2021

January

• The Great Gatsby 14 Jan
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss F Scott Fitzgerald’s finest novel, published in 1925, one of the great American novels of the twentieth century.
  810 American literature in English
• The Plague of Justinian 21 Jan
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the plague that broke out in Constantinople 541AD, in the reign of Emperor Justinian.
  940 History of Europe
• Saint Cuthbert 28 Jan
  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 his martyrdom in 1170.
  270 History of Christianity

February

• Emilie du Châtelet 4 Feb
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the outstanding French mathematicians and natural philosophers of the 18th Century, celebrated across Europe.
  510 Mathematics
• The Rosetta Stone 11 Feb
  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.
  930 History of the Ancient World
• Medieval Pilgrimage 18 Feb
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the idea and experience of Christian pilgrimage in Europe from the 12th to the 15th centuries, which figured so strongly in the imagination of the age.
  200 Religion
• Marcus Aurelius 25 Feb
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the man who, according to Machiavelli, was the last of the Five Good Emperors.
  180 Ancient, medieval, and Eastern philosophy

March

• The Rime of the Ancient Mariner 4 Mar
  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 movement.
  820 English and Old English literatures
• The Late Devonian Extinction 11 Mar
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the devastating mass extinctions of the Late Devonian Period, roughly 370 million years ago, when around 70 percent of species disappeared.
  560 Fossils and prehistoric life
• The Bacchae 18 Mar
  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 and humiliation in a long war with Sparta.
  880 Classical and modern Greek literatures
• David Ricardo 25 Mar
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most influential economists from the age of Adam Smith and Thomas Malthus.
  330 Economics

April

• The Russo-Japanese War 1 Apr
  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 impact on both countries.
  950 History of Asia
• Pierre-Simon Laplace 8 Apr
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Laplace (1749-1827) who was a giant in the world of mathematics both before and after the French Revolution.
  510 Mathematics
• Arianism 15 Apr
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the form of Christianity adopted by Ostrogoths in the 4th century AD, which they learned from Roman missionaries and from their own contact with the imperial court at Constantinople.
  270 History of Christianity
• The Franco-American Alliance 1778 22 Apr
  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 revolutionary war against Britain and to promote French trade across the Atlantic.
  900 History
• Ovid 29 Apr
  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 and a mistake.
  870 Latin and Italic literatures

May

• The Second Barons’ War 6 May
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the years of bloody conflict that saw Simon de Montfort (1205-65) become the most powerful man in England, with Henry III as his prisoner.
  940 History of Europe
• Longitude 13 May
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the search for Longitude while at sea.
  620 Engineering
• Journey to the West 20 May
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the great novels of China’s Ming era, and perhaps the most loved.
  890 Other literatures
• The Interregnum 27 May
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the period between the execution of Charles I in 1649 and the unexpected restoration of his son Charles II in 1660, known as The Interregnum.
  940 History of Europe

June

• Kant’s Copernican Revolution 3 Jun
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the insight into our relationship with the world that Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) shared in his book The Critique of Pure Reason in 1781.
  100 Philosophy
• Booth’s Life and Labour Survey 10 Jun
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Charles Booth’s survey, The Life and Labour of the People in London, published in 17 volumes from 1889 to 1903.
  360 Social problems and social services
• Edward Gibbon 17 Jun
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of one of the great historians, best known for his History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (published 1776-89).
  900 History
• Shakespeare’s Sonnets 24 Jun
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the collection of poems published in 1609 by Thomas Thorpe: Shakespeare’s Sonnets, “never before imprinted”.
  820 English and Old English literatures

September

• The Evolution of Crocodiles 16 Sep
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the remarkable diversity of the animals that dominated life on land in the Triassic, before the rise of the dinosaurs in the Jurassic, and whose descendants are often described wrongly as ‘living fossils’.
  590 Animals (Zoology)
• Herodotus 23 Sep
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Greek writer known as the father of histories, dubbed by his detractors as the father of lies.
  930 History of the Ancient World
• The Tenant of Wildfell Hall 30 Sep
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Anne Bronte’s second novel, published in 1848, which is now celebrated alongside those of her sisters but which Charlotte Bronte tried to suppress as a ‘mistake’.
  820 English and Old English literatures

October

• The Manhattan Project 7 Oct
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the race to build an atom bomb in the USA during World War Two.
  620 Engineering
• The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth 14 Oct
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the republic that emerged from the union of the Kingdom of Poland and Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the 14th Century.
  940 History of Europe
• Iris Murdoch 21 Oct
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the author and philosopher Iris Murdoch (1919 - 1999).
  100 Philosophy
• Corals 28 Oct
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the simple animals which informed Charles Darwin’s first book, The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs, published in 1842.
  570 Biology

November

• The Song of Roland 4 Nov
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss an early masterpiece of French epic poetry, from the 12th Century.
  840 French and related literatures
• William and Caroline Herschel 11 Nov
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss William Herschel (1738 - 1822) and his sister Caroline Herschel (1750 - 1848) who were born in Hanover and made their reputation in Britain.
  520 Astronomy
• The Decadent Movement 18 Nov
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the British phase of a movement that spread across Europe in the mid-19th and early 20th centuries.
  820 English and Old English literatures
• Plato’s Gorgias 25 Nov
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of Plato’s most striking dialogues, in which he addresses the real nature of power and freedom, and the relationship between pleasure and true self-interest.
  180 Ancient, medieval, and Eastern philosophy

December

• The Battle of Trafalgar 2 Dec
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the events of 21st October 1805, in which the British fleet led by Nelson destroyed a combined Franco-Spanish fleet in the Atlantic off the coast of Spain.
  900 History
• The May Fourth Movement 9 Dec
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the violent protests in China on 4th May 1919 over the nation’s humiliation in the Versailles Treaty after World War One.
  950 History of Asia
• A Christmas Carol 16 Dec
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Charles Dickens’ novella, written in 1843 when he was 31, which has become intertwined with his reputation and with Christmas itself.
  820 English and Old English literatures
• The Hittites 23 Dec
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the empire that flourished in the Late Bronze Age in what is now Turkey, and which, like others at that time, mysteriously collapsed.
  930 History of the Ancient World
• Fritz Lang 30 Dec
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Austrian-born film director Fritz Lang (1890-1976), who was one of the most celebrated film-makers of the 20th century.
  790 Recreational and performing arts