2020

Catullus 9 Jan

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 obscene.
870 Latin and Italic literatures
The Siege of Paris 1870-71 16 Jan

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 off from the rest of the country and food was scarce.
940 History of Europe
Solar Wind 23 Jan

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, interacting with Earth’s magnetosphere, and in comet tails that stream away from the Sun regardless of their own direction.
520 Astronomy
Alcuin 30 Jan

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 at Charlemagne’s court.
270 History of Christianity

George Sand 6 Feb

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 wrote under the name George Sand.
800 Literature, rhetoric and criticism
Battle of the Teutoburg Forest 13 Feb

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great Roman military disaster of 9 AD when Germanic tribes under Arminius ambushed and destroyed three legions under Varus.
930 History of the Ancient World
The Valladolid Debate 20 Feb

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the debate in Valladolid, Spain in 1550, over Spanish rights to enslave the native peoples in the newly conquered lands.
320 Political science
The Evolution of Horses 27 Feb

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the origins of horses, from their dog sized ancestors to their proliferation in the New World until hunted to extinction, their domestication in Asia and their development since.
590 Animals (Zoology)

Paul Dirac 5 Mar

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the theoretical physicist Dirac (1902-1984), whose achievements far exceed his general fame.
530 Physics
The Covenanters 12 Mar

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the bonds that Scottish Presbyterians made between themselves and their monarchs in the 16th and 17th Centuries, to maintain their form of worship.
940 History of Europe

Pericles 17 Sep

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Pericles (495-429BC), the statesman who dominated the politics of Athens for thirty years, the so-called Age of Pericles, when the city’s cultural life flowered, its democracy strengthened as its empire grew, and the Acropolis was adorned with the Parthenon.
930 History of the Ancient World
Cave Art 24 Sep

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss ideas about the Stone Age people who created the extraordinary images found in caves around the world, from hand outlines to abstract symbols to the multicoloured paintings of prey animals at Chauvet and, as shown above, at Lascaux.
930 History of the Ancient World

Macbeth 1 Oct

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies.
820 English and Old English literatures
Deism 8 Oct

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the idea that God created the universe and then left it for humans to understand by reason not revelation.
210 Philosophy and theory of religion
Alan Turing 15 Oct

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Alan Turing (1912-1954) whose 1936 paper On Computable Numbers effectively founded computer science.
510 Mathematics
Maria Theresa 22 Oct

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Maria Theresa (1717-1780) who inherited the Austrian throne in 1740 at the age of 23.
940 History of Europe
Piers Plowman 29 Oct

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 of Piers the Plowman.
820 English and Old English literatures

Mary Astell 5 Nov

The philosopher Mary Astell (1666 - 1731) has been described as “the first English feminist”.
300 Social sciences, sociology and anthropology
Albrecht Dürer 12 Nov

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great German artist Albrecht Durer (1471-1528) who achieved fame throughout Europe for the power of his images.
700 Arts
The Zong Massacre 26 Nov

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the notorious events off Jamaica in 1781 and their background.
320 Political science

Fernando Pessoa 3 Dec

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 in his list of the 26 most significant western writers since the Middle Ages.
800 Literature, rhetoric and criticism
John Wesley and Methodism 10 Dec

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss John Wesley (1703 - 1791) and the movement he was to lead and inspire.
270 History of Christianity
The Cultural Revolution 17 Dec

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 revolution that he feared had become too bourgeois and to remove his enemies and rivals.
950 History of Asia
Eclipses 31 Dec

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss solar eclipses, some of life’s most extraordinary moments, when day becomes night and the stars come out before day returns either all too soon or not soon enough, depending on what you understand to be happening.
520 Astronomy