edward Her...
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...
Cave Art
24 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss ideas about the Stone Age people who created the extraordinary images found in caves around the world, from hand outli...
Pericles
17 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Pericles (495-429BC), the statesman who dominated the politics of Athens for thirty years, the so-called Age of Peric...
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...
The Covenanters
12 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the bonds that Scottish Presbyterians made between themselves and their monarchs in the 16th and 17th Centuries, to ma...
Paul Dirac
05 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the theoretical physicist Dirac (1902-1984), whose achievements far exceed his general fame. To his peers, he was rank...
The Evolution of Horses
27 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the origins of horses, from their dog sized ancestors to their proliferation in the New World until hunted to extincti...
The Valladolid Debate
20 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the debate in Valladolid, Spain in 1550, over Spanish rights to enslave the native peoples in the newly conquered land...
Battle of the Teutoburg Forest
13 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great Roman military disaster of 9 AD when Germanic tribes under Arminius ambushed and destroyed three legions und...
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...
Alcuin
30 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Alcuin of York, c735-804AD, who promoted education as a goal in itself, and had a fundamental role in the renaissance ...
Solar Wind
23 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the flow of particles from the outer region of the Sun which we observe in the Northern and Southern Lights, interacti...
The Siege of Paris 1870-71
16 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the siege of Paris during the Franco-Prussian war and the social unrest that followed, as the French capital was cut o...
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...
Tutankhamun
26 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the discovery in 1922 of Tutankhamun's 3000 year old tomb and its impact on the understanding of ancient Egypt, both a...
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...
Coffee
12 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history and social impact of coffee. From its origins in Ethiopia, coffea arabica spread through the Ottoman Empi...
Lawrence of Arabia
05 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss T.E. Lawrence (1888 – 1935), better known as Lawrence of Arabia, a topic drawn from over 1200 suggestions for our Li...
Li Shizhen
28 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of Li Shizhen (1518-1593) whose compendium of natural medicines is celebrated in China as the most ...
Melisende, Queen of Jerusalem
21 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the most powerful woman in the Crusader states in the century after the First Crusade. Melisende (1105-61) was born an...
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...
The Treaty of Limerick
07 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 1691 peace treaty that ended the Williamite War in Ireland, between supporters of the deposed King James II and th...
Hybrids
31 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss what happens when parents from different species have offspring, despite their genetic differences. In some cases, suc...
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...
Rousseau on Education
10 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) on the education of children, as set out in his novel or treatise Emile...
Dorothy Hodgkin
03 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work and ideas of Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin (1910-1994), awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1964 for revealing...
The Rapture
26 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas developed by the Anglican priest John Nelson Darby (1800-1882), drawn from his reading of scripture, in whic...
Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow
19 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how, in September 1812, Napoleon captured Moscow and waited a month for the Russians to meet him, to surrender and why...
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...
Doggerland
27 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the people, plants and animals once living on land now under the North Sea, now called Doggerland after Dogger Bank, i...
The Mytilenaean Debate
20 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss why Athenians decided to send a fast ship to Lesbos in 427BC, rowing through the night to catch one they sent the day...
The Inca
13 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how the people of Cusco, in modern Peru, established an empire along the Andes down to the Pacific under their supreme...
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...
President Ulysses S Grant
30 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the impact of Grant's presidency on Americans in the years after the Civil War in which he, with Lincoln, had led the ...
Kinetic Theory
23 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how scientists sought to understand the properties of gases and the relationship between pressure and volume, and what...
Bergson and Time
09 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the French philosopher Henri Bergson (1859-1941) and his ideas about human experience of time passing and how that dif...
The Gordon Riots
02 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the most destructive riots in London's history, which reached their peak on 7th June 1780 as troops fired on the crowd...
Nero
25 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life of Nero (37-68 AD) who became Emperor at the age of 16. At first he was largely praised for his generosity ye...
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...
The Evolution of Teeth
11 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss theories about the origins of teeth in vertebrates, and what we can learn from sharks in particular and their ancestor...
The Great Irish Famine
04 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss why the potato crop failures in the 1840s had such a catastrophic impact in Ireland. It is estimated that one million...
The Danelaw
28 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the effective partition of England in the 880s after a century of Viking raids, invasions and settlements. Alfred of ...
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...
Authenticity
14 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss what it means to be oneself, a question explored by philosophers from Aristotle to the present day, including St Augus...
William Cecil
07 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the impact on the British Isles of William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley, the most poweful man in the court of Elizabeth I...
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...
Pheromones
21 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how members of the same species send each other invisible chemical signals to influence the way they behave. Pheromon...
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...
Aristotle's Biology
07 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the remarkable achievement of Aristotle (384-322BC) in the realm of biological investigation, for which he has been ca...
Owain Glyndwr
31 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life of the Welsh nobleman, also known as Owen Glendower, who began a revolt against Henry IV in 1400 which was at...
Emmy Noether
24 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and life of one of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th century, Emmy Noether. Noether’s Theorem is reg...
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 ...
Papal Infallibility
10 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss why, in 1870, the Vatican Council issued the decree ‘pastor aeternus’ which, among other areas, affirmed papal inf...
Venus
27 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the planet Venus which is both the morning star and the evening star, rotates backwards at walking speed and has a day...
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...
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...
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...
Hope
22 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosophy of hope. To the ancient Greeks, hope was closer to self-deception, one of the evils left in Pandora's b...
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...
Free Radicals
01 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the properties of atoms or molecules with a single unpaired electron, which tend to be more reactive, keen to seize an...
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...
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...
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
27 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and life of the German theologian, born in Breslau/Wroclaw in 1906 and killed in the Flossenbürg concentrat...
Automata
20 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of real and imagined machines that appear to be living, and the questions they raise about life and creati...
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...
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...
Echolocation
21 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how some bats, dolphins and other animals emit sounds at high frequencies to explore their environments, rather than s...