Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the best known events and figures in Irish history. In 1014 Brian Boru, High King of Ireland, defeated the Hiberno-Norse forces of Sigtrygg Silkbeard and allies near their Dublin stronghold, with Brian losing his life on the day of battle. Soon chroniclers in Ireland and abroad were recording and retelling the events, raising the status of Brian Boru as one who sacrificed himself for Ireland, Christ-like, a connection reinforced by the battle taking place on Good Friday. While some of the facts are contested, the Battle of Clontarf became a powerful symbol of what a united Ireland could achieve by force against invaders.

With

Seán Duffy

Máire Ní Mhaonaigh

And

Alex Woolf

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Reading list:

Howard B. Clarke, Sheila Dooley and Ruth Johnson, Dublin and the Viking World (O'Brien Press Ltd, 2018)

Howard B. Clarke and Ruth Johnson (ed.), The Vikings in Ireland and Beyond: Before and After Clontarf (Four Courts Press, 2015)

Clare Downham, ‘The Battle of Clontarf in Irish History and Legend’ (History Ireland 13, No. 5, 2005)

Seán Duffy, Brian Boru and the Battle of Clontarf (Gill & Macmillan, 2014)

Seán Duffy (ed.), Medieval Dublin XVI: Proceedings of Clontarf 1014–2014: National Conference Marking the Millennium of the Battle of Clontarf (Four Courts Press, 2017)

Colmán Etchingham, ‘North Wales, Ireland and the Isles: The Insular Viking Zone’ (Peritia 15, 2001)

Colmán Etchingham, Jón Viðar Sigurðsson, Máire Ní Mhaonaigh and Elizabeth Ashman Rowe, Norse-Gaelic Contacts in a Viking World (Brepols N.V., 2019)

David Griffiths, Vikings of the Irish Sea (The History Press, 2nd ed., 2025)

James Henthorn Todd (ed. and trans.), Cogadh Gaedhel re Gallaibh: The War of the Gaedhil with the Gaill, or, the Invasions of Ireland by the Danes and other Norsemen (first published 1867; Cambridge University Press, 2012)

Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, Brian Boru: Ireland's greatest king? (The History Press, 2006)

Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, ‘Tales of Three Gormlaiths in Medieval Irish Literature’ (Ériu 52, 2002)

Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, ‘Cogad Gáedel re Gallaib: Some Dating Consierations’ (Peritia 9, 1995)

Brendan Smith, The Cambridge History of Ireland, vol. 1, 600–1550 (Cambridge University Press, 2018), especially ‘The Scandinavian Intervention’ by Alex Woolf

In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the brothers Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus whose names are entwined with the end of Rome's Republic and the rise of the Roman Emperors. As tribunes, they brought popular reforms to the Roman Republic at the end of the 2nd century BC. Tiberius (c163-133BC) brought in land reform so every soldier could have his farm, while Gaius (c154-121BC) offered cheap grain for Romans and targeted corruption among the elites. Those elites saw the reforms as such a threat that they had the brothers killed: Tiberius in a shocking murder led by the Pontifex Maximus, the high priest, in 133BC and Gaius 12 years later with the senate's approval. This increase in political violence was to destabilise the Republic, forever tying the Gracchi to the question of why Rome’s Republic gave way to the Rome of Emperors.

With

Catherine Steel

Federico Santangelo

And

Kathryn Tempest

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Reading list:

Appian (trans. John Carter), The Civil Wars (Penguin Classics, 2005)

Valentina Arena, Jonathan R. W. Prag and Andrew Stiles, A Companion to the Political Culture of the Roman Republic (Wiley-Blackwell, 2022), especially the chapter by Lea Beness and Tom Hillard

R. Cristofoli, A. Galimberti and F. Rohr Vio (eds.), Costruire la Memoria: Uso e abuso della storia fra tarda repubblica e primo principato (L'Erma di Bretschneider, 2017), especially ‘The 'Tyranny' of the Gracchi and the Concordia of the Optimates: An Ideological Construct.’ by Francisco Pina Polo

Suzanne Dixon, Cornelia: Mother of the Gracchi, (Routledge, 2007)

Peter Garnsey and Dominic Rathbone, ‘The Background to the Grain Law of Gaius Gracchus’ (Journal of Roman Studies 75, 1985)

O. Hekster, G. de Kleijn and D. Slootjes (eds.), Crises and the Roman Empire (Brill, 2007), especially ‘Tiberius Gracchus, Land and Manpower’ by John W. Rich

Josiah Osgood, Rome and the Making of a World State, 150 BCE-20 CE (Cambridge University Press, 2018)

Plutarch (trans. Ian Scott-Kilvert and Christopher Pelling), Rome in Crisis (Penguin Classics, 2010)

Plutarch (trans. Robin Waterfield, ed. Philip A. Stadter), Roman Lives (Oxford University Press, 2008)

Nathan Rosenstein, ‘Aristocrats and Agriculture in the Middle and Late Republic’ (Journal of Roman Studies 98, 2008)

A. N. Sherwin-White, ‘The Lex Repetundarum and the Political Ideas of Gaius Gracchus’ (Journal of Roman Studies 72, 1982)

Catherine Steel, The End of the Roman Republic, 146 to 44 BC: Conquest and Crisis (Edinburgh University Press, 2013)

David Stockton, The Gracchi (Oxford University Press, 1979)

In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961), who was part of the movement known as phenomenology. While less well-known than his contemporaries Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, his popularity has increased among philosophers in recent years. Merleau-Ponty rejected Rene Descartes’ division between body and mind, arguing that the way we perceive the world around us cannot be separated from our experience of inhabiting a physical body. Merleau-Ponty was interested in the down-to-earth question of what it is actually like to live in the world. While performing actions as simple as brushing our teeth or patting a dog, we shape the world and, in turn, the world shapes us.

Komarine Romdenh-Romluc

Thomas Baldwin

And

Timothy Mooney

Produced by Eliane Glaser

Reading list:

Peter Antich, Motivation and the Primacy of Perception: Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of

Dimitris Apostolopoulos, Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Language (Rowman and Littlefield, 2019)

Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being and Apricot Cocktails (Chatto and Windus, 2016)

Thomas Baldwin (ed.), Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Basic Writings (Routledge, 2004)

Thomas Baldwin (ed.), Reading Merleau-Ponty (Routledge, 2007)

Renaud Barbaras (trans. Ted Toadvine and Leonard Lawlor), The Being of the Phenomenon: Merleau-Ponty’s Ontology (Indiana University Press, 2004).

Anya Daly, Merleau-Ponty and the Ethics of Intersubjectivity (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016)

M. C. Dillon, Merleau-Ponty’s Ontology (Northwestern University Press, 1998, 2nd ed.)

Maurice Merleau-Ponty (trans. Alden L. Fisher), The Structure of Behavior (first published 1942; Beacon Press, 1976)

Maurice Merleau-Ponty (trans. Donald Landes), Phenomenology of Perception (first published 1945; Routledge, 2011)

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Sense and Non-Sense (first published 1948; Northwestern University Press, 1964)

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Signs (first published 1960; Northwestern University Press, 1964)

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible (first published 1964; Northwestern University Press, 1968)

Maurice Merleau-Ponty (trans. Oliver Davis with an introduction by Thomas Baldwin), The World of Perception (Routledge, 2008)

Ariane Mildenberg (ed.), Understanding Merleau-Ponty, Understanding Modernism (Bloomsbury, 2019)

Timothy Mooney, Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception: On the Body Informed

Katherine J. Morris, Starting with Merleau-Ponty (Continuum, 2012)

Komarine Romdenh-Romluc, Merleau-Ponty and Phenomenology of Perception (Routledge, 2011)

Komarine Romdenh-Romluc, The Routledge Guidebook to Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception (Routledge, 2011)

Jean-Paul Sartre (trans. Benita Eisler), Situations (Hamish Hamilton, 1965)

Hilary Spurling, The Girl from the Fiction Department (Penguin, 2003)

Jon Stewart (ed.), The Debate Between Sartre and Merleau-Ponty (Northwestern University Press, 1998)

Ted Toadvine, Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy of Nature (Northwestern University

Kerry Whiteside, Merleau-Ponty and the Foundation of an Existential Politics (Princeton University Press, 1988)

Iris Marion Young, On Female Body Experience: “Throwing Like a Girl” and Other Essays (Oxford University Press, 2005)

In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most energetic, varied and innovative playwrights of his time. Thomas Middleton (1580-1627) worked across the London stages both alone and with others from Dekker and Rowley to Shakespeare and more. Middleton’s range included raucous city comedies such as A Chaste Maid in Cheapside and chilling revenge tragedies like The Changeling and The Revenger’s Tragedy, some with the main adult companies and some with child actors playing the scheming adults. Middleton seemed to be everywhere on the Jacobean stage, mixing warmth and cruelty amid laughter and horror, and even Macbeth’s witches may be substantially his work.

With

Emma Smith

Lucy Munro

And

Michelle O’Callaghan

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Reading list:

Swapan Chakravorty, Society and Politics in the Plays of Thomas Middleton (Clarendon Press, 1996)

Suzanne Gossett (ed.), Thomas Middleton in Context (Cambridge University Press, 2011)

R.V. Holdsworth (ed.), Three Jacobean Revenge Tragedies: A Selection of Critical Essays (Macmillan, 1990), especially ‘Calvinist Psychology in Middleton’s Tragedies’ by John Stachniewski

Mark Hutchings and A. A. Bromham, Middleton and His Collaborators (Northcote House, 2007)

Gordon McMullan and Kelly Stage (eds.), The Changeling: The State of Play (The Arden Shakespeare, 2022)

Lucy Munro, Shakespeare in the Theatre: The King's Men (The Arden Shakespeare, 2020)

David Nicol, Middleton & Rowley: Forms of Collaboration in the Jacobean Playhouse (University of Toronto Press, 2012)

Michelle O’Callaghan, Thomas Middleton: Renaissance Dramatist (Edinburgh University Press, 2009)

Gary Taylor and Trish Thomas Henley (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Thomas Middleton (Oxford University Press, 2012)

In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

Melvyn Bragg and guests explore the history and reputation of the Persian ruler Cyrus the Great. Cyrus the Second of Persia as he was known then was born in the sixth century BCE in Persis which is now in Iran. He was the founder of the first Persian Empire, the largest empire at that point in history, spanning more than two million square miles.

His story was told by the Greek historians Herodotus and Xenophon, and in the Hebrew bible he is praised for freeing the Jewish captives in Babylon.

But the historical facts are intertwined with fiction.

Cyrus proclaimed himself ‘king of the four corners of the world’ in the famous Cyrus Cylinder, one of the most admired objects in the British Museum. It’s been called by some the first bill of human rights, but that’s a label which has been disputed by most scholars today.

With

Mateen Arghandehpour, a researcher for the Invisible East Project at Oxford University,

Lindsay Allen, Senior Lecturer in Ancient Greek and Near Eastern History at King’s College London,

And

Lynette Mitchell, Professor Emerita in Classics and Ancient History at Exeter University.

Producer: Eliane Glaser

Reading list:

Pierre Briant (trans. Peter T. Daniels), From Cyrus to Alexander: A History of the Persian Empire (Eisenbrauns, 2002)

John Curtis and Nigel Tallis (eds.), Forgotten Empire: The World of Ancient Persia (The British Museum Press, 2005)

Irving Finkel (ed.), The Cyrus Cylinder: The King of Persia’s Proclamation from Ancient Babylon (I.B.Tauris, 2013)

Lisbeth Fried, ‘Cyrus the Messiah? The Historical Background to Isaiah 45:1’ (Harvard Theological Review 95, 2002)

M. Kozuh, W.F. Henkelman, C.E. Jones and C. Woods (eds.), Extraction and Control: Studies in Honour of Matthew W. Stolper (Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 2014), especially the chapter ‘Cyrus the Great, exiles and foreign gods: A comparison of Assyrian and Persian policies in subject nations’ by R. J. van der Spek

Lynette Mitchell, Cyrus the Great: A Biography of Kingship (Routledge, 2023)

Michael Roaf, Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East (Facts On File, 1990)

Vesta Sarkosh Curtis and Sarah Stewart (eds.), Birth of the Persian Empire (I.B.Tauris, 2005), especially the chapter ‘Cyrus the Great and the kingdom of Anshan’ by D.T. Potts

Matt Waters, King of the World: The Life of Cyrus the Great (Oxford University Press, 2022)

In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio production

Since plants have to mate and produce offspring while rooted to the spot, they have to be pollinated – by wind, water, or animals – most commonly insects. They use a surprising array of tricks to attract pollinators: striking colours, iridescent light effects, and enticing scents, to name but a few.

Insects, on the other hand, do not seek to pollinate plants – they are looking for food; so plants make sure it’s worth their while. Insects are also remarkably sophisticated in their ability to find, recognise and find their way inside flowers.

So pollination has evolved as a complex dance between plants and pollinators that is essential for life on earth to continue.

With

Beverley Glover, Director of the Cambridge University Botanic Garden

Jane Memmott, Professor of Ecology at the University of Bristol

And

Lars Chittka, Professor of Sensory and Behavioural Ecology at Queen Mary, University of London.

Producer: Eliane Glaser

Reading list:

Stephen L Buchmann and Gary Paul Nabhan, The Forgotten Pollinators (Island Press, 1997)

Lars Chittka, The Mind of a Bee (Princeton University Press, 2023)

Steven Falk, Field Guide to the Bees of Britain and Ireland (British Wildlife Publishing, 2015)

Francis S. Gilbert (illustrated by Steven J. Falk), Hoverflies: Naturalists' Handbooks vol. 5 (Pelagic Publishing, 2015)

Dave Goulson, A Sting in the Tale: My Adventures with Bumblebees (Vintage, 2014)

Edwige Moyroud and Beverley J. Glover, ‘The evolution of diverse floral morphologies’ (Current Biology vol 11, 2017)

Jeff Ollerton, Birds and Flowers: An Intimate 50 Million Year Relationship (Pelagic Publishing, 2024)

Timothy Walker, Pollination: The Enduring Relationship Between Plant and Pollinator (Princeton University Press, 2020)

In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Hindu goddess Kali, often depicted as dark blue, fierce, defiant, revelling in her power, and holding in her four or more arms a curved sword and a severed head with a cup underneath to catch the blood. She may have her tongue out, to catch more blood spurting from her enemies, be wearing a garland of more severed heads and a skirt of severed hands and yet she is also a nurturing mother figure, known in West Bengal as ‘Maa Kali’ and she can be fiercely protective. Sometimes she is shown as young and conventionally beautiful and at other times as old, emaciated and hungry, so defying any narrow definition.

With

Bihani Sarkar

Julius Lipner

And

Jessica Frazier

During this discussion, Julius Lipner reads a translation of a poem by Kamalakanta (c.1769–1821) "Is my black Mother Syama really black?" This translation is by Rachel Fell McDermott and can be found in her book Singing to the Goddess, Poems to Kali and Uma from Bengal (Oxford University Press, 2001)

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Reading list:

Mandakranta Bose (ed.), The Goddess (Oxford University Press, 2018)

John S. Hawley and Donna M. Wulff (eds.), Devi: Goddesses of India (University of California Press, 1996)

Knut A. Jacobsen (ed.), Brill's Encyclopedia of Hinduism, vol 1 (Brill, 2025)

David Kinsley, Hindu Goddesses: Visions of the Divine Feminine in the Hindu Religious Tradition (University of California Press, 1986), especially chapter 8

Rachel Fell McDermott and Jeffrey J. Kripal (eds.), Encountering Kālī in the margins, at the center, in the west (University of California Press, 2003)

In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the renowned and versatile Irish writer Oliver Goldsmith (1728 - 1774). There is a memorial to him in Westminster Abbey’s Poet’s Corner written by Dr Johnson, celebrating Goldsmith's life as a poet, natural philosopher and historian. To this could be added ‘playwright’ and ‘novelist’ and ‘science writer’ and ‘pamphleteer’ and much besides, as Goldsmith explored so many different outlets for his talents. While he began on Grub Street in London, the centre for jobbing writers scrambling for paid work, he became a great populariser and compiler of new ideas and knowledge and achieved notable successes with poems such as The Deserted Village, his play She Stoops to Conquer and his short novel The Vicar of Wakefield.

With

David O’Shaughnessy

Judith Hawley

And

Michael Griffin

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Reading list:

Norma Clarke, Brothers of the Quill: Oliver Goldsmith in Grub Street (Harvard University Press, 2016)

Leo Damrosch, The Club: Johnson, Boswell, and the Friends Who Shaped an Age (Yale University Press, 2019)

Oliver Goldsmith (ed. Aileen Douglas and Ian Campbell Ross), The Vicar of Wakefield: A Tale, Supposed to Be Written by Himself (first published 1766; Cambridge University Press, 2024)

Oliver Goldsmith (ed. Arthur Friedman), The Vicar of Wakefield (first published 1766; Oxford University Press, 2008)

Oliver Goldsmith (ed. Arthur Friedman), The Collected Works of Oliver Goldsmith, 5 vols (Clarendon Press, 1966)

Oliver Goldsmith (ed. James Ogden), She Stoops to Conquer (first performed 1773; Methuen Drama, 2003)

Oliver Goldsmith (ed. James Watt), The Citizen of the World (first published 1762; Cambridge University Press, 2024)

Oliver Goldsmith (ed. Nigel Wood), She Stoops to Conquer and Other Comedies (first performed 1773; Oxford University Press, 2007)

Michael Griffin and David O’Shaughnessy (eds.), Oliver Goldsmith in Context (Cambridge University Press, 2024)

Michael Griffin and David O’Shaughnessy (eds.), The Letters of Oliver Goldsmith (Cambridge University Press, 2018)

Roger Lonsdale (ed.), The Poems of Gray, Collins and Goldsmith (Longmans, 1969)

In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio production

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Catherine of Aragon (1485-1536), the youngest child of the newly dominant Spanish rulers Ferdinand and Isabella. When she was 3, her parents contracted her to marry Arthur, Prince of Wales, the heir to the Tudor king Henry VII in order to strengthen Spain's alliances, since Henry's kingdom was a longstanding trade partner and an enemy of Spain's greatest enemy, France. For the next decade Catherine had the best humanist education available, preparing her for her expected life as queen and drawing inspiration from her warrior mother. She arrived in London to be married when she was 15 but within a few months she was widowed, her situation uncertain and left relatively impoverished for someone of her status. Rather than return home, Catherine stayed and married her late husband's brother, Henry VIII. In her view and that of many around her, she was an exemplary queen and, even after Henry VIII had arranged the annulment of their marriage for the chance of a male heir with Anne Boleyn, Catherine continued to consider herself his only queen.

With

Lucy Wooding

Maria Hayward

And

Gonzalo Velasco Berenguer

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Reading list:

Michelle Beer, Queenship at the Renaissance Courts of Britain: Catherine of Aragon and Margaret Tudor, 1503-1533 (Royal Historical Society, 2018)

G. R. Bernard, The King's Reformation: Henry VIII and the Remaking of the English Church (Yale University Press, 2007)

José Luis Colomer and Amalia Descalzo (eds.), Spanish Fashion at the Courts of Early Modern Europe (Centro de Estudios Europa Hispanica, 2014), especially vol 2, 'Spanish Princess or Queen of England? The Image, Identity and Influence of Catherine of Aragon at the Courts of Henry VII and Henry VIII' by Maria Hayward

Theresa Earenfight, Catherine of Aragon: Infanta of Spain, Queen of England (Penn State University Press, 2022)

John Edwards, Ferdinand and Isabella: Profiles In Power (Routledge, 2004)

Garrett Mattingley, Catherine of Aragon (first published 1941; Random House, 2000)

J. J. Scarisbrick, Henry VIII (first published 1968; Yale University Press, 1997)

David Starkey, Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII (Vintage, 2004)

Giles Tremlett, Catherine of Aragon: Henry's Spanish Queen (Faber & Faber, 2011)

Juan Luis Vives (trans. Charles Fantazzi), The Education of a Christian Woman: A Sixteenth-Century Manual (University of Chicago Press, 2000)

Patrick Williams, Catherine of Aragon: The Tragic Story of Henry VIII's First Unfortunate Wife (Amberley Publishing, 2013)

Lucy Wooding, Henry VIII (Routledge, 2009)

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the architect Sir John Soane (1753 -1837), the son of a bricklayer. He rose up the ranks of his profession as an architect to see many of his designs realised to great acclaim, particularly the Bank of England and the Law Courts at Westminster Hall, although his work on both of those has been largely destroyed. He is now best known for his house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields in London, which he remodelled and crammed with antiquities and artworks: he wanted visitors to experience the house as a dramatic grand tour of Europe in microcosm. He became professor of architecture at the Royal Academy, and in a series of influential lectures he set out his belief in the power of buildings to enlighten people about “the poetry of architecture”. Visitors to the museum and his other works can see his trademark architectural features such as his shallow dome, which went on to inspire Britain's red telephone boxes.

With:

Frances Sands, the Curator of Drawings and Books at Sir John Soane’s Museum

Frank Salmon, Associate Professor of the History of Art at the University of Cambridge and Director of the Ax:son Johnson Centre for the Study of Classical Architecture

And

Gillian Darley, historian and author of Soane's biography.

Producer: Eliane Glaser

Reading list:

Barry Bergdoll, European Architecture 1750-1890 (Oxford University Press, 2000)

Bruce Boucher, John Soane's Cabinet of Curiosities: Reflections on an Architect and His Collection (Yale University Press, 2024)

Oliver Bradbury, Sir John Soane’s Influence on Architecture from 1791: An Enduring Legacy (Routledge, 2015)

Gillian Darley, John Soane: An Accidental Romantic (Yale University Press, 1999)

Ptolemy Dean, Sir John Soane and the Country Estate (Ashgate, 1999)

Ptolemy Dean, Sir John Soane and London (Lund Humphries, 2006)

Helen Dorey, John Soane and J.M.W. Turner: Illuminating a Friendship (Sir John Soane’s Museum, 2007)

Tim Knox, Sir John Soane’s Museum (Merrell, 2015)

Brian Lukacher, Joseph Gandy: An Architectural Visionary in Georgian England (Thames and Hudson, 2006)

Susan Palmer, At Home with the Soanes: Upstairs, Downstairs in 19th Century London (Pimpernel Press, 2015)

Frances Sands, Architectural Drawings: Hidden Masterpieces at Sir John Soane’s Museum (Batsford, 2021)

Sir John Soane’s Museum, A Complete Description (Sir John Soane’s Museum, 2018)

Mary Ann Stevens and Margaret Richardson (eds.), John Soane Architect: Master of Space and Light (Royal Academy Publications, 1999)

John Summerson, Architecture in Britain 1530-1830 (9th edition, Yale University Press, 1993)

A.A. Tait, Robert Adam: Drawings and Imagination (Cambridge University Press, 1993)

John H. Taylor, Sir John Soane’s Greatest Treasure: The Sarcophagus of Seti I (Pimpernel Press, 2017)

David Watkin, Sir John Soane: Enlightenment Thought and the Royal Academy Lectures (Cambridge University Press, 1996)

David Watkin, Sir John Soane: The Royal Academy Lectures (Cambridge University Press, 2000)

John Wilton-Ely, Piranesi, Paestum & Soane (Prestel, 2013)