2016

January

• Saturn 14 Jan
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the planet Saturn with its rings of ice and rock and over 60 moons.
  520 Astronomy
• Thomas Paine’s Common Sense 21 Jan
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Paine and his pamphlet “Common Sense” which was published in Philadelphia in January 1776 and promoted the argument for American independence from Britain.
  970 History of North America
• Eleanor of Aquitaine 28 Jan
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, times and influence of Eleanor of Aquitaine (c1122-1204) who was one of the most powerful women in Twelfth Century Europe, possibly in the entire Middle Ages.
  940 History of Europe

February

• Chromatography 4 Feb
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the origins, development and uses of chromatography.
  540 Chemistry
• Rumi’s Poetry 11 Feb
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poetry of Rumi, the Persian scholar and Sufi mystic of the 13th Century.
  890 Other literatures
• Robert Hooke 18 Feb
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Robert Hooke (1635-1703) who worked for Robert Boyle and was curator of experiments at the Royal Society.
  500 Science
• Mary Magdalene 25 Feb
  Mary Magdalene is one of the best-known figures in the Bible and has been a frequent inspiration to artists and writers over the last 2000 years.
  270 History of Christianity

March

• The Dutch East India Company 3 Mar
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie or VOC, known in English as the Dutch East India Company.
  380 Commerce, communications and transportation
• The Maya Civilization 10 Mar
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Maya Civilization, developed by the Maya people, which flourished in central America from around 250 AD in great cities such as Chichen Itza and Uxmal with advances in mathematics, architecture and astronomy.
  970 History of North America
• Bedlam 17 Mar
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the early years of Bedlam, the name commonly used for the London hospital of St Mary of Bethlehem outside Bishopsgate, described in 1450 by the Lord Mayor of London as a place where may “be found many men that be fallen out of their wit.
  360 Social problems and social services
• Aurora Leigh 24 Mar
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s epic “Aurora Leigh” which was published in 1856.
  820 English and Old English literatures
• Agrippina the Younger 31 Mar
  Agrippina the Younger was one of the most notorious and influential of the Roman empresses in the 1st century AD.
  930 History of the Ancient World

April

• The Sikh Empire 7 Apr
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rise of the Sikh Empire at the end of the 18th Century under Ranjit Singh, pictured above, who unified most of the Sikh kingdoms following the decline of the Mughal Empire.
  900 History
• The Neutron 14 Apr
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the neutron, one of the particles found in an atom’s nucleus.
  530 Physics
• 1816, the Year Without a Summer 21 Apr
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the impact of the eruption of Mt Tambora, in 1815, on the Indonesian island of Sambawa.
  900 History
• Euclid’s Elements 28 Apr
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Euclid’s Elements, a mathematical text book attributed to Euclid and in use from its appearance in Alexandria, Egypt around 300 BC until modern times, dealing with geometry and number theory.
  510 Mathematics

May

• Tess of the d’Urbervilles 5 May
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy, originally serialised in The Graphic in 1891 and, with some significant changes, published as a complete novel in 1892.
  820 English and Old English literatures
• Titus Oates and his ‘Popish Plot’ 12 May
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Titus Oates (1649-1705) who, with Israel Tonge, spread rumours of a Catholic plot to assassinate Charles II.
  940 History of Europe
• The Muses 19 May
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Muses and their role in Greek mythology, when they were goddesses of poetry, song, music and dance: what the Greeks called mousike, ‘the art of the Muses’ from which we derive our word ‘music.
  800 Literature, rhetoric and criticism
• The Gettysburg Address 26 May
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, ten sentences long, delivered at the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery at Gettysburg after the Union forces had won an important battle with the Confederates.
  970 History of North America

June

• Margery Kempe and English Mysticism 2 Jun
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the English mystic Margery Kempe (1373-1438) whose extraordinary life is recorded in a book she dictated, The Book of Margery Kempe.
  270 History of Christianity
• Penicillin 9 Jun
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss penicillin, discovered by Alexander Fleming in 1928.
  610 Medicine and health
• The Bronze Age Collapse 16 Jun
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss The Bronze Age Collapse, the name given by many historians to what appears to have been a sudden, uncontrolled destruction of dominant civilizations around 1200 BC in the Aegean, Eastern Mediterranean and Anatolia.
  930 History of the Ancient World
• Songs of Innocence and of Experience 23 Jun
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss William Blake’s collection of illustrated poems “Songs of Innocence and of Experience.
  820 English and Old English literatures
• Sovereignty 30 Jun
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of the idea of Sovereignty, the authority of a state to govern itself and the relationship between the sovereign and the people.
  320 Political science

July

• The Invention of Photography 7 Jul
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the development of photography in the 1830s, when techniques for ‘drawing with light’ evolved to the stage where, in 1839, both Louis Daguerre and William Henry Fox Talbot made claims for its invention.
  770 Photography, computer art, cinematography, videography

September

• Zeno’s Paradoxes 22 Sep
  In a programme first broadcast in 2016, Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Zeno of Elea, a pre-Socratic philosopher from c490-430 BC whose paradoxes were described by Bertrand Russell as “immeasurably subtle and profound.
  190 Modern Western Philosophy
• Animal Farm 29 Sep
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Animal Farm, which Eric Blair published under his pen name George Orwell in 1945.
  320 Political science

October

• Lakshmi 6 Oct
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the origins of the Hindu goddess Lakshmi, and of the traditions that have built around her for over 3,000 years.
  290 Other religions
• Plasma 13 Oct
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss plasma, the fourth state of matter after solid, liquid and gas.
  530 Physics
• The 12th Century Renaissance 20 Oct
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the changes in the intellectual world of Western Europe in the 12th Century, and their origins.
  900 History
• John Dalton 27 Oct
  The scientist John Dalton was born in North England in 1766.
  540 Chemistry

November

• Epic of Gilgamesh 3 Nov
  “He who saw the Deep” are the first words of the standard version of The Epic of Gilgamesh, the subject of this discussion between Melvyn Bragg and his guests.
  890 Other literatures
• The Fighting Temeraire 10 Nov
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss “The Fighting Temeraire”, one of Turner’s greatest works and the one he called his ‘darling’.
  750 Painting
• Justinian’s Legal Code 17 Nov
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas brought together under Justinian I, Byzantine emperor in the 6th century AD, which were rediscovered in Western Europe in the Middle Ages and became very influential in the development of laws in many European nations and elsewhere.
  340 Law
• Baltic Crusades 24 Nov
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Baltic Crusades, the name given to a series of overlapping attempts to convert the pagans of North East Europe to Christianity at the point of the sword.
  940 History of Europe

December

• Garibaldi and the Risorgimento 1 Dec
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Giuseppe Garibaldi and the Italian Risorgimento.
  940 History of Europe
• Harriet Martineau 8 Dec
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Harriet Martineau who, from a non-conformist background in Norwich, became one of the best known writers in the C19th.
  300 Social sciences, sociology and anthropology
• The Gin Craze 15 Dec
  In a programme first broadcast in December 2016, Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the craze for gin in Britain in the mid-18th century and the attempts to control it.
  360 Social problems and social services
• Four Quartets 22 Dec
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Four Quartets, TS Eliot’s last great work which he composed, against a background of imminent and actual world war, as meditations on the relationship between time and humanity.
  820 English and Old English literatures
• Johannes Kepler 29 Dec
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the German astronomer Johannes Kepler (1571 - 1630).
  520 Astronomy