Avsnitt
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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 political philosophy. It was first published in 1971. Rawls drew on his own experience in WW2 and saw the chance in its aftermath to build a new society, one founded on personal liberty and fair equality of opportunity. While in that just society there could be inequalities, Rawls’ radical idea was that those inequalities must be to the greatest advantage not to the richest but to the worst off.
With
Fabienne PeterProfessor of Philosophy at the University of Warwick
Martin O’NeillProfessor of Political Philosophy at the University of York
And
Jonathan WolffThe Alfred Landecker Professor of Values and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford and Fellow of Wolfson College
Producer: Simon Tillotson
In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production
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Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most celebrated thinkers of the twentieth century. Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) was a German Jewish philosopher, critic, historian, an investigator of culture, a maker of radio programmes and more. Notably, in his Arcades Project, he looked into the past of Paris to understand the modern age and, in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, examined how the new media of film and photography enabled art to be politicised, and politics to become a form of art. The rise of the Nazis in Germany forced him into exile, and he worked in Paris in dread of what was to come; when his escape from France in 1940 was blocked at the Spanish border, he took his own life.
With
Esther LeslieProfessor of Political Aesthetics at Birkbeck, University of London
Kevin McLaughlinDean of the Faculty and Professor of English, Comparative Literature and German Studies at Brown University
And
Carolin DuttlingerProfessor of German Literature and Culture at the University of Oxford
Producer: Simon Tillotson
In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production
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Saknas det avsnitt?
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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 One, part of the totalitarian superstate of Oceania which is always at war and where the protagonist, Winston Smith, works at the Ministry of Truth as a rewriter of history: 'Who controls the past,' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.' The influence of Orwell's novel is immeasurable, highlighting threats to personal freedom with concepts he named such as doublespeak, thoughtcrime, Room 101, Big Brother, memory hole and thought police.
With
David DwanProfessor of English Literature and Intellectual History at the University of Oxford
Lisa MullenTeaching Associate in Modern Contemporary Literature at the University of Cambridge
And
John BowenProfessor of English Literature at the University of York
Producer: Simon Tillotson
In Our Time is a BBC Sounds Audio Production
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Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the astonishing work of Michelangelo (1477-1564) in this great chapel in the Vatican, firstly the ceiling with images from Genesis (of which the image above is a detail) and later The Last Judgement on the altar wall. For the Papacy, Michelangelo's achievement was a bold affirmation of the spiritual and political status of the Vatican, of Rome and of the Catholic Church. For the artist himself, already famous as the sculptor of David in Florence, it was a test of his skill and stamina, and of the potential for art to amaze which he realised in his astonishing mastery of the human form.
With
Catherine FletcherProfessor of History at Manchester Metropolitan University
Sarah VowlesThe Smirnov Family Curator of Italian and French Prints and Drawings at the British Museum
And
Matthias WivelThe Aud Jebsen Curator of Sixteenth-Century Italian Paintings at the National Gallery
Producer: Simon TillotsonIn Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production
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Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) and his examination of the American democratic system. He wrote De La Démocratie en Amérique in two parts, published in 1835 and 1840, when France was ruled by the July Monarchy of Louis-Philippe. Tocqueville was interested in how aspects of American democracy, in the age of President Andrew Jackson, could be applied to Europe as it moved away from rule by monarchs and aristocrats. His work has been revisited by politicians ever since, particularly in America, with its analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of direct democracy and its warnings of mediocrity and the tyranny of the majority.
With
Robert GildeaProfessor of Modern History at the University of Oxford
Susan-Mary GrantProfessor of American History at Newcastle University
and
Jeremy JenningsProfessor of Political Theory and Head of the School of Politics & Economics at King's College London
Producer: Simon Tillotson
In Our Time is a BBC Sounds Audio Production
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Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the most abundant lifeform on Earth: the viruses that 'eat' bacteria. Early in the 20th century, scientists noticed that something in their Petri dishes was making bacteria disappear and they called these bacteriophages, things that eat bacteria. From studying these phages, it soon became clear that they offered countless real or potential benefits for understanding our world, from the tracking of diseases to helping unlock the secrets of DNA to treatments for long term bacterial infections. With further research, they could be an answer to the growing problem of antibiotic resistance.
With
Martha ClokieDirector for the Centre for Phage Research and Professor of Microbiology at the University of Leicester
James EbdonProfessor of Environmental Microbiology at the University of Brighton
And
Claas KirchhelleHistorian and Chargé de Recherche at the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research’s CERMES3 Unit in Paris.
Producer: Simon Tillotson
In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production
Reading list:
James Ebdon, ‘Tackling sources of contamination in water: The age of phage’ (Microbiologist, Society for Applied Microbiology, Vol 20.1, 2022)
Thomas Häusler, Viruses vs. Superbugs: A Solution to the Antibiotics Crisis? (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006)
Tom Ireland, The Good Virus: The Untold Story of Phages: The Mysterious Microbes that Rule Our World, Shape Our Health and Can Save Our Future (Hodder Press, 2024)
Claas Kirchhelle and Charlotte Kirchhelle, ‘Northern Normal–Laboratory Networks, Microbial Culture Collections, and Taxonomies of Power (1939-2000)’ (SocArXiv Papers, 2024)
Dmitriy Myelnikov, ‘An alternative cure: the adoption and survival of bacteriophage therapy in the USSR, 1922–1955’ (Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 73, no. 4, 2018)
Forest Rohwer, Merry Youle, Heather Maughan and Nao Hisakawa, Life in our Phage World: A Centennial Field Guide to Earth’s most Diverse Inhabitants (Wholon, 2014)
Steffanie Strathdee and Thomas Patterson (2019) The Perfect Predator: A Scientist’s Race to Save Her Husband from a Deadly Superbug: A Memoir (Hachette Books, 2020)
William C. Summers, Félix d`Herelle and the Origins of Molecular Biology (Yale University Press, 1999)
William C. Summers, The American Phage Group: Founders of Molecular Biology (University Press, 2023)
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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. He spent his first visit in poverty, escaping from war in France, while by the second he had become so commercially successful that he stayed at the Savoy Hotel. There, from his balcony, he began a series of almost a hundred paintings that captured the essence of this dynamic city at that time, with fog and smoke almost obscuring the bridges, boats and Houses of Parliament. The pollution was terrible for health but the diffraction through the sooty droplets offered an ever-changing light that captivated Monet, and he was to paint the Thames more than he did his water lilies or haystacks or Rouen Cathedral. On his return to France, Monet appeared to have a new confidence to explore an art that was more abstract than impressionist.
With
Karen SerresSenior Curator of Paintings at the Courtauld Gallery, LondonCurator of the exhibition 'Monet and London. Views of the Thames'
Frances FowleProfessor of Nineteenth-Century Art at the University of Edinburgh and Senior Curator of French Art at the National Galleries of Scotland
And
Jackie WullschlägerChief Art Critic for the Financial Times and author of ‘Monet, The Restless Vision’
In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production
Producer: Simon TillotsonStudio production: John Goudie
Reading list:
Caroline Corbeau Parsons, Impressionists in London: French Artists in Exile 1870-1904 (Tate Publishing, 2017)
Frances Fowle, Monet and French Landscape: Vétheuil and Normandy (National Galleries of Scotland, 2007), especially the chapter ‘Making Money out of Monet: Marketing Monet in Britain 1870-1905’
Robert Gordon and Andrew Forge, Monet (Harry N. Abrams, 1983)
Paul Hayes Tucker, Monet in the ’90s: The Series Paintings (Yale University Press, 1990)
Paul Hayes Tucker, Monet in the 20th Century (Yale University Press, 1998)
Katharine A. Lochnan, Turner, Whistler, Monet (Tate Publishing, 2005)
Nicholas Reed, Monet and the Thames: Paintings and Modern Views of Monet’s London (Lilburne Press, 1998)
Grace Seiberling, Monet in London (High Museum of Art, 1988)
Karen Serres, Frances Fowle and Jennifer A. Thompson, Monet and London: Views of the Thames (Paul Holberton Publishing, 2024 – catalogue to accompany Courtauld Gallery exhibition)
Charles Stuckey, Monet: A Retrospective (Random House, 1985)
Daniel Wildenstein, Monet: The Triumph of Impressionism (first published 1996; Taschen, 2022)
Jackie Wullschläger, Monet: The Restless Vision (Allen Lane, 2023)
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Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the doctrine of Karma as developed initially among Hindus, Jains and Buddhists in India from the first millennium BCE. Common to each is an idea, broadly, that you reap what you sow: how you act in this world has consequences either for your later life or your future lives, depending on your view of rebirth and transmigration. From this flow different ideas including those about free will, engagement with the world or disengagement, the nature of ethics and whether intention matters, and these ideas continue to develop today.
With
Monima ChadhaProfessor of Indian Philosophy and Tutorial Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford
Jessica FrazierLecturer in the Study of Religion at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies
And
Karen O’Brien-KopLecturer in Asian Religions at Kings College London
Producer: Simon Tillotson
In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production
Reading list:
J. Bronkhorst, Karma (University of Hawaii Press, 2011)
J. H. Davis (ed.), A Mirror is for Reflection: Understanding Buddhist Ethics (Oxford University Press, 2017), especially ‘Buddhism Without Reincarnation? Examining the Prospects of a “Naturalized” Buddhism’ by J. Westerhoff
J. Ganeri (ed.), Ethics and Epics: Philosophy, Culture, and Religion (Oxford University Press, 2002), especially ‘Karma and the Moral Order’ by B. K. Matilal
Y. Krishan, The Doctrine of Karma: Its Origin and Development in Brāhmaṇical, Buddhist and Jaina Traditions (Motilal Banarsidass Publishers Private Limited, 1997)
N.K.G. Mendis (ed.), The Questions of King Milinda: An Abridgement of Milindapañha (Buddhist Publication Society, 1993)
M. Siderits, How Things Are: An Introduction to Buddhist Metaphysics (Oxford University Press, 2022)
M. Vargas and J. Dorris (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Moral Psychology (Oxford Univesrity Press, 2022), especially ‘Karma, Moral Responsibility and Buddhist Ethics’ by B. Finnigan
J. Zu, 'Collective Karma Cluster Concepts in Chinese Canonical Sources: A Note' (Journal of Global Buddhism, Vol.24: 2, 2023)
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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 English novels and a favourite of Dickens. Coleridge wrote that it had one of the 'three most perfect plots ever planned'. Fielding had made his name in the theatre with satirical plays that were so painful for their targets in government that, from then until the 1960s, plays required approval before being staged; seeking other ways to make a living, Fielding turned to law and to fiction. 'Tom Jones' is one of the great comic novels, with the tightness of a farce and the ambition of a Greek epic as told by the finest raconteur. While other authors might present Tom as a rake and a libertine, Fielding makes him the hero for his fundamental good nature, so offering a caution not to judge anyone too soon, if ever.
With
Judith HawleyProfessor of 18th Century Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London
Henry PowerProfessor of English Literature at the University of Exeter
And
Charlotte RobertsAssociate Professor of English Literature at University College London
Producer: Simon Tillotson
In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production
Reading list:
Martin C. Battestin with Ruthe R. Battestin, Henry Fielding: A Life (Routledge, 1989)
J. M. Beattie, The First English Detectives: The Bow Street Runners and the Policing of London, 1750–1840 (Oxford University Press, 2012) S. Dickie, Cruelty and Laughter: Forgotten Comic Literature and the Unsentimental Eighteenth Century (University of Chicago Press, 2011)
J.A. Downie (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the Eighteenth-Century Novel (Oxford University Press, 2020)
Henry Fielding (ed. John Bender and Simon Stern), The History of Tom Jones (Oxford University Press, 2008)
Henry Fielding (ed. Tom Keymer), The Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon (Penguin Classics, 1996)
Ronald Paulson, The Life of Henry Fielding: A Critical Biography (Wiley Blackwell, 2000)
Henry Power, Epic into Novel: Henry Fielding, Scriblerian Satire, and the Consumption of Classical Literature (Oxford University Press, 2015)
Claude Rawson, Henry Fielding and the Augustan Ideal under Stress (first published 1972; Routledge, 2021)
Claude Rawson (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Henry Fielding (Cambridge University Press, 2007)
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Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Saga of the Earls of Orkney, as told in the 13th Century by an unknown Icelander. This was the story of arguably the most important, strategically, of all the islands in the British Viking world, when the Earls controlled Shetland, Orkney and Caithness from which they could raid the Irish and British coasts, from Dublin round to Lindisfarne. The Saga combines myth with history, bringing to life the places on those islands where Vikings met, drank, made treaties, told stories, became saints, plotted and fought.
With
Judith JeschProfessor of Viking Studies at the University of Nottingham
Jane HarrisonArchaeologist and Research Associate at Oxford and Newcastle Universities
And
Alex WoolfSenior Lecturer in History at the University of St Andrews
Producer: Simon Tillotson
In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production
Reading list:
Theodore M. Andersson, The Growth of Medieval Icelandic Sagas, 1180-1280, (Cornell University Press, 2012)
Margaret Clunies Ross, The Cambridge Introduction to the Old Norse-Icelandic Saga (Cambridge University Press, 2010)
Robert Cook (trans.), Njals Saga (Penguin, 2001)
Barbara E. Crawford, The Northern Earldoms: Orkney and Caithness from AD 870 to 1470 (John Donald Short Run Press, 2013)
Shami Ghosh, Kings’ Sagas and Norwegian History: Problems and Perspectives (Brill, 2011)
J. Graham-Campbell and C. E. Batey, Vikings in Scotland (Edinburgh University Press, 2002)
David Griffiths, J. Harrison and Michael Athanson, Beside the Ocean: Coastal Landscapes at the Bay of Skaill, Marwick, and Birsay Bay, Orkney: Archaeological Research 2003-18 (Oxbow Books, 2019)
Jane Harrison, Building Mounds: Orkney and the Vikings (Routledge, forthcoming)
Ármann Jakobsson and Sverrir Jakobsson (eds.), The Routledge Research Companion to the Medieval Icelandic Sagas (Routledge, 2017)
Judith Jesch, The Viking Diaspora (Routledge, 2015)
Judith Jesch, ‘Earl Rögnvaldr of Orkney, a Poet of the Viking Diaspora’ (Journal of the North Atlantic, Special Volume 4, 2013)
Judith Jesch, The Poetry of Orkneyinga Saga (H.M. Chadwick Memorial Lectures, University of Cambridge, 2020)
Devra Kunin (trans.), A History of Norway and the Passion and Miracles of the Blessed Olafr (Viking Society for Northern Research, 2001)
Rory McTurk (ed.), A Companion to Old Norse-Icelandic Literature and Culture (Wiley-Blackwell, 2004)
Tom Muir, Orkney in the Sagas (Orkney Islands Council, 2005)
Else Mundal (ed.), Dating the Sagas: Reviews and Revisions (Museum Tusculanum Press, 2013)
Heather O’Donoghue, Old Norse-Icelandic Literature: A Short Introduction, (John Wiley & Sons, 2004)Heather O'Donoghue and Eleanor Parker (eds.), The Cambridge History of Old Norse-Icelandic Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2024), especially 'Landscape and Material Culture' by Jane Harrison and ‘Diaspora Sagas’ by Judith Jesch
Richard Oram, Domination and Lordship, Scotland 1070-1230, (Edinburgh University Press, 2011)
Olwyn Owen (ed.), The World of Orkneyinga Saga: The Broad-cloth Viking Trip (Orkney Islands Council, 2006)
Hermann Pálsson and Paul Edwards (trans.), Orkneyinga Saga: The History of the Earls of Orkney (Penguin Classics, 1981)
Snorri Sturluson (trans. tr. Alison Finlay and Anthony Faulkes), Heimskringla, vol. I-III (Viking Society for Northern Research, 2011-2015)
William P. L. Thomson, The New History of Orkney (Birlinn Ltd, 2008)
Alex Woolf, From Pictland to Alba, 789-1070 (Edinburgh University Press, 2007), especially chapter 7
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Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the canonical figures from the history of political thought. Marsilius of Padua (c1275 to c1343) wrote 'Defensor Pacis' (The Defender of the Peace) around 1324 when the Papacy, the Holy Roman Emperor and the French King were fighting over who had supreme power on Earth. In this work Marsilius argued that the people were the source of all power and they alone could elect a leader to act on their behalf; they could remove their leaders when they chose and, afterwards, could hold them to account for their actions. He appeared to favour an elected Holy Roman Emperor and he was clear that there were no grounds for the Papacy to have secular power, let alone gather taxes and wealth, and that clerics should return to the poverty of the Apostles. Protestants naturally found his work attractive in the 16th Century when breaking with Rome. In the 20th Century Marsilius has been seen as an early advocate for popular sovereignty and republican democracy, to the extent possible in his time.
With
Annabel BrettProfessor of Political Thought and History at the University of Cambridge
George GarnettProfessor of Medieval History and Fellow and Tutor at St Hugh’s College, University of Oxford
And
Serena FerenteProfessor of Medieval History at the University of Amsterdam
Producer: Simon TillotsonIn Our Time is a BBC Sounds Audio Production
Reading list:
Richard Bourke and Quentin Skinner (eds), Popular Sovereignty in Historical Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2016), especially 'Popolo and law in Marsilius and the jurists' by Serena Ferente
J. Canning, Ideas of Power in the Late Middle Ages, 1296-1417 (Cambridge University Press, 2011)
H.W.C. Davis (ed.), Essays in Mediaeval History presented to Reginald Lane Poole (Clarendon Press, 1927), especially ‘The authors cited in the Defensor Pacis’ by C.W. Previté-Orton
George Garnett, Marsilius of Padua and ‘The Truth of History’ (Oxford University Press, 2006)
J.R. Hale, J.R.L. Highfield and B. Smalley (eds.), Europe in the Late Middle Ages (Faber and Faber, 1965), especially ‘Marsilius of Padua and political thought of his time’ by N. Rubinstein
Joel Kaye, 'Equalization in the Body and the Body Politic: From Galen to Marsilius of Padua’ (Mélanges de l'Ecole Française de Rome 125, 2013)
Xavier Márquez (ed.), Democratic Moments: Reading Democratic Texts (Bloomsbury, 2018), especially ‘Consent and popular sovereignty in medieval political thought: Marsilius of Padua’s Defensor pacis’ by T. Shogimen
Marsiglio of Padua (trans. Cary J. Nederman), Defensor Minor and De Translatione Imperii (Cambridge University Press, 1993)
Marsilius of Padua (trans. Annabel Brett), The Defender of the Peace (Cambridge University Press, 2005)
Gerson Moreño-Riano (ed.), The World of Marsilius of Padua (Brepols, 2006)
Gerson Moreno-Riano and Cary J. Nederman (eds), A Companion to Marsilius of Padua (Brill, 2012)
A. Mulieri, S. Masolini and J. Pelletier (eds.), Marsilius of Padua: Between history, Politics, and Philosophy (Brepols, 2023)
C. Nederman, Community and Consent: The Secular Political Theory of Marsiglio of Padua’s Defensor Pacis (Rowman and Littlefield, 1995)
Vasileios Syros, Marsilius of Padua at the Intersection of Ancient and Medieval Traditions of Political Thought (University of Toronto Press, 2012)
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Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the woman who, for almost fifty years, was the most powerful figure in the Chinese court. Cixi (1835-1908) started out at court as one of the Emperor's many concubines, yet was the only one who gave him a son to succeed him and who also possessed great political skill and ambition. When their son became emperor he was still a young child and Cixi ruled first through him and then, following his death, through another child emperor. This was a time of rapid change in China, when western powers and Japan humiliated the forces of the Qing empire time after time, and Cixi had the chance to push forward the modernising reforms the country needed to thrive. However, when she found those reforms conflicted with her own interests or those of the Qing dynasty, she was arguably obstructive or too slow to act and she has been personally blamed for some of those many humiliations even when the fault lay elsewhere.
With
Yangwen ZhengProfessor of Chinese History at the University of Manchester
Rana MitterThe S.T. Lee Professor of US-Asia Relations at the Harvard Kennedy School
And
Ronald PoAssociate Professor in the Department of International History at London School of Economics and Visiting Professor at Leiden University
Producer: Simon TillotsonIn Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production
Reading list:
Pearl S. Buck, Imperial Woman: The Story of the Last Empress of China (first published 1956; Open Road Media, 2013)
Katharine A. Carl, With the Empress Dowager (first published 1906; General Books LLC, 2009)
Jung Chang, Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China (Jonathan Cape, 2013)
Princess Der Ling, Old Buddha (first published 1929; Kessinger Publishing, 2007) Joseph W. Esherick, The Origins of the Boxer Uprising (University of California Press, 1987)
John K. Fairbank and Merle Goldman, China: A New History (Harvard University Press, 2006)
Peter Gue Zarrow and Rebecca Karl (eds.), Rethinking the 1898 Reform Period: Political and Cultural Change in Late Qing China (Harvard University Press, 2002)
Grant Hayter-Menzies, Imperial Masquerade: The Legend of Princess Der Ling (Hong Kong University Press, 2008)
Keith Laidler, The Last Empress: The She-Dragon of China (Wiley, 2003)
Keith McMahon, Celestial Women: Imperial Wives and Concubines in China from Song to Qing (Rowman & Littlefield, 2020)
Anchee Min, The Last Empress (Bloomsbury, 2011)
Ying-Chen Peng, Artful Subversion: Empress Dowager Cixi’s Image Making (Yale University Press, 2023).
Sarah Pike Conger, Letters from China: with Particular Reference to the Empress Dowager and the Women of China (first published 1910; Forgotten Books, 2024)
Stephen Platt, Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China's Last Golden Age (Atlantic Books, 2019)
Liang Qichao (trans. Peter Zarrow), Thoughts From the Ice-Drinker's Studio: Essays on China and the World (Penguin Classics, 2023)
Sterling Seagrave, Dragon Lady: The Life and Legend of the Last Empress of China (Vintage, 1993)
Jonathan D. Spence, The Search for Modern China (first published 1991; W. W. Norton & Company, 2001)
X. L. Woo, Empress Dowager Cixi: China's Last Dynasty and the Long Reign of a Formidable Concubine (Algora Publishing, 2003)
Zheng Yangwen, Ten Lessons in Modern Chinese History (Manchester University Press, 2018)
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Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most significant philosophers of the twentieth century, Philippa Foot (1920 - 2010). Her central question was, “Why be moral?” Drawing on Aristotle and Aquinas, Foot spent her life working through her instinct that there was something lacking in the prevailing philosophy of the 1950s and 1960s which held that values could only be subjective. Could there really be no objective response to the horrors of the concentration camps that she had seen on newsreels, no way of saying that such acts were morally wrong? Foot developed an ethics based on virtues, in which humans needed virtues to flourish as surely as plants needed light and water. While working through her ideas she explored applied ethics and the difference between doing something and letting it happen, an idea she illustrated with what became The Trolley Problem.
With
Anil GomesFellow and Tutor in Philosophy at Trinity College, University of Oxford
Sophie Grace ChappellProfessor of Philosophy at the Open University
And
Rachael WisemanReader in Philosophy at the University of Liverpool
Producer: Simon TillotsonIn Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production
Reading list:
Philippa Foot, Virtues and Vices (Oxford University Press, 1978)
Philippa Foot, Moral Dilemmas (Oxford University Press, 2002)
Philippa Foot, Natural Goodness (Oxford University Press, 2001)
John Hacker-Wright, Philippa Foot's Moral Thought (Bloomsbury, 2013)
Benjamin Lipscomb, The Women Are Up To Something (Oxford University Press, 2021)
Clare Mac Cumhaill and Rachael Wiseman, Metaphysical Animals: How Four Women Brought Philosophy Back to Life (Chatto, 2022)
Dan Russell (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Virtue Ethics (Cambridge University Press), especially ‘Virtue Ethics in the Twentieth Century’ by Timothy (now Sophie Grace) Chappell
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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 English Tudor world, especially the sonnet, so preparing the way for Shakespeare and Donne. As an ambassador to Henry VIII and, allegedly, too close to Anne Boleyn, he experienced great privilege under intense scrutiny. Some of Wyatt's poems, such as They Flee From Me That Sometime Did Me Seek, are astonishingly fresh and conversational and yet he wrote them under the tightest constraints, when a syllable out of place could have condemned him to the Tower.
With
Brian Cummings50th Anniversary Professor of English at the University of York
Susan BrigdenRetired Fellow at Lincoln College, University of Oxford
And
Laura AsheProfessor of English Literature at the University of Oxford
Producer: Simon TillotsonIn Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production
Reading list:
Thomas Betteridge and Suzannah Lipscomb (eds.), Henry VIII and the Court: Art, Politics and Performance (Routledge, 2016)
Susan Brigden, Thomas Wyatt: The Heart’s Forest (Faber, 2012)
Nicola Shulman, Graven with Diamonds: The Many Lives of Thomas Wyatt: Courtier, Poet, Assassin, Spy (Short Books, 2011)
Chris Stamatakis, Sir Thomas Wyatt and the Rhetoric of Rewriting (Oxford University Press, 2012)
Patricia Thomson (ed.), Thomas Wyatt: The Critical Heritage (Routledge, 1995)
Greg Walker, Writing Under Tyranny: English Literature and the Henrician Reformation (Oxford University Press, 2005)
Thomas Wyatt (ed. R. A. Rebholz), The Complete Poems (Penguin, 1978)
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Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the planet which is closest to our Sun. We see it as an evening or a morning star, close to where the Sun has just set or is about to rise, and observations of Mercury helped Copernicus understand that Earth and the other planets orbit the Sun, so displacing Earth from the centre of our system. In the 20th century, further observations of Mercury helped Einstein prove his general theory of relativity. For the last 50 years we have been sending missions there to reveal something of Mercury's secrets and how those relate to the wider universe, and he latest, BepiColombo, is out there in space now.
With
Emma BunceProfessor of Planetary Plasma Physics and Director of the Institute for Space at the University of Leicester
David RotheryProfessor of Planetary Geosciences at the Open University
And
Carolin CrawfordEmeritus Fellow of Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge, and Emeritus Member of the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge
Producer: Simon TillotsonIn Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio production
Reading list:
Emma Bunce, ‘All (X-ray) eyes on Mercury’ (Astronomy & Geophysics, Volume 64, Issue 4, August 2023)
Emma Bunce et al, ‘The BepiColombo Mercury Imaging X-Ray Spectrometer: Science Goals, Instrument Performance and Operations’ (Space Science Reviews: SpringerLink, volume 216, article number 126, Nov 2020)
David A. Rothery, Planet Mercury: From Pale Pink Dot to Dynamic World (Springer, 2014)
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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 the familiar ‘strange’: with plays such as Mother Courage and The Caucasian Chalk Circle he wanted his audience not to sit back but to engage, observe and discover the contradictions in life, and act on what they learnt. He developed this approach in turbulent times, from Weimar Germany to the rise of the Nazis, to exile in Scandinavia and America and then post-war life in East Berlin, and he has since inspired dramatists around the world.
With
Laura BradleyProfessor of German and Theatre at the University of Edinburgh
David BarnettProfessor of Theatre at the University of York
And
Tom KuhnProfessor of Twentieth Century German Literature, Emeritus Fellow of St Hugh's College, University of Oxford
Producer: Simon TillotsonIn Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio production
Reading list:
David Barnett, Brecht in Practice: Theatre, Theory and Performance (Bloomsbury, 2014)
David Barnett, A History of the Berliner Ensemble (Cambridge University Press, 2015)
Laura Bradley and Karen Leeder (eds.), Brecht and the GDR: Politics, Culture, Posterity (Camden House, 2015)
Laura Bradley, ‘Training the Audience: Brecht and the Art of Spectatorship’ (The Modern Language Review, 111, 2016)
Bertolt Brecht (ed. Marc Silberman, Tom Kuhn and Steve Giles), Brecht on Theatre (Bloomsbury, 2014)
Bertolt Brecht (ed. Tom Kuhn, Steve Giles and Marc Silberman), Brecht on Performance (Bloomsbury, 2014)
Bertolt Brecht (trans. Tom Kuhn and David Constantine), The Collected Poems of Bertolt Brecht (Norton Liveright, 2018) which includes the poem ‘Spring 1938’ read by Tom Kuhn in this programme
Stephen Brockmann (ed.), Bertolt Brecht in Context (Cambridge University Press, 2021)
Meg Mumford, Bertolt Brecht (Routledge, 2009)
Stephen Parker, Bertolt Brecht: A Literary Life (Bloomsbury, 2014)
Ronald Speirs, Brecht’s Poetry of Political Exile (Cambridge University Press, 2000)
David Zoob, Brecht: A Practical Handbook (Nick Hern Books, 2018)
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Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Napoleon Bonaparte's temporary return to power in France in 1815, following his escape from exile on Elba . He arrived with fewer than a thousand men, yet three weeks later he had displaced Louis XVIII and taken charge of an army as large as any that the Allied Powers could muster individually. He saw that his best chance was to pick the Allies off one by one, starting with the Prussian and then the British/Allied armies in what is now Belgium. He appeared to be on the point of victory at Waterloo yet somehow it eluded him, and his plans were soon in tatters. His escape to America thwarted, he surrendered on 15th July and was exiled again but this time to Saint Helena. There he wrote his memoirs to help shape his legacy, while back in Europe there were still fears of his return.
With
Michael RoweReader in European History at Kings College London
Katherine AstburyProfessor of French Studies at the University of Warwick
And
Zack WhiteLeverhulme Early Career Research Fellow at the University of Portsmouth
Producer: Simon TillotsonIn Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio production.
Reading list:
Katherine Astbury and Mark Philp (ed.), Napoleon's Hundred Days and the Politics of Legitimacy (Palgrave, 2018)
Jeremy Black, The Battle of Waterloo: A New History (Icon Books, 2010)
Michael Broers, Napoleon: The Decline and Fall of an Empire: 1811-1821 (Pegasus Books, 2022)
Philip Dwyer, Citizen Emperor: Napoleon in power 1799-1815 (Bloomsbury, 2014)
Charles J. Esdaile, Napoleon, France and Waterloo: The Eagle Rejected (Pen & Sword Military, 2016)
Gareth Glover, Waterloo: Myth and Reality (Pen & Sword Military, 2014)
Sudhir Hazareesingh, The Legend of Napoleon (Granta, 2014)
John Hussey, Waterloo: The Campaign of 1815, Volume 1, From Elba to Ligny and Quatre Bras (Greenhill Books, 2017)
Andrew Roberts, Napoleon the Great (Penguin Books, 2015)
Brian Vick, The Congress of Vienna: Power and Politics after Napoleon (Harvard University Press, 2014)
Zack White (ed.), The Sword and the Spirit: Proceedings of the first ‘War & Peace in the Age of Napoleon’ Conference (Helion and Company, 2021)
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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 between them by staging a sex strike. To the men in the audience in 411BC, the idea that peace in the Peloponnesian War could be won so easily was ridiculous and the thought that their wives could have so much power over them was even more so. However Aristophanes' comedy also has the women seizing the treasure in the Acropolis that was meant to fund more fighting in an emergency, a fund the Athenians had recently had to draw on. They were in a perilous position and, much as they might laugh at Aristophanes' jokes, they knew there were real concerns about the actual cost of the war in terms of wealth and manpower.
With
Paul CartledgeAG Leventis Senior Research Fellow of Clare College, University of Cambridge
Sarah MilesAssociate Professor in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at Durham University
And
James RobsonProfessor of Classical Studies at the Open University
Producer: Simon Tillotson
Reading list:
Aristophanes (ed. Jeffrey Henderson), Lysistrata (Oxford University Press, 1987)
Aristophanes (ed. Jeffrey Henderson), Three Plays by Aristophanes: Staging Women (Routledge, 2010)
Aristophanes (ed. Jeffrey Henderson), Birds; Lysistrata; Women at the Thesmophoria (Loeb Classical Library series, Harvard University Press, 2014)
Aristophanes (ed. Alan H. Sommerstein), Lysistrata and Other Plays: The Acharnians; The Clouds; Lysistrata (Penguin, 2002)
Aristophanes (ed. Alan H. Sommerstein), Lysistrata (Aris & Phillips, 1998)
Paul Cartledge, Aristophanes and his Theatre of the Absurd (Bristol Classical Press, 1999)
Kenneth Dover, Aristophanic Comedy (University of California Press, 1972)
Germaine Greer, Lysistrata: The Sex Strike: After Aristophanes (Aurora Metro Press, 2000)
Tony Harrison, The Common Chorus: A Version of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata (Faber & Faber, 1992)
Douglas M. MacDowell, Aristophanes and Athens: An Introduction to the Plays (Oxford University Press, 1995)
S. Douglas Olson (ed.), Ancient Comedy and Reception: Essays in Honor of Jeffrey Henderson (De Gruyter, 2013), especially 'She (Don't) Gotta Have It: African-American reception of Lysistrata' by Kevin Wetmore
James Robson, Aristophanes: Lysistrata, Bloomsbury ancient comedy companions (Bloomsbury, 2023)
James Robson, Aristophanes: An Introduction (Duckworth, 2009)
Ralph M. Rosen and Helene P. Foley (eds.), Aristophanes and Politics. New Studies (Brill, 2020)
Donald Sells, Parody, Politics and the Populace in Greek Old Comedy (Bloomsbury, 2018)
David Stuttard (ed.), Looking at Lysistrata: Eight Essays and a New Version of Aristophanes' Provocative Comedy (Bristol Classical Press, 2010)
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Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Serbian-American inventor Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) and his role in the development of electrical systems towards the end of the nineteenth century. He made his name in New York in the contest over which current should flow into homes and factories in America. Some such as Edison backed direct current or DC while others such as Westinghouse backed alternating current or AC and Nikola Tesla’s invention of a motor that worked on AC swung it for the alternating system that went on to power the modern age. He ensured his reputation and ideas burnt brightly for the next decades, making him synonymous with the lone, genius inventor of the new science fiction.
With
Simon SchafferEmeritus Fellow of Darwin College, University of Cambridge
Jill JonnesHistorian and author of “Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse and the Race to Electrify the World”
And
Iwan MorusProfessor of History at Aberystwyth University
Producer: Simon Tillotson
Reading list:
W. Bernard Carlson, Tesla: Inventor of the Electrical Age (Princeton University Press, 2013)
Margaret Cheney and Robert Uth, Tesla: Master of Lightning (Barnes & Noble Books, 1999)
Thomas P. Hughes, Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society, 1880-1930 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983)
Carolyn Marvin, When Old Technologies Were New (Open University Press, 1988)
Iwan Rhys Morus, Nikola Tesla and the Electrical Future (Icon Books, 2019)
Iwan Rhys Morus, How The Victorians Took Us To The Moon (Icon, 2022)
David E. Nye, Electrifying America: Social Meanings of a New Technology (MIT Press, 1991)
John J. O’Neill, Prodigal Genius: The Life of Nikola Tesla (first published 1944; Cosimo Classics, 2006)
Marc J. Seifer, Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla, Biography of a Genius (first published 1996; Citadel Press, 2016)
Nikola Tesla, My Inventions: The Autobiography of Nikola Tesla (first published 1919; Martino Fine Books, 2011)
Nikola Tesla, My Inventions and other Writings (Penguin, 2012)
In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio production
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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 Russian Empire and until recently part of Sweden. The compiler of this epic was a doctor, Elias Lönnrot (1802-1884), who had travelled the land to hear traditional poems about mythical heroes being sung in Finnish, the language of the peasantry, and writing them down in his own order to create this landmark work. In creating The Kalevala, Lönnrot helped the Finns realise they were a distinct people apart from Sweden and Russia, who deserved their own nation state and who came to demand independence, which they won in 1917.
With
Riitta ValijärviAssociate Professor in Finnish and Minority Languages at University College London
Thomas DuboisThe Halls-Bascom Professor of Scandinavian Folklore and Literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
And
Daniel AbondoloFormerly Reader in Hungarian at University College London
Producer: Simon Tillotson
Reading list:
Nigel Fabb, What is Poetry? Language and Memory in the Poems of the World (Cambridge University Press, 2015)
Frog, Satu Grünthal, Kati Kallio and Jarkko Niemi (eds), Versification: Metrics in Practice (Finnish Literature Society, 2021)
Riho Grünthal et al., ‘Drastic demographic events triggered the Uralic spread’ (Diachronica, Volume 39, Issue 4, Aug 2022)
Lauri Honko (ed.), The Kalevala and the World's Traditional Epics (Finnish Literature Society, 2002)
The Kalevala Heritage: Archive Recordings of Ancient Finnish Songs. Online Catalogue no. ODE8492.
Mauri Kunnas, The Canine Kalevala (Otava Publishing, 1992)
Kuusi, Matti, et al. (eds.), Finnish Folk Poetry: Epic (Finnish Literature Society, 1977)
Elias Lönnrot (trans. John Martin Crawford), Kalevala: The Epic Poem of Finland (first published 1887; CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2017)
Elias Lönnrot (trans. W. F. Kirby), Kalevala: The Land of the Heroes (first published by J.M. Dent & Sons, 1907, 2 vols.; Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd, 2000)
Elias Lönnrot (trans. Francis Peabody Magoun Jr.), The Kalevala, or Poems of the Kaleva District (Harvard University Press, 1963)
Elias Lönnrot (trans. Eino Friberg), The Kalevala: Epic of the Finnish People (Otava Publishing, 1988)
Elias Lönnrot (trans. Keith Bosley), The Kalevala: An Epic Poem after Oral Tradition (Oxford University Press, 1989)
Kirsti Mäkinen, Pirkko-Liisa Surojegin, Kaarina Brooks, An Illustrated Kalevala: Myths and Legends from Finland (Floris Books, 2020)
Sami Makkonen, Kalevala: The Graphic Novel (Ablaze, 2024)
Juha Y. Pentikäinen (trans. Ritva Poom), Kalevala Mythology, (Indiana University Press, 1999)
Tina K. Ramnarine, Ilmatar’s Inspirations: Nationalism, Globalization and the Changing Soundscapes of Finnish Folk Music (University of Chicago Press, 2003) Jonathan Roper (ed.), Alliteration in Culture (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), especially chapter 12 ‘Alliteration in (Balto-) Finnic Languages’ by Frog and Eila Stepanova
Karl Spracklen, Metal Music and the Re-imagining of Masculinity, Place, Race and Nation (Emerald Publishing, 2020), especially the chapter ‘Finnish Folk Metal: Raising Drinking Horns in Mainstream Metal’
Leea Virtanen and Thomas A. DuBois, Finnish Folklore: Studia Fennica Folkloristica 9 (Finnish Literature Society, 2000)
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