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 The Neil Westreich Curator of Post 1800 Paintings at the National Gallery Martin Bailey A leading Van Gogh specialist and correspondent for The Art Newspaper And Frances Fowle Professor of Nineteenth Century Art at the University of Edinburgh and Senior Curator at National Galleries Scotland 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 the speeches that became a byword for fierce attacks on political opponents. It was in the 4th century BC, in Athens, that Demosthenes delivered these speeches against the tyrant Philip II of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great, when Philip appeared a growing threat to Athens and its allies and Demosthenes feared his fellow citizens were set on appeasement. In what became known as The Philippics, Demosthenes tried to persuade Athenians to act against Macedon before it was too late; eventually he succeeded in stirring them, even if the Macedonians later prevailed. For these speeches prompting resistance, Demosthenes became famous as one of the Athenian democracy’s greatest freedom fighters. Later, in Rome, Cicero's attacks on Mark Antony were styled on Demosthenes and these too became known as Philippics. With Paul Cartledge A. G. Leventis Senior Research Fellow at Clare College, University of Cambridge Kathryn Tempest Reader in Latin Literature and Roman History at the University of Roehampton And Jon Hesk Reader in Greek and Classical Studies at the University of St Andrews Producer: Simon Tillotson Spanning history, religion, culture, science and philosophy, In Our Time from BBC Radio 4 is essential listening for the intellectually curious. In each episode, host Melvyn Bragg and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the speeches that became a byword for fierce attacks on political opponents. It was in the 4th century BC, in Athens, that Demosthenes delivered these speeches against the tyrant Philip II of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great, when Philip appeared a growing threat to Athens and its allies and Demosthenes feared his fellow citizens were set on appeasement. In what became known as The Philippics, Demosthenes tried to persuade Athenians to act against Macedon before it was too late; eventually he succeeded in stirring them, even if the Macedonians later prevailed. For these speeches prompting resistance, Demosthenes became famous as one of the Athenian democracy’s greatest freedom fighters. Later, in Rome, Cicero's attacks on Mark Antony were styled on Demosthenes and these too became known as Philippics.

With Paul Cartledge A. G. Leventis

Kathryn Tempest

And

Jon Hesk

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Spanning history, religion, culture, science and philosophy, In Our Time from BBC Radio 4 is essential listening for the intellectually curious. In each episode, host Melvyn Bragg and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.

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 Ashley Watkins Chair of French at the University of Bristol Kate Griffiths Professor in French and Translation at Cardiff University And Edmund Birch Lecturer in French Literature and Director of Studies at Churchill College & Selwyn College, University of Cambridge 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)

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the idea that Civility, in one of its meanings, is among the most valuable social virtues: the skill to discuss topics that really matter to you, with someone who disagrees and yet somehow still get along. In another of its meanings, when Civility describes the limits of behaviour that is acceptable, the idea can reflect society at its worst: when only those deemed 'civil enough' are allowed their rights, their equality and even their humanity. Between these extremes, Civility is a slippery idea that has fascinated philosophers especially since the Reformation, when competing ideas on how to gain salvation seemed to make it impossible to disagree and remain civil.

With

Teresa Bejan

Phil Withington

And

John Gallagher

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Reading list:

Teresa M. Bejan, Mere Civility: Disagreement and the Limits of Toleration (Harvard University Press, 2017)

Anna Bryson, From Courtesy to Civility: Changing Codes of Conduct in Early Modern England (Oxford University Press, 1998)

Peter Burke, The Fortunes of the Courtier: The European Reception of Castiglione’s Cortegiano (Polity Press, 1995)

Peter Burke, Brian Harrison and Paul Slack (eds.), Civil Histories: Essays Presented to Sir Keith Thomas (Oxford University Press, 2000)

Keith J. Bybee, How Civility Works (Stanford University Press, 2016)

Nandini Das, João Vicente Melo, Haig Z. Smith and Lauren Working, Keywords of Identity, Race, and Human Mobility in Early Modern England (Amsterdam University Press, 2021)

Jurgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (Polity, 1992)

Jennifer Richards, Rhetoric and Courtliness in Early Modern Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2003)

Austin Sarat (ed.), Civility, Legality, and Justice in America (Cambridge University Press, 2014)

Keith Thomas, In Pursuit of Civility: Manners and Civilization in Early Modern England (Yale University Press, 2018)

Phil Withington, Society in Early Modern England: The Vernacular Origins of Some Powerful Ideas (Polity, 2010)

Lauren Working, The Making of an Imperial Polity: Civility and America in the Jacobean Metropolis (Cambridge University Press, 2020)

In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

Spanning history, religion, culture, science and philosophy, In Our Time from BBC Radio 4 is essential listening for the intellectually curious. In each episode, host Melvyn Bragg and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.

Melvyn Bragg and guests explore dragons, literally and symbolically potent creatures that have appeared in many different guises in countries and cultures around the world.

Sometimes compared to snakes, alligators, lions and even dinosaurs, dragons have appeared on clay tablets in ancient Mesopotamia, in the Chinese zodiac, in the guise of the devil in Christian religious texts and in the national symbolism of the countries of England and Wales.

They are often portrayed as terrifying but sometimes appear as sacred and even benign creatures, and they continue to populate our cultural fantasies through blockbuster films, TV series and children’s books.

With:

Kelsey Granger, Post Doctoral Researcher in Chinese History at the University of Edinburgh

Daniel Ogden, Professor of Ancient History at the University of Exeter

And

Juliette Wood, Associate Lecturer in the School of Welsh at the University of Wales.

Reading list:

Paul Acker and Carolyne Larrington (eds.), Revisiting the Poetic Edda: Essays on Old Norse Heroic Legend (Routledge, 2013), especially ‘Dragons in the Eddas and in Early Nordic Art’ by Paul Acker

Scott G. Bruce (ed.), The Penguin Book of Dragons (Penguin, 2022)

James H. Charlesworth, The Good and Evil Serpent: How a Universal Symbol became Christianized (Yale University Press, 2009)

Juliana Dresvina, A Maid with a Dragon: The Cult of St Margaret of Antioch in Medieval England (Oxford University Press, 2016)

Joyce Tally Lionarons, The Medieval Dragon: The Nature of the Beast in Germanic Literature (Hisarlik Press, 1998)

Daniel Ogden, Dragons, Serpents, and Slayers in the Classical and Early Christian Worlds: A Sourcebook (Oxford University Press, 2013)

Daniel Ogden, The Dragon in the West (Oxford University Press, 2021)

Christine Rauer, Beowulf and the Dragon (D.S. Brewer, 2000)

Phil Senter et al., ‘Snake to Monster: Conrad Gessner’s Schlangenbuch and the Evolution of the Dragon in the Literature of Natural History’ (Journal of Folklore Research, vol. 53, no. 1, 2016)

Jacqueline Simpson, British Dragons: Myth, Legend and Folklore (first published 1980; Wordsworth Editions, 2001)

Jeffrey Snyder-Reinke, Dry Spells: State Rainmaking and Local Governance in Late Imperial China (Harvard University Press, 2009)

Roel Sterckx, The Animal and the Daemon in Early China (State University of New York Press, 2002)

Roel Sterckx, Chinese Thought: From Confucius to Cook Ding (Pelican Books, 2019)

J. R. R. Tolkien, The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays (first published 1983; HarperCollins, 2007)

Christopher Walter, The Warrior Saints in Byzantine Art and Tradition (Routledge, 2003)

Juliette Wood, Fantastic Creatures in Mythology and Folklore: From Medieval Times to the Present Day (Bloomsbury Academic, 2018)

Yang Xin, Li Yihua, and Xu Naixiang, Art of the Dragon (Shambhala, 1988)

In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio production

Spanning history, religion, culture, science and philosophy, In Our Time from BBC Radio 4 is essential listening for the intellectually curious. In each episode, host Melvyn Bragg and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss John Barbour's epic poem The Brus, or Bruce, which he wrote c1375. The Brus is the earliest surviving poem in Older Scots and the only source of many of the stories of King Robert I of Scotland (1274-1329), popularly known as Robert the Bruce, and his victory over the English at Bannockburn in 1314. In almost 14,000 lines of rhyming couplets, Barbour distilled the aspects of the Bruce’s history most relevant for his own time under Robert II (1316-1390), the Bruce's grandson and the first of the Stewart kings, when the mood was for a new war against England after decades of military disasters. Barbour’s battle scenes are meant to stir in the name of freedom, and the effect of the whole is to assert Scotland as the rightful equal of any power in Europe.

With

Rhiannon Purdie

Steve Boardman

And

Michael Brown

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Reading list:

John Barbour (ed. A.A.M. Duncan), The Bruce (Canongate Classics, 2007)

G.W.S. Barrow, Robert Bruce and the Community of the Realm of Scotland (Edinburgh University Press, 1988)

Stephen Boardman, The Early Stewart Kings: Robert II and Robert III (Tuckwell Press, 1996)

Steve Boardman and Susan Foran (eds.), Barbour's Bruce and its Cultural Contexts: Politics, Chivalry and Literature in Late Medieval Scotland (D.S. Brewer, 2015)

Michael Brown, Disunited Kingdoms: Peoples and Politics in the British Isles, 1280-1460 (Routledge, 2013)

Michael Brown, The Wars of Scotland, 1214-1371 (Edinburgh University Press, 2004)

Thomas Owen Clancy and Murray Pittock, Ian Brown and Susan Manning (eds.), The Edinburgh History of Scottish Literature, Vol. 1: From Columba to the Union (until 1707), (Edinburgh University Press 2006)

Robert Crawford, Scotland's Books: A History of Scottish Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009)

Robert DeMaria Jr., Heesok Chang and Samantha Zacher (eds.), A Companion to British Literature: Vol 1, Medieval Literature, 700-1450 (John Wiley & Sons, 2014), especially 'Before the Makars: Older Scots literature under the early Stewart Kings' by Rhiannon Purdie

Colm McNamee, The Wars of the Bruces: Scotland, England and Ireland 1306-1328 (Tuckwell Press, 2001)

Michael Penman, Robert the Bruce, King of the Scots (Yale University Press, 2014)

In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

Spanning history, religion, culture, science and philosophy, In Our Time from BBC Radio 4 is essential listening for the intellectually curious. In each episode, host Melvyn Bragg and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the evolution of lungs and of the first breaths, which can be traced back 400 million years to when animal life spread from rock pools and swamps onto land, as some fish found an evolutionary advantage in getting their oxygen from air rather than water. Breathing with lungs may have started with fish filling their mouths with air and forcing it down into sacs in their chests, like the buccal pumping that frogs do now, and slowly their swimming muscles adapted to work their lungs like bellows.

While lungs developed in different ways, there are astonishing continuities: for example, the distinct breathing system that helps tiny birds fly thousands of miles now is also the one that once allowed some dinosaurs to become huge; our hiccups are vestiges of the flight reaction in fish needing more oxygen; and we still breathe through our skins, just not enough to meet our needs.

With:

Steve Brusatte

Emily Rayfield

And

Jonathan Codd

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Reading list:

Roger B. J. Benson, Richard J. Butler, Matthew T. Carrano and Patrick M. O'Connor, ‘Air-filled postcranial bones in theropod dinosaurs: physiological implications and the ‘reptile’–bird transition’ (Biological Reviews: Cambridge Philosophical Society, July 2011)

Steve Brusatte, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World (Mariner Books, 2018)

Jennifer A. Clack, Gaining Ground: The Origin and Evolution of Tetrapods (2nd edition, Indiana University Press, 2012)

Camila Cupello et al, ‘Lung Evolution in vertebrates and the water-to-land transition’ (eLife, July 2022)

Andrew Davies and Carl Moore, The Respiratory System (Elsevier, 2010)

Kenneth Kardong, Vertebrates: Comparative Anatomy, Function, Evolution (8th edition, McGraw-Hill Education, 2018)

Ye Li et al, ‘Origin and stepwise evolution of vertebrate lungs’ (Nature Ecology & Evolution, Feb 2025)

P. Martin Sander and Marcus Clauss, ‘Sauropod Gigantism’ (Science, Oct 2008)

Goran Nilsson, Respiratory Physiology of Vertebrates: Life With and Without Oxygen (Cambridge University Press, 2010)

Steven F. Perry et al, ‘What came first, the lung or the breath?’ (Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology, Part A: Molecular & Integrative Biology, May 2001)

Michael J. Stephen, Breath Taking: The Power, Fragility, and Future of Our Extraordinary Lungs (Grove/Atlantic, 2022)

Mathew J. Wedel, ‘The evolution of vertebral pneumaticity in sauropod dinosaurs’ (Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, Aug 2010)

In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

Spanning history, religion, culture, science and philosophy, In Our Time from BBC Radio 4 is essential listening for the intellectually curious. In each episode, host Melvyn Bragg and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.

In 1897, Gustav Klimt led a group of radical artists to break free from the cultural establishment of Vienna and found a movement that became known as the Vienna Secession.

In the vibrant atmosphere of coffee houses, Freudian psychoanalysis and the music of Wagner and Mahler, the Secession sought to bring together fine art and music with applied arts such as architecture and design.

The movement was characterized by Klimt’s stylised paintings, richly decorated with gold leaf, and the art nouveau buildings that began to appear in the city, most notably the Secession Building, which housed influential exhibitions of avant-garde art and was a prototype of the modern art gallery. The Secessionists themselves were pioneers in their philosophy and way of life, aiming to immerse audiences in unified artistic experiences that brought together visual arts, design, and architecture.

 With:

Mark Berry, Professor of Music and Intellectual History at Royal Holloway, University of London

Leslie Topp, Professor Emerita in History of Architecture at Birkbeck, University of London

And

Diane Silverthorne, art historian and 'Vienna 1900' scholar

Producer: Eliane Glaser

Reading list:

Mark Berry, Arnold Schoenberg: Critical Lives (Reaktion Books, 2018)

Gemma Blackshaw, Facing the Modern: The Portrait in Vienna 1900 (National Gallery Company, 2013)

Elizabeth Clegg, Art, Design and Architecture in Central Europe, 1890-1920 (Yale University Press, 2006)

Richard Cockett, Vienna: How the City of Ideas Created the Modern World (Yale University Press, 2023)

Stephen Downes, Gustav Mahler (Reaktion Books, 2025)

Peter Gay, Freud, Jews, and Other Germans: Masters and Victims in Modernist Culture (Oxford University Press, 1979)

Tag Gronberg, Vienna: City of Modernity, 1890-1914 (Peter Lang, 2007)

Allan S. Janik and Hans Veigl, Wittgenstein in Vienna: A Biographical Excursion Through the City and its History (Springer/Wien, 1998)

Jill Lloyd and Christian Witt-Dörring (eds.), Vienna 1900: Style and Identity (Hirmer Verlag, 2011)

William J. McGrath, Dionysian Art and Populist Politics in Austria (Yale University Press, 1974)

Tobias Natter and Christoph Grunenberg (eds.), Gustav Klimt: Painting, Design and Modern Life (Tate, 2008)

Carl E. Schorske, Fin-de-siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture (Vintage, 1979)

Elana Shapira, Style and Seduction: Jewish Patrons, Architecture and Design in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna (Brandeis University Press, 2016)

Diane V Silverthorne, Dan Reynolds and Megan Brandow-Faller, Die Fläche: Design and Lettering of the Vienna Secession, 1902-1911 (Letterform Archive, 2023)

Edward Timms, Karl Kraus: Apocalyptic Satirist: Culture & Catastrophe in Habsburg Vienna (Yale University Press, 1989)

Leslie Topp, Architecture and Truth in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna (Cambridge University Press, 2004)

Peter Vergo, Art in Vienna, 1898-1918: Klimt, Kokoschka, Schiele and Their Contemporaries (4th ed., Phaidon, 2015)

Hans-Peter Wipplinger (ed.), Vienna 1900: Birth of Modernism (Walther & Franz König, 2019)

Hans-Peter Wipplinger (ed.), Masterpieces from the Leopold Museum (Walther & Franz König)

Stefan Zweig, The World of Yesterday: An Autobiography (University of Nebraska Press, 1964)

In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

Spanning history, religion, culture, science and philosophy, In Our Time from BBC Radio 4 is essential listening for the intellectually curious. In each episode, host Melvyn Bragg and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.

Ever since Franz Anton Mesmer induced trance-like states in his Parisian subjects in the late eighteenth century, dressed in long purple robes, hypnosis has been associated with performance, power and the occult.

 It has exerted a powerful hold over the cultural imagination, featuring in novels and films including Bram Stoker’s Dracula and George du Maurier’s Trilby - and it was even practiced by Charles Dickens himself.

But despite some debate within the medical establishment about the scientific validity of hypnosis, it continues to be used today as a successful treatment for physical and psychological conditions. Scientists are also using hypnosis to learn more about the power of suggestion and belief.

With:

Catherine Wynne, Reader in Victorian and Early Twentieth-Century Literature and Visual Cultures at the University of Hull

Devin Terhune, Reader in Experimental Psychology at King’s College London

And

Quinton Deeley, Consultant Neuropsychiatrist at the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, and Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s College London, where he leads the Cultural and Social Neuroscience Research Group.

Producer: Eliane Glaser

Reading list:

Henri F. Ellenberger, The Discovery of the Unconscious: The History and Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry (Vol. 1, Basic Books, 1970)

William Hughes, That Devil’s Trick: Hypnotism and the Victorian Popular Imagination (Manchester University Press, 2015)

Asti Hustvedt, Medical Muses: Hysteria in Nineteenth-Century Paris (Bloomsbury, 2011)

Fred Kaplan, Dickens and Mesmerism: The Hidden Springs of Fiction (first published 1975; Princeton University Press, 2017)

Wendy Moore, The Mesmerist: The Society Doctor Who Held Victorian London Spellbound (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2017)

Michael R. Nash and Amanda J. Barnier (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Hypnosis Theory, Research, and Practice (Oxford University Press, 2012)

Judith Pintar and Steven Jay Lynn, Hypnosis: A Brief History (John Wiley & Sons, 2008)

Amir Raz, The Suggestible Brain: The Science and Magic of How We Make Up Our Minds (Balance, 2024)

Robin Waterfield, Hidden Depths: The Story of Hypnosis (Pan, 2004)

Alison Winter, Mesmerized: Powers of Mind in Victorian Britain (Chicago University Press, 1998)

Fiction:

Thomas Mann, Mario and the Magician: & other stories (first published 1930; Vintage Classics, 1996)

George du Maurier, Trilby (first published 1894; Penguin Classics, 1994)

Bram Stoker, Dracula (first published 1897; Penguin Classics, 2003)

In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio production