In Our Time

By BBC Radio 4History

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In Our Time episodes

February 17, 2022 Romeo and Juliet
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss William Shakespeare's famous tragedy, written in the early 1590s after a series of histories and comedies. His audience already knew the story of the feuding Capulets and Montagues in Verona and the fate of the young lovers from their rival houses, but not how Shakespeare would tell it and, with his poetry and plotting, he created a work so powerful and timeless that his play has shaped the way we talk of love, especially young love, ever since.
The image above is of Mrs Patrick Campbell ('Mrs Pat') as Juliet and Johnson Forbes-Robinson as Romeo in a scene from the 1895 production at the Lyceum Theatre, London
With
Helen Hackett
Professor of English Literature at University College London
Paul Prescott
Professor of English and Theatre at the University of California Merced
And
Emma Smith
Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Hertford College, University of Oxford
Producer: Simon Tillotson
51 min
February 10, 2022 Walter Benjamin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most celebrated thinkers of the twentieth century. Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) was a German Jewish philosopher, critic, historian, an investigator of culture, a maker of radio programmes and more. Notably, in his Arcades Project, he looked into the past of Paris to understand the modern age and, in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, examined how the new media of film and photography enabled art to be politicised, and politics to become a form of art. The rise of the Nazis in Germany forced him into exile, and he worked in Paris in dread of what was to come; when his escape from France in 1940 was blocked at the Spanish border, he took his own life.
With
Esther Leslie
Professor of Political Aesthetics at Birkbeck, University of London
Kevin McLaughlin
Dean of the Faculty and Professor of English, Comparative Literature and German Studies at Brown University
And
Carolin Duttlinger
Professor of German Literature and Culture at the University of Oxford
Producer: Simon Tillotson
51 min
February 03, 2022 The Temperance Movement
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the momentum behind teetotalism in 19th Century Britain, when calls for moderation gave way to complete abstinence in pursuit of a better life. Although arguments for temperance had been made throughout the British Isles beforehand, the story of the organised movement in Britain is often said to have started in 1832 in Preston, when Joseph Livesey and seven others gave a pledge to abstain. The movement grew quickly, with Temperance Halls appearing as new social centres in towns in place of pubs, and political parties being drawn into taking sides either to support abstinence or impose it or reject it.
The image above, which appeared in The Teetotal Progressionist in 1852, is an example of the way in which images contained many points of temperance teaching, and is © Copyright Livesey Collection at the University of Central Lancashire.
With
Annemarie McAllister
Senior Research Fellow in History at the University of Central Lancashire
James Kneale
Associate Professor in Geography at University College London
And
David Beckingham
Associate Professor in Cultural and Historical Geography at the University of Nottingham
Producer: Simon Tillotson
53 min
January 27, 2022 Colette
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the outstanding French writers of the twentieth century. The novels of Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (1873 - 1954) always had women at their centre, from youth to mid-life to old age, and they were phenomenally popular, at first for their freshness and frankness about women’s lives, as in the Claudine stories, and soon for their sheer quality as she developed as a writer. Throughout her career she intrigued readers by inserting herself, or a character with her name, into her works, fictionalising her life as a way to share her insight into the human experience.
With
Diana Holmes
Professor of French at the University of Leeds
Michèle Roberts
Writer, novelist, poet and Emeritus Professor of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia
And
Belinda Jack
Fellow and Tutor in French Literature and Language at Christ Church, University of Oxford
Producer: Simon Tillotson
52 min
January 20, 2022 The Gold Standard
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the system that flourished from 1870 when gold became dominant and more widely available, following gold rushes in California and Australia. Banknotes could be exchanged for gold at central banks, the coins in circulation could be gold (as with the sovereign in the image above, initially worth £1), gold could be freely imported and exported, and many national currencies around the world were tied to gold and so to each other. The idea began in Britain, where sterling was seen as good as gold, and when other countries rushed to the Gold Standard the confidence in their currencies grew, and world trade took off and, for a century, gold was seen as a vital component of the world economy, supporting stability and confidence. The system came with constraints on government ability to respond to economic crises, though, and has been blamed for deepening and prolonging the Great Depression of the 1930s.
With
Catherine Schenk
Professor of Economic and Social History at the University of Oxford
Helen Paul
Lecturer in Economics and Economic History at the University of Southampton
And
Matthias Morys
Senior Lecturer in Economic History at the University of York
Produced by Eliane Glaser and Simon Tillotson
49 min
January 13, 2022 Thomas Hardy's Poetry
After 27 years, Melvyn Bragg has decided to step down from the In Our Time presenter’s chair. With over a thousand episodes to choose from, he has selected just six that capture the huge range and depth of the subjects he and his experts have tackled. In this second of his choices, we hear Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss one of his favourite poets.
Their topic is Thomas Hardy (1840 -1928) and his commitment to poetry, which he prized far above his novels. In the 1890s, once he had earned enough from his fiction, Hardy stopped writing novels altogether and returned to the poetry he had largely put aside since his twenties. He hoped that he might be ranked one day alongside Shelley and Byron, worthy of inclusion in a collection such as Palgrave's Golden Treasury which had inspired him. Hardy kept writing poems for the rest of his life, in different styles and metres, and he explored genres from nature, to war, to epic. Among his best known are what he called his Poems of 1912 to 13, responding to his grief at the death of his first wife, Emma (1840 -1912), who he credited as the one who had made it possible for him to leave his work as an architect's clerk and to write the novels that made him famous.
With
Mark Ford
Poet, and Professor of English and American Literature, University College London.
Jane Thomas
Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Hull and Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Leeds
And
Tim Armstrong
Professor of Modern English and American Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London
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
51 min
December 30, 2021 Fritz Lang
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. He worked first in Weimar Germany, creating a range of films including the startling and subversive Mabuse the Gambler and the iconic but ruinously expensive Metropolis before arguably his masterpiece, M, with both the police and the underworld hunting for a child killer in Berlin, his first film with sound. The rise of the Nazis prompted Lang's move to Hollywood where he developed some of his Weimar themes in memorable and disturbing films such as Fury and The Big Heat.
With
Stella Bruzzi
Professor of Film and Dean of Arts and Humanities at University College London
Joe McElhaney
Professor of Film Studies at Hunter College, City University of New York
And
Iris Luppa
Senior Lecturer in Film Studies in the Division of Film and Media at London South Bank University
Producer: Simon Tillotson
55 min
December 23, 2021 The Hittites
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. For the next three thousand years these people of the Land of Hatti, as they called themselves, were known only by small references to their Iron Age descendants in the Old Testament and by unexplained remains in their former territory. Discoveries in their capital of Hattusa just over a century ago brought them back to prominence, including cuneiform tablets such as one (pictured above) which relates to an agreement with their rivals, the Egyptians. This agreement has since become popularly known as the Treaty of Kadesh and described as the oldest recorded peace treaty that survives to this day, said to have followed a great chariot battle with Egypt in 1274 BC near the Orontes River in northern Syria.
With
Claudia Glatz
Professor of Archaeology at the University of Glasgow
Ilgi Gercek
Assistant Professor of Ancient Near Eastern Languages and History at Bilkent University
And
Christoph Bachhuber
Lecturer in Archaeology at St John’s College, University of Oxford
Producer: Simon Tillotson
53 min
December 16, 2021 A Christmas Carol
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. Ebenezer Scrooge is the miserly everyman figure whose joyless obsession with money severs him from society and his own emotions, and he is only saved after recalling his lonely past, seeing what he is missing now and being warned of his future, all under the guidance of the ghosts of Christmases Past, Present and Yet To Come. Redeemed, Scrooge comes to care in particular about one of the many minor characters in the story who make a great impact, namely Tiny Tim, the disabled child of the poor and warm-hearted Cratchit family, with his cry, "God bless us, every one!"
With
Juliet John
Professor of English Literature and Dean of Arts and Social Sciences at City, University of London
Jon Mee
Professor of Eighteenth-Century Studies at the University of York
And
Dinah Birch
Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Cultural Engagement and Professor of English Literature at the University of Liverpool
Producer: Simon Tillotson
57 min
December 09, 2021 The May Fourth Movement
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. China had supported the Allies, sending workers to dig trenches, and expected to regain the German colonies on its territory, but the Allies and China's leaders chose to give that land to Japan instead. To protestors, this was a travesty and reflected much that was wrong with China, with its corrupt leaders, division by warlords, weakness before Imperial Europe and outdated ideas and values. The movement around 4th May has since been seen as a watershed in China’s development in the 20th century, not least as some of those connected with the movement went on to found the Communist Party of China a few years later.
The image above is of students from Peking University marching with banners during the May Fourth demonstrations in 1919.
With
Rana Mitter
Professor of the History and Politics of Modern China and Fellow of St Cross College, University of Oxford
Elisabeth Forster
Lecturer in Chinese History at the University of Southampton
And
Song-Chuan Chen
Associate Professor in History at the University of Warwick
Producer: Simon Tillotson
53 min