BBC Radio Podcasts from In Our Time: Culture
Molière
The great French playwright and comic actor who flourished at the court of Louis XIV.
Thomas Middleton
The prolific and versatile Jacobean playwright tasked with 'improving' some of Shakespeare
Oliver Goldsmith
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss this influential and prolific 18th-century Irish writer.
Sir John Soane
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the influential English architect John Soane.
Vase-mania
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the eighteenth century mania for classical vases.
Plutarch's Parallel Lives
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the influential Greek biographer and his main work
Nizami Ganjavi
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great 12th-century Persian epic romantic poet.
Italo Calvino
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the influential 20th-century Italian novelist and essayist
George Herbert
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss arguably the greatest devotional poem writer in English.
Little Women
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Louisa May Alcott's influential story of the March sisters
Robert Graves
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the fine poet of love and war and author of I, Claudius.
Monet in England
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Claude Monet's fascination with the foggy Thames.
Fielding's Tom Jones
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the great English comic novels.
Sir Thomas Wyatt
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the astonishing poet at the heart of Henry VIII's court
Bertolt Brecht
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great 20th-century German playwright.
Lysistrata
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aristophanes' comedy in which a sex strike brings peace.
The Kalevala
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the epic poem that helped build the Finnish nation.
The Waltz
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the impact of the waltz on British society and culture.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Lewis Carroll's fantastical tale inspired by Alice Liddell
Twelfth Night, or What You Will
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Shakespeare's great comedy of love, desire and marriage.
Vincent van Gogh
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great Dutch painter of Sunflowers and Starry Nights.
Edgar Allan Poe
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the author of the Fall of the House of Usher.
Marguerite de Navarre
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss writer and Renaissance queen Marguerite de Navarre.
The Theory of the Leisure Class
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Veblen on conspicuous consumption and conspicuous leisure.
Germinal
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Emile Zola's novel, set in a French miners' strike.
The Seventh Seal
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Bergman's iconic film of a knight playing chess with Death
Death in Venice
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Mann's novella of 1912.
Oedipus Rex
Melvyn Bragg and guests on Sophocles' tragedy, sometimes called the best play ever written
Virgil's Georgics
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Roman poet's celebration of agriculture and rural life
Walt Whitman
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the innovative and highly influential American poet.
A Room of One's Own
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Virginia Woolf's essay on women and literature.
The Ramayana
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ancient Sanskrit epic.
Stevie Smith
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the writer best known for her poem Not Waving But Drowning
John Donne
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the priest who was one of England's finest love poets.
Persuasion
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Austen's last complete novel, published after her death.
Citizen Kane
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Orson Welles' celebrated and influential film from 1941.
The Nibelungenlied
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the medieval German epic The Song of the Nibelungs.
Bauhaus
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the influential German school founded by Walter Gropius.
Wilfred Owen
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the outstanding poets of the First World War.
Berthe Morisot
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the innovative artist at the heart of French impressionism
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Orwell's novel on totalitarianism, truth and surveillance.
John Bull
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the origins and evolution of the satirical everyman figure
Dylan Thomas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poems, plays and persona of the prominent Welsh writer
Tang Era Poetry
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Li Bai and Du Fu from the Golden Age of Chinese Poetry.
Olympe de Gouges
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the author of The Declaration of the Rights of Woman, 1791
Polidori's The Vampyre
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 1819 work that inspired two centuries of vampire tales
The Sistine Chapel
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Michelangelo's iconic frescoes in Renaissance Rome.
Antigone
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Sophocles' tragedy of an autocrat who defies family ties.
Romeo and Juliet
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Shakespeare's tragedy of young star-crossed love in Verona
Colette
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss a major force in French culture in the 20th century.
Thomas Hardy's Poetry
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hardy's goal of being a great poet and how he succeeded.
Fritz Lang
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss a giant of cinema in Weimar Germany and Hollywood.
A Christmas Carol
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Charles Dickens' celebrated story of Scrooge's redemption.
The Decadent Movement
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Beardsley, Wilde and art for art's sake in the 1890s.
The Song of Roland
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss a masterpiece of French epic poetry from the 12th century.
Iris Murdoch
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosophy of the celebrated author of The Bell.
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Anne Bronte's novel of a woman's fight for independence.
Herodotus
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Greek writer known as the father of history.
Shakespeare's Sonnets
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss some of the greatest and most challenging poems in English
Edward Gibbon
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the author of Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
Journey to the West
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great novel from the Ming Era, with its heroic Monkey.
Ovid
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most influential poets of Rome's Augustan Age.
The Bacchae
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the revenge of Dionysus on Thebes in Euripides' tragedy.
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Coleridge's famous poem of a sailor who shot an albatross.
The Rosetta Stone
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the deciphering of hieroglyphs, secret for 1,500 years.
The Great Gatsby
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Fitzgerald's celebrated novel of the Jazz Age.
Fernando Pessoa
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great Portuguese poet and his many literary personas.
Albrecht Dürer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and timeless works of the great German artist.
Piers Plowman
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss William Langland's celebrated poem, written around 1370.
Macbeth
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of Shakespeare's greatest tragedies.
Frankenstein
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Mary Shelley's Gothic story of a monster brought to life
George Sand
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the celebrated French novelist, her life and work.
Catullus
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poems of Catullus from the late Roman Republic
Auden
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss WH Auden's life and his poetry from the 1930s.
Crime and Punishment
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Dostoevsky's novel. The hero thinks he's above the law....
Robert Burns
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poetry, ideas and life of Robert Burns (1759-1796).
The Time Machine
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the science and ideas in HG Wells' story of time travel.
Lorca
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Spanish poet and playwright's work, life and death.
Sir Thomas Browne
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the physician with a curious mind in dangerous times
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Shakespeare's comedy, one of his most popular plays
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss 'the only influential poet of the Victorian age'.
Antarah ibn Shaddad
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poetry and context of this pre-Islamic Arabian knight
Judith beheading Holofernes
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how this Bible story has inspired artists for centuries.
Samuel Beckett
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the playwright and novelist, author of Waiting for Godot
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the greatest poems from medieval England
Horace
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Roman poet Horace, who flourished under Augustus.
Is Shakespeare History? The Romans
Melvyn Bragg discusses the impact of Shakespeare's approach to history (programme 2 of 2).
Is Shakespeare History? The Plantagenets
Melvyn Bragg discusses the impact of Shakespeare's approach to history (programme 1 of 2)
Edith Wharton
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Wharton's novels of America's Gilded Age.
The Iliad
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the epic poem on the wrath of Achilles in the Trojan War.
William Morris
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss a great cultural figure of the 19th century.
Henrik Ibsen
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the playwright and his tragedies of middle-class life.
The Mabinogion
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the medieval Welsh stories of Celtic mythology.
Middlemarch
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss George Eliot's greatest novel, published 1871-72.
Anna Akhmatova
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the celebrated Russian poet.
Hamlet
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Shakespeare's best known, longest and most quoted play.
Beethoven
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and influence of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Moby Dick
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the most popular idea sent in by listeners.
Germaine de Stael
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and works of the great woman of letters.
Picasso's Guernica
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the events behind and impact of Picasso's iconic work.
Aphra Behn
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aphra Behn (1640-1689): playwright, poet, spy.
Wuthering Heights
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Emily Bronte's only novel, Wuthering Heights.
al-Biruni
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Central Asian scientist and historian al-Biruni.
Eugene Onegin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Pushkin's masterpiece, Eugene Onegin, a novel in verse.
Christine de Pizan
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Christine de Pizan (c1364-1430).
Emily Dickinson
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), celebrated American poet.
Hokusai
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai.
North and South
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Elizabeth Gaskell's novel North and South from 1855.
Seneca the Younger
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the works, life and times of Seneca the Younger.
John Clare
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss John Clare, poet and farm labourer.
Four Quartets
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss TS Eliot's Four Quartets, known as his great last work.
The Fighting Temeraire
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss JMW Turner's The Fighting Temeraire.
Epic of Gilgamesh
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Gilgamesh, the great epic poem from ancient Mesopotamia.
The 12th Century Renaissance
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss a period of great change in western Europe.
Animal Farm
All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
Songs of Innocence and of Experience
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss William Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience.
The Muses
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Muses in Greek mythology and after.
Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles.
Aurora Leigh
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aurora Leigh by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Rumi's Poetry
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poetry of Rumi (1207-1273).
Tristan and Iseult
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the story of Tristan and Iseult.
Emma
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Emma, the novel by Jane Austen.
Holbein at the Tudor Court
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Holbein at the court of Henry VIII.
Frida Kahlo
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Frida Kahlo.
Jane Eyre
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, first published in 1847.
Tagore
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rabindranath Tagore.
Fanny Burney
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of the 18th-century writer Fanny Burney.
Sappho
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the ancient Greek poet Sappho.
Beowulf
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the epic Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf.
Bruegel's The Fight Between Carnival and Lent
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Bruegel's painting The Fight Between Carnival and Lent.
Kafka's The Trial
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss The Trial, by Franz Kafka.
Aesop
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aesop, legendary author of the famous collection of fables
Rudyard Kipling
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Rudyard Kipling.
Mrs Dalloway
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs Dalloway.
The Bluestockings
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the 18th-century Bluestocking Society.
The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.
The Tale of Sinuhe
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the ancient Egyptian poem The Tale of Sinuhe.
Tristram Shandy
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Laurence Sterne's comic novel Tristram Shandy.
The Tempest
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Shakespeare's The Tempest.
Pascal
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the French thinker Blaise Pascal.
The Invention of Radio
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the invention of radio.
Romance of the Three Kingdoms
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Chinese book Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
Queen Zenobia
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Queen Zenobia, who led a rebellion against Ancient Rome.
Lévi-Strauss
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.
Icelandic Sagas
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Icelandic sagas.
Montaigne
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the great French writer Michel de Montaigne.
The Amazons
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Amazons, formidable female warriors of classical myth.
Chekhov
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the Russian writer Anton Chekhov.
Decline and Fall
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Evelyn Waugh's comic novel Decline and Fall.
Le Morte d'Arthur
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Malory's epic medieval tale Le Morte d'Arthur.
Shahnameh of Ferdowsi
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Persian epic poem, the Shahnameh of Ferdowsi.
The Anarchy
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss The Anarchy, the 12th-century English civil war.
Caxton and the Printing Press
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss William Caxton and the influence of the printing press.
Gerald of Wales
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the medieval scholar Gerald of Wales.
The Druids
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Druids of ancient Europe.
Annie Besant
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the 19th-century writer and campaigner Annie Besant.
James Joyce's Ulysses
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss James Joyce's celebrated novel Ulysses.
Voltaire's Candide
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Voltaire's satirical novel Candide, published in 1759.
Moses Mendelssohn
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the German-Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn.
Benjamin Franklin
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Benjamin Franklin.
The Kama Sutra
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Kama Sutra.
The Safavid Dynasty
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Safavid Dynasty of early modern Iran.
Robinson Crusoe
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Daniel Defoe's seminal novel Robinson Crusoe.
Christina Rossetti
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Victorian poet Christina Rossetti.
Tennyson's In Memoriam
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem In Memoriam.
The Anatomy of Melancholy
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Robert Burton's book The Anatomy of Melancholy.
The Medieval University
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the foundation of the medieval universities.
Aristotle's Poetics
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aristotle's Poetics.
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Byron's poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage.
History of Metaphor
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of metaphor.
The Unicorn
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the history and mythology of the unicorn.
Sturm und Drang
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the German artistic movement known as Sturm und Drang.
Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Artists
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Artists.
Roman Satire
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Roman satire.
Munch and The Scream
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Edvard Munch and his most famous painting, The Scream.
Silas Marner
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss George Eliot's 1861 novel Silas Marner.
The Samurai
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history and myth of the Samurai.
Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
Elizabethan Revenge
Melvyn Bragg discusses why revenge tragedy was so popular with Elizabethan theatre goers.
The Whale - A History
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the evolutionary history of the whale.
Aldous Huxley's Brave New World
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aldous Huxley's dystopian 1932 novel Brave New World.
The School of Athens
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Raphael's depiction of Plato and Aristotle.
The Waste Land and Modernity
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss TS Eliot's seminal poem The Waste Land.
The Brothers Grimm
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the fairy tales collected by the Brothers Grimm.
Swift's A Modest Proposal
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jonathan Swift's satirical 1729 pamphlet A Modest Proposal
The Baroque Movement
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the culture of the Baroque.
Dante's Inferno
Melvyn Bragg examines Dante’s ‘Inferno’, a medieval journey through Hell’s nine circles
The Music of the Spheres
Melvyn Bragg explores the ancient astrological idea of the music of the spheres.
The Metaphysical Poets
Melvyn Bragg examines the Metaphysical poets, including John Donne and Andrew Marvell.
The Riddle of the Sands
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the prescient thriller about Anglo-German relations.
The Library at Nineveh
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss a treasure house of Assyrian ideas.
Yeats and Irish Politics
Melvyn Bragg examines the effect of Irish politics on the work of the poet W.B. Yeats.
The Greek Myths
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Greek myths from Achilles to Zeus.
Lear
Melvyn Bragg and guests examine Shakespeare’s bloodthirsty tragedy, King Lear.
Rudolph II
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rudolph II and his Renaissance Court in Prague.
The Fisher King
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the enigmatic myth of the Fisher King.
Camus
The life ad work of the Algerian-French writer and philosopher, Albert Camus.