In Our Time: Culture

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Lewis Carroll's book which first appeared in print in 1865 with illustrations by John Tenniel. It has since become one of the best known works in English, captivating readers who follow young Alice as she chases a white rabbit, pink eyed, in a waistcoat with pocket watch, down a rabbit hole that becomes a well and into wonderland. There she meets the Cheshire Cat, the Hatter, the March Hare, the Mock Turtle and more, all the while growing smaller and larger, finally outgrowing everyone at the trial of Who Stole the Tarts from the Queen of Hearts and exclaiming 'Who cares for you? You’re nothing but a pack of cards!'

With

Franziska Kohlt

Kiera Vaclavik

And

Robert Douglas-Fairhurst

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Reading list:

Kate Bailey and Simon Sladen (eds), Alice: Curiouser and Curiouser (V&A Publishing, 2021)

Gillian Beer, Alice in Space: The Sideways Victorian World of Lewis Carroll (University of Chicago Press, 2016)

Will Brooker, Alice's Adventures: Lewis Carroll and Alice in Popular Culture (Continuum, 2004)

Humphrey Carpenter, Secret Gardens: A Study of the Golden Age of Children’s Literature (first published 1985; Faber and Faber, 2009)

Lewis Carroll (introduced by Martin Gardner), The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition, (W. W. Norton & Company, 2000)

Gavin Delahunty and Christoph Benjamin Schulz (eds), Alice in Wonderland Through the Visual Arts (Tate Publishing, 2011)

Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, The Story of Alice: Lewis Carroll and the Secret History of Wonderland (Harvill Secker, 2015)

Colleen Hill, Fairy Tale Fashion (Yale University Press, 2016)

Franziska Kohlt, Alice through the Wonderglass: The Surprising Histories of a Children's Classic (Reaktion, forthcoming 2025)

Charlie Lovett, Lewis Carroll: Formed by Faith (University of Virginia Press, 2022)

Elizabeth Sewell, The Field of Nonsense (first published 1952; Dalkey Archive Press, 2016)

Kiera Vaclavik, 'Listening to the Alice books' (Journal of Victorian Culture, Volume 26, Issue 1, January 2021)

Diane Waggoner, Lewis Carroll's Photography and Modern Childhood (Princeton University Press 2020)

Edward Wakeling, The Man and his Circle (IB Tauris, 2014)

Edward Wakeling, The Photographs of Lewis Carroll: A Catalogue Raisonné (University of Texas Press, 2015)

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of Shakespeare’s great comedies, which plays in the space between marriage, love and desire. By convention a wedding means a happy ending and here there are three, but neither Orsino nor Viola, Olivia nor Sebastian know much of each other’s true character and even the identities of the twins Viola and Sebastian have only just been revealed to their spouses to be. These twins gain some financial security but it is unclear what precisely the older Orsino and Olivia find enduringly attractive in the adolescent objects of their love. Meanwhile their hopes and illusions are framed by the fury of Malvolio, tricked into trusting his mistress Olivia loved him and who swears an undefined revenge on all those who mocked him.

With

Pascale Aebischer

Michael Dobson

And

Emma Smith

Produced by Simon Tillotson, Victoria Brignell and Luke Mulhall

Reading list:

C.L. Barber, Shakespeare’s Festive Comedies: A Study of Dramatic Form and Its Relation to Social Custom (first published 1959; Princeton University Press, 2011)

Simone Chess, ‘Queer Residue: Boy Actors’ Adult Careers in Early Modern England’ (Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 19.4, 2020)

Callan Davies, What is a Playhouse? England at Play, 1520-1620 (Routledge, 2023)

Frances E. Dolan, Twelfth Night: Language and Writing (Bloomsbury, 2014)

John Drakakis (ed.), Alternative Shakespeares (Psychology Press, 2002), especially ‘Disrupting Sexual Difference: Meaning and Gender in the Comedies’ by Catherine Belsey

Bart van Es, Shakespeare’s Comedies: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2016)

Sonya Freeman Loftis, Mardy Philippian and Justin P. Shaw (eds.), Inclusive Shakespeares: Identity, Pedagogy, Performance (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023), especially ‘”I am all the daughters of my father’s house, and all the brothers too”: Genderfluid Potentiality in As You Like It and Twelfth Night’ by Eric Brinkman

Ezra Horbury, ‘Transgender Reassessments of the Cross-Dressed Page in Shakespeare, Philaster, and The Honest Man’s Fortune’ (Shakespeare Quarterly 73, 2022)

Jean Howard, ‘Crossdressing, the theatre, and gender struggle in early modern England’ (Shakespeare Quarterly 39, 1988)

Harry McCarthy, Boy Actors in Early Modern England: Skill and Stagecraft in the Theatre (Cambridge University Press, 2022)

Stephen Orgel, Impersonations: The Performance of Gender in Shakespeare's England (Cambridge University Press, 1996)

William Shakespeare (eds. Michael Dobson and Molly Mahood), Twelfth Night (Penguin, 2005)

William Shakespeare (ed. Keir Elam), Twelfth Night (Arden Shakespeare, 2008)

Emma Smith, This is Shakespeare: How to Read the World's Greatest Playwright (Pelican, 2019)

Victoria Sparey, Shakespeare’s Adolescents: Age, Gender and the Body in Shakespearean Performance and Early Modern Culture (Manchester University Press, 2024)

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Dutch artist famous for starry nights and sunflowers, self portraits and simple chairs. These are images known the world over, and Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) painted them and around 900 others in the last decade of his short, brilliant life and, famously, in that lifetime he made only one recorded sale. Yet within a few decades after his death these extraordinary works, with all their colour and life, became the most desirable of all modern art, propelled in part by the story of Vincent van Gogh's struggle with mental health.

With

Christopher Riopelle

Martin Bailey

And

Frances Fowle

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Reading list:

Martin Bailey, Living with Vincent Van Gogh: The Homes and Landscapes that shared the Artist (White Lion Publishing, 2019)

Martin Bailey, Studio of the South: Van Gogh in Provence (Frances Lincoln, 2021)

Martin Bailey, Van Gogh’s Finale: Auvers and the Artist’s Rise to Fame (Frances Lincoln, 2021)

Nienke Bakker and Ella Hendriks, Van Gogh and the Sunflowers: A Masterpiece Examined (Van Gogh Museum, 2019)

Nienke Bakker, Emmanuel Coquery, Teio Meedendorp and Louis van Tilborgh (eds), Van Gogh in Auvers-sur-Oise: His Final Months (Thames & Hudson, 2023)

Frances Fowle, Van Gogh's Twin: The Scottish Art Dealer Alexander Reid, 1854-1928 (National Galleries of Scotland, 2010)

Bregje Gerritse, The Potato Eaters: Van Gogh’s First Masterpiece (Van Gogh Museum, 2021)

Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith, Van Gogh: The Life (Random House, 2012)

Leo Jansen, Hans Luijten and Nienke Bakker (eds), Vincent van Gogh: The Letters: The Complete Illustrated and Annotated Edition (Thames and Hudson Ltd, 2009)

Leo Jansen, Hans Luijten and Nienke Bakker (eds), Vincent van Gogh, A Life in Letters (Thames and Hudson Ltd, 2020)

Hans Luitjen, Jo van Gogh Bonger: The Woman who Made Vincent Famous Bloomsbury, 2022

Louis van Tilborgh, Martin Bailey, Karen Serres (ed.), Van Gogh Self-Portraits (Courtauld Institute, 2022)

Ingo F. Walther and Rainer Metzger, Van Gogh. The Complete Paintings (Taschen, 2022)

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Poe (1809-1849), the American author who is famous for his Gothic tales of horror, madness and the dark interiors of the mind, such as The Fall of the House of Usher and The Tell-Tale Heart. As well as tapping at our deepest fears in poems such as The Raven, Poe pioneered detective fiction with his character C. Auguste Dupin in The Murders in the Rue Morgue. After his early death, a rival rushed out a biography to try to destroy Poe's reputation but he has only become more famous over the years as a cultural icon as well as an author.

With

Bridget Bennett

Erin Forbes

And

Tom Wright

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Reading list:

Peter Ackroyd, Poe: A Life Cut Short (Vintage, 2009)

Amy Branam Armiento and Travis Montgomery (eds.), Poe and Women: Recognition and Revision (Lehigh University Press, 2023)

Joan Dayan, Fables of Mind: An Inquiry into Poe's Fiction (Oxford University Press, 1987)

Erin Forbes, ‘Edgar Allan Poe in the Great Dismal Swamp’ (Modern Philology, 2016)

Kevin J. Hayes (ed.), Edgar Allan Poe in Context (Cambridge University Press, 2012)

J. Gerald Kennedy and Scott Peeples (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Edgar Allan Poe (Oxford University Press, 2018)

Jill Lepore, 'The Humbug: Poe and the Economy of Horror' (The New Yorker, April 20, 2009)

Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark (Vintage, 1993)

Scott Peeples and Michelle Van Parys, The Man of the Crowd: Edgar Allan Poe and the City (Princeton University Press, 2020)

Edgar Allan Poe, The Portable Edgar Allan Poe (Penguin, 2006)

Shawn Rosenhelm and Stephen Rachman (eds.), The American Face of Edgar Allan Poe (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995)

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Marguerite, Queen of Navarre (1492 – 1549), author of the Heptaméron, a major literary landmark in the French Renaissance. Published after her death, The Heptaméron features 72 short stories, many of which explore relations between the sexes. However, Marguerite’s life was more eventful than that of many writers. Born into the French nobility, she found herself the sister of the French king when her brother Francis I came to the throne in 1515. At a time of growing religious change, Marguerite was a leading exponent of reform in the Catholic Church and translated an early work of Martin Luther into French. As the Reformation progressed, she was not afraid to take risks to protect other reformers.

With

Sara Barker

Emily Butterworth

And

Emma Herdman

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Reading list:

Giovanni Boccaccio (trans. Wayne A. Rebhorn), The Decameron (Norton, 2013)

Emily Butterworth, Marguerite de Navarre: A Critical Companion (Boydell &Brewer, 2022)

Patricia Cholakian and Rouben Cholakian, Marguerite de Navarre: Mother of the Renaissance (Columbia University Press, 2006)

Gary Ferguson, Mirroring Belief: Marguerite de Navarre’s Devotional Poetry (Edinburgh University Press, 1992)

Gary Ferguson and Mary B. McKinley (eds.), A Companion to Marguerite de Navarre (Brill, 2013)

Mark Greengrass, The French Reformation (John Wiley & Sons, 1987)

R.J. Knecht, The Rise and Fall of Renaissance France (Fontana Press, 2008)

R.J. Knecht, Renaissance Warrior and Patron: The Reign of Francis I (Cambridge University Press, 2008)

John D. Lyons and Mary B. McKinley (eds.), Critical Tales: New Studies of the ‘Heptaméron’ and Early Modern Culture (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993)

Marguerite de Navarre (trans. Paul Chilton), The Heptameron (Penguin, 2004)

Marguerite de Navarre (trans. Rouben Cholakian and Mary Skemp), Selected Writings: A Bilingual Edition (University of Chicago Press, 2008)

Marguerite de Navarre (trans. Hilda Dale), The Coach and The Triumph of the Lamb (Elm Press, 1999)

Marguerite de Navarre (trans. Hilda Dale), The Prisons (Whiteknights, 1989)

Marguerite de Navarre (ed. Gisèle Mathieu-Castellani), L’Heptaméron (Libraririe générale française, 1999)

Jonathan A. Reid, King’s Sister – Queen of Dissent: Marguerite of Navarre (1492-1549) and her Evangelical Network (Brill, 2009)

Paula Sommers, ‘The Mirror and its Reflections: Marguerite de Navarre’s Biblical Feminism’ (Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, 5, 1986)

Kathleen Wellman, Queens and Mistresses of Renaissance France (Yale University Press, 2013)

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the most influential work of Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929). In 1899, during America’s Gilded Age, Veblen wrote The Theory of the Leisure Class as a reminder that all that glisters is not gold. He picked on traits of the waning landed class of Americans and showed how the new moneyed class was adopting these in ways that led to greater waste throughout society. He called these conspicuous leisure and conspicuous consumption and he developed a critique of a system that favoured profits for owners without regard to social good. The Theory of the Leisure Class was a best seller and funded Veblen for the rest of his life, and his ideas influenced the New Deal of the 1930s. Since then, an item that becomes more desirable as it becomes more expensive is known as a Veblen good.

With

Matthew Watson

Bill Waller

And

Mary Wrenn

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Reading list:

Charles Camic, Veblen: The Making of an Economist who Unmade Economics (Harvard University Press, 2021)

John P. Diggins, Thorstein Veblen: Theorist of the Leisure Class (Princeton University Press, 1999)

John P. Diggins, The Bard of Savagery: Thorstein Veblen and Modern Social Theory (Seabury Press, 1978)

John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society (Penguin, 1999)

Ken McCormick, Veblen in Plain English: A Complete Introduction to Thorstein Veblen’s Economics (Cambria Press, 2006)

Sidney Plotkin and Rick Tilman, The Political Ideas of Thorstein Veblen (Yale University Press, 2012)

Juliet B. Schor, The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don't Need (William Morrow & Company, 1999)

Juliet B. Schor, Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture (Simon & Schuster Ltd, 2005)

Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class (first published 1899; Oxford University Press, 2009)

Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of Business Enterprise (first published 1904; Legare Street Press, 2022)

Thorstein Veblen, The Higher Learning in America (first published 2018; Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015)

Thorstein Veblen, Absentee Ownership and Business Enterprise in Recent Times: The Case of America (first published 1923; Routledge, 2017)

Thorstein Veblen, Conspicuous Consumption (Penguin, 2005)

Thorstein Veblen, The Complete Works (Musaicum Books, 2017)

Charles J. Whalen (ed.), Institutional Economics: Perspective and Methods in Pursuit of a Better World (Routledge, 2021)

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Emile Zola's greatest literary success, his thirteenth novel in a series exploring the extended Rougon-Macquart family. The relative here is Etienne Lantier, already known to Zola’s readers as one of the blighted branch of the family tree and his story is set in Northern France. It opens with Etienne trudging towards a coalmine at night seeking work, and soon he is caught up in a bleak world in which starving families struggle and then strike, as they try to hold on to the last scraps of their humanity and the hope of change.

With

Susan Harrow

Kate Griffiths

And

Edmund Birch

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Reading list:

David Baguley, Naturalist Fiction: The Entropic Vision (Cambridge University Press, 1990)

William Burgwinkle, Nicholas Hammond and Emma Wilson (eds.), The Cambridge History of French Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2011), particularly ‘Naturalism’ by Nicholas White

Kate Griffiths, Emile Zola and the Artistry of Adaptation (Legenda, 2009)

Kate Griffiths and Andrew Watts, Adapting Nineteenth-Century France: Literature in Film, Theatre, Television, Radio, and Print (University of Wales Press, 2013)

Anna Gural-Migdal and Robert Singer (eds.), Zola and Film: Essays in the Art of Adaptation (McFarland & Co., 2005)

Susan Harrow, Zola, The Body Modern: Pressures and Prospects of Representation (Legenda, 2010)

F. W. J. Hemmings, The Life and Times of Emile Zola (first published 1977; Bloomsbury, 2013)

William Dean Howells, Emile Zola (The Floating Press, 2018)

Lida Maxwell, Public Trials: Burke, Zola, Arendt, and the Politics of Lost Causes (Oxford University Press, 2014)

Brian Nelson, Emile Zola: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2020)

Brian Nelson (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Emile Zola (Cambridge University Press, 2007)

Sandy Petrey, Realism and Revolution: Balzac, Stendhal, Zola, and the Performances of History (Cornell University Press, 1988)

Arthur Rose, ‘Coal politics: receiving Emile Zola's Germinal’ (Modern & contemporary France, 2021, Vol.29, 2)

Philip D. Walker, Emile Zola (Routledge, 1969)

Emile Zola (trans. Peter Collier), Germinal (Oxford University Press, 1993)

Emile Zola (trans. Roger Pearson), Germinal (Penguin Classics, 2004)

In the 1000th edition of In Our Time, Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss arguably the most celebrated film of the Swedish director Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007). It begins with an image that, once seen, stays with you for the rest of your life: the figure of Death playing chess with a Crusader on the rocky Swedish shore. The release of this film in 1957 brought Bergman fame around the world. We see Antonius Block, the Crusader, realising he can’t beat Death but wanting to prolong this final game for one last act, without yet knowing what that act might be. As he goes on a journey through a plague ridden world, his meeting with a family of jesters and their baby offers him some kind of epiphany.

With

Jan Holmberg

Claire Thomson

And

Laura Hubner

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Reading list:

Alexander Ahndoril (trans. Sarah Death), The Director (Granta, 2008)

Ingmar Bergman (trans. Marianne Ruuth), Images: My Life in Film (Faber and Faber, 1995)

Ingmar Bergman (trans. Joan Tate), The Magic Lantern: An Autobiography (Viking, 1988)

Ingmar Bergman (trans. Joan Tate), The Best Intentions (Vintage, 2018)

Ingmar Bergman (trans. Joan Tate), Sunday’s Children (Vintage, 2018)

Ingmar Bergman (trans. Joan Tate), Private Confessions (Vintage, 2018)

Stig Björkman, Torsten Manns and Jonas Sima (trans. Paul Britten Austin), Bergman on Bergman: Interviews with Ingmar Bergman (Da Capo Press, 1993)

Melvyn Bragg, The Seventh Seal: BFI Film Classics (British Film Institute, 1993)

Paul Duncan and Bengt Wanselius (eds.), The Ingmar Bergman Archives (Taschen/Max Ström, 2018)

Erik Hedling (ed.), Ingmar Bergman: An Enduring Legacy (Lund University Press, 2021)

Laura Hubner, The Films of Ingmar Bergman: Illusions of Light and Darkness (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)

Daniel Humphrey, Queer Bergman: Sexuality, Gender, and the European Art Cinema (University of Texas Press, 2013)

Maaret Koskinen (ed.), Bergman Revisited: Performance, Cinema, and the Arts (Wallflower Press, 2008)

Selma Lagerlöf (trans. Peter Graves), The Phantom Carriage (Norvik Press, 2011)

Mariah Larsson and Anders Marklund (eds.), Swedish Film: An Introduction and Reader (Nordic Academic Press, 2010)

Paisley Livingston, Ingmar Bergman and the Rituals of Art (Cornell University Press, 2019)

Birgitta Steene (ed.), Focus on The Seventh Seal (Prentice Hall, 1972)

Birgitta Steene, Ingmar Bergman: A Reference Guide (Amsterdam University Press, 2014)

Death in Venice is Thomas Mann’s most famous – and infamous - novella.

With

Karolina Watroba, Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in Modern Languages at All Souls College, University of Oxford

Erica Wickerson, a Former Research Fellow at St Johns College, University of Cambridge

Sean Williams, Senior Lecturer in German and European Cultural History at the University of Sheffield

Sean Williams' series of Radio 3's The Essay, Death in Trieste, can be found here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001lzd4

Sophocles’ play Oedipus Rex begins with a warning: the murderer of the old king of Thebes, Laius, has never been identified or caught, and he’s still at large in the city. Oedipus is the current king of Thebes, and he sets out to solve the crime.

His investigations lead to a devastating conclusion. Not only is Oedipus himself the killer, but Laius was his father, and Laius’ wife Jocasta, who Oedipus has married, is his mother.

Oedipus Rex was composed during the golden age of Athens, in the 5th century BC. Sophocles probably wrote it to explore the dynamics of power in an undemocratic society. It has unsettled audiences from the very start: it is the only one of Sophocles’ plays that didn’t win first prize at Athens’ annual drama festival. But it’s had exceptionally good write-ups from the critics:

With:

Nick Lowe, Reader in Classical Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London

Fiona Macintosh, Professor of Classical Reception and Fellow of St Hilda’s College at the University of Oxford

Edith Hall, Professor of Classics at Durham University