In Our Time: Culture

By BBC Radio 4History

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In Our Time: Culture episodes

October 01, 2020 Macbeth
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies. When three witches prophesy that Macbeth will be king one day, he is not prepared to wait and almost the next day he murders King Duncan as he sleeps, a guest at Macbeth’s castle. From there we explore their brutal world where few boundaries are distinct – between safe and unsafe, friend and foe, real and unreal, man and beast – until Macbeth too is slaughtered.
The image above shows Nicol Williamson as Macbeth in a 1983 BBC TV adaptation.
With:
Emma Smith
Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Hertford College, University of Oxford
Kiernan Ryan
Emeritus Professor of English Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London
And
David Schalkwyk,
Professor of Shakespeare Studies and Director of Global Shakespeare at Queen Mary, University of London
Producer: Simon Tillotson
52 min
March 19, 2020 Frankenstein
In a programme first broadcast in May 2019, Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Mary Shelley's (1797-1851) Gothic story of a Swiss natural philosopher, Victor Frankenstein, and the creature he makes from parts of cadavers and which he then abandons, horrified by his appearance, and never names. Rejected by all humans who see him, the monster takes his revenge on Frankenstein, killing those dear to him. Shelley started writing Frankenstein when she was 18, prompted by a competition she had with Byron and her husband Percy Shelley to tell a ghost story while they were rained in in the summer of 1816 at the Villa Diodati by Lake Geneva.
The image of Mary Shelley, above, was first exhibited in 1840.
With
Karen O'Brien
Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford
Michael Rossington
Professor of Romantic Literature at Newcastle University
And
Jane Thomas
Professor of Victorian and Early 20th Century Literature at the University of Hull
Producer: Simon Tillotson
This programme is a repeat
56 min
February 06, 2020 George Sand
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. When she wrote her first novel under that name, she referred to herself as a man. This was in Indiana (1832), which had the main character breaking away from her unhappy marriage. It made an immediate impact as it overturned the social conventions of the time and it drew on her own early marriage to an older man, Casimir Dudevant. Once Sand's identity was widely known, her works became extremely popular in French and in translation, particularly her rural novels, outselling Hugo and Balzac in Britain, perhaps buoyed by an interest in her personal life, as well as by her ideas on the rights and education of women and strength of her writing.
With
Belinda Jack
Fellow and Tutor in French at Christ Church, University of Oxford
Angela Ryan
Senior Lecturer in French at University College Cork
And
Nigel Harkness
Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Humanities and Social Sciences and Professor of French at Newcastle University
Producer: Simon Tillotson
55 min
January 09, 2020 Catullus
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. He found a new way to write about love, in poems to the mysterious Lesbia, married and elusive, and he influenced Virgil and Ovid and others, yet his explicit poems were to blight his reputation for a thousand years. Once the one surviving manuscript was discovered in the Middle Ages, though, anecdotally as a plug in a wine butt, he inspired Petrarch and the Elizabethan poets, as he continues to inspire many today.
The image above is of Lesbia and her Sparrow, 1860, artist unknown
With
Gail Trimble
Brown Fellow and Tutor in Classics at Trinity College at the University of Oxford
Simon Smith
Reader in Creative Writing at the University of Kent, poet and translator of Catullus
and
Maria Wyke
Professor of Latin at University College London
Producer: Simon Tillotson
53 min
December 19, 2019 Auden
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and poetry of WH Auden (1907-1973) up to his departure from Europe for the USA in 1939. As well as his personal life, he addressed suffering and confusion, and the moral issues that affected the wider public in the 1930s and tried to unpick what was going wrong in society and to understand those times. He witnessed the rise of totalitarianism in the austerity of that decade, travelling through Germany to Berlin, seeing Spain in the Civil War and China during its wars with Japan, often collaborating with Christopher Isherwood. In his lifetime his work attracted high praise and intense criticism, and has found new audiences in the fifty years since his death, sometimes taking literally what he meant ironically.
With
Mark Ford
Poet and Professor of English at University College London
Janet Montefiore
Professor Emerita of 20th Century English Literature at the University of Kent
And
Jeremy Noel-Tod
Senior Lecturer in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia
Producer: Simon Tillotson
54 min
November 14, 2019 Crime and Punishment
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the novel written by Dostoevsky and published in 1866, in which Raskolnikov, a struggling student, justifies his murder of two women, as his future is more valuable than their lives. He thinks himself superior, above the moral laws that apply to others. The police have little evidence against him but trust him to confess, once he cannot bear the mental torture of his crime - a fate he cannot avoid, any more than he can escape from life in St Petersburg and his personal failures.
The image above is from a portrait of Dostoevsky by Vasili Perov, 1872.
With
Sarah Hudspith
Associate Professor in Russian at the University of Leeds
Oliver Ready
Lecturer in Russian at the University of Oxford, Research Fellow at St Antony’s College and a translator of this novel
And
Sarah Young
Associate Professor in Russian at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London
Producer: Simon Tillotson
53 min
October 24, 2019 Robert Burns
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of the man who, in his lifetime, was called The Caledonian Bard and whose fame and influence was to spread around the world. Burns (1759-1796) was born in Ayrshire and his work as a tenant farmer earned him the label The Ploughman Poet, yet it was the quality of his verse that helped his reputation endure and grow. His work inspired other Romantic poets and his personal story and ideas combined with that, giving his poems a broad strength and appeal - sung by revolutionaries and on Mao's Long March, as well as on New Year's Eve and at Burns Suppers.
With
Robert Crawford
Professor of Modern Scottish Literature and Bishop Wardlaw Professor of Poetry at the University of St Andrews
Fiona Stafford
Professor of English at the University of Oxford
and
Murray Pittock
Bradley Professor of English Literature and Pro Vice Principal at the University of Glasgow
Producer: Simon Tillotson
53 min
October 17, 2019 The Time Machine
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas explored in HG Wells' novella, published in 1895, in which the Time Traveller moves forward to 802,701 AD. There he finds humanity has evolved into the Eloi and Morlocks, where the Eloi are small but leisured fruitarians and the Morlocks live below ground, carry out the work and have a different diet. Escaping the Morlocks, he travels millions of years into the future, where the environment no longer supports humanity.
The image above is from a painting by Anton Brzezinski of a scene from The Time Machine, with the Time Traveller meeting the Eloi
With
Simon Schaffer
Professor of History of Science at Cambridge University
Amanda Rees
Historian of science at the University of York
And
Simon James
Professor in the Department of English Studies at Durham University
Producer: Simon Tillotson
52 min
July 04, 2019 Lorca
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Spanish poet and playwright Federico Garcia Lorca (1898-1936), author of Blood Wedding, Yerma and The House of Bernarda Alba, who mixed the traditions of Andalusia with the avant-garde. He found his first major success with his Gypsy Ballads, although Dali, once his close friend, mocked him for these, accusing Lorca of being too conservative. He preferred performing his poems to publishing them, and his plays marked a revival in Spanish theatre. He was captured and killed by Nationalist forces at the start of the Civil War, his body never recovered, and it's been suggested this was punishment for his politics and for being openly gay. He has since been seen as the most important Spanish playwright and poet of the last century.
With
Maria Delgado
Professor of Creative Arts at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London
Federico Bonaddio
Reader in Modern Spanish at King’s College London
And
Sarah Wright
Professor of Hispanic Studies and Screen Arts at Royal Holloway, University of London
Producer: Simon Tillotson
54 min
June 06, 2019 Sir Thomas Browne
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the range, depth and style of Browne (1605-82) , a medical doctor whose curious mind drew him to explore and confess his own religious views, challenge myths and errors in science and consider how humans respond to the transience of life. His Religio Medici became famous throughout Europe and his openness about his religion, in that work, was noted as rare when others either kept quiet or professed orthodox views. His Pseudodoxia Epidemica challenged popular ideas, whether about the existence of mermaids or if Adam had a navel, and his Hydriotaphia or Urn Burial was a meditation on what matters to humans when handling the dead. In 1923, Virginia Woolf wrote, "Few people love the writings of Sir Thomas Browne, but those that do are the salt of the earth." He also contributed more words to the English language than almost anyone, such as electricity, indigenous, medical, ferocious, carnivorous ambidextrous and migrant.
With
Claire Preston
Professor of Renaissance Literature at Queen Mary University of London
Jessica Wolfe
Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
And
Kevin Killeen
Professor of English at the University of York
Producer: Simon Tillotson
53 min