In Our Time

By BBC Radio 4History

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In Our Time episodes

November 17, 2016 Justinian's Legal Code
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas brought together under Justinian I, Byzantine emperor in the 6th century AD, which were rediscovered in Western Europe in the Middle Ages and became very influential in the development of laws in many European nations and elsewhere.
With
Caroline Humfress
Professor of Medieval History at the University of St Andrews
Simon Corcoran
Lecturer in Ancient History at Newcastle University
and
Paul du Plessis
Senior Lecturer in Civil law and European legal history at the School of Law, University of Edinburgh
Producer: Simon Tillotson.
48 min
November 10, 2016 The Fighting Temeraire
This image: Joseph Mallord William Turner, The Fighting Temeraire, 1839 (c) The National Gallery, London
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss "The Fighting Temeraire", one of Turner's greatest works and the one he called his 'darling'. It shows one of the most famous ships of the age, a hero of Trafalgar, being towed up the Thames to the breakers' yard, sail giving way to steam. Turner displayed this masterpiece to a public which, at the time, was deep in celebration of the Temeraire era, with work on Nelson's Column underway, and it was an immediate success, with Thackeray calling the painting 'a national ode'.
With
Susan Foister
Curator of Early Netherlandish, German and British Painting at the National Gallery
David Blayney Brown
Manton Curator of British Art 1790-1850 at Tate Britain
and
James Davey
Curator of Naval History at the National Maritime Museum
Producer: Simon Tillotson.
46 min
November 03, 2016 Epic of Gilgamesh
"He who saw the Deep" are the first words of the standard version of The Epic of Gilgamesh, the subject of this discussion between Melvyn Bragg and his guests. Gilgamesh is often said to be the oldest surviving great work of literature, with origins in the third millennium BC, and it passed through thousands of years on cuneiform tablets. Unlike epics of Greece and Rome, the intact story of Gilgamesh became lost to later generations until tablets were discovered by Hormuzd Rassam in 1853 near Mosul and later translated. Since then, many more tablets have been found and much of the text has been reassembled to convey the story of Gilgamesh, king of Uruk the sheepfold, and Enkidu who the gods created to stop Gilgamesh oppressing his people. Together they fight Humbaba, monstrous guardian of the Cedar Forest, and kill the Bull of Heaven, for which the gods make Enkidu mortally ill. Gilgamesh goes on a long journey as he tries unsuccessfully to learn how to live forever, learning about the Great Deluge on the way, but his remarkable building works guarantee that his fame will last long after his death.
With
Andrew George
Professor of Babylonian at SOAS, University of London
Frances Reynolds
Shillito Fellow in Assyriology at the Oriental Institute, University of Oxford and Fellow of St Benet's Hall
and
Martin Worthington
Lecturer in Assyriology at the University of Cambridge
Producer: Simon Tillotson.
47 min
October 27, 2016 John Dalton
The scientist John Dalton was born in North England in 1766. Although he came from a relatively poor Quaker family, he managed to become one of the most celebrated scientists of his age. Through his work, he helped to establish Manchester as a place where not only products were made but ideas were born. His reputation during his lifetime was so high that unusually a statue was erected to him before he died. Among his interests were meteorology, gasses and colour blindness. However, he is most remembered today for his pioneering thinking in the field of atomic theory.
With:
Jim Bennett
Former Director of the Museum of the History of Science at the University of Oxford and Keeper Emeritus at the Science Museum
Aileen Fyfe
Reader in British History at the University of St Andrews
James Sumner
Lecturer in the History of Technology at the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine at the University of Manchester
Producer: Victoria Brignell.
46 min
October 20, 2016 The 12th Century Renaissance
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the changes in the intellectual world of Western Europe in the 12th Century, and their origins. This was a time of Crusades, the formation of states, the start of Gothic architecture, a reconnection with Roman and Greek learning and their Arabic development and the start of the European universities, and has become known as The 12th Century Renaissance.
The image above is part of Notre-Dame de la Belle-Verrière, Chartres Cathedral, from 1180.
With
Laura Ashe
Associate Professor of English at Worcester College, University of Oxford
Elisabeth van Houts
Honorary Professor of European Medieval History at the University of Cambridge
and
Giles Gasper
Reader in Medieval History at Durham University
Producer: Simon Tillotson.
50 min
October 13, 2016 Plasma
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss plasma, the fourth state of matter after solid, liquid and gas. As over ninety-nine percent of all observable matter in the Universe is plasma, planets like ours, with so little plasma and so much solid, liquid and gas, appear all the more remarkable. On the grand scale, plasma is what the Sun is made from and, when we look into the night sky, almost everything we can see with the naked eye is made of plasma. On the smallest scale, here on Earth, scientists make plasma to etch the microchips on which we rely for so much. Plasma is in the fluorescent light bulbs above our heads and, in laboratories around the world, it is the subject of tests to create, one day, an inexhaustible and clean source of energy from nuclear fusion.
With
Justin Wark
Professor of Physics and Fellow of Trinity College at the University of Oxford
Kate Lancaster
Research Fellow for Innovation and Impact at the York Plasma Institute at the University of York
and
Bill Graham
Professor of Physics at Queens University, Belfast
Producer: Simon Tillotson.
46 min
October 06, 2016 Lakshmi
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the origins of the Hindu goddess Lakshmi, and of the traditions that have built around her for over 3,000 years. According to the creation story of the Puranas, she came to existence in the churning of the ocean of milk. Her prominent status grew alongside other goddesses in the mainly male world of the Vedas, as female deities came to be seen as the Shakti, the energy of the gods, without which they would be powerless. Lakshmi came to represent the qualities of blessing, prosperity, fertility, beauty and good fortune and, more recently, political order, and she has a significant role in Diwali, one of the most important of the Hindu festivals.
With
Jessica Frazier
Lecturer in Religious Studies at the University of Kent
Research Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies at the University of Oxford
Jacqueline Suthren-Hirst
Senior Lecturer in South Asian Studies at the University of Manchester
and
Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad
Professor of Comparative Religion and Philosophy at Lancaster University
Producer: Simon Tillotson.
48 min
September 29, 2016 Animal Farm
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Animal Farm, which Eric Blair published under his pen name George Orwell in 1945.
A biting critique of totalitarianism, particularly Stalinism, the essay sprung from Orwell's experiences fighting Fascists in Spain: he thought that all on the left were on the same side, until the dominant Communists violently suppressed the Anarchists and Trotskyists, and Orwell had to escape to France to avoid arrest.
Setting his satire in an English farm, Orwell drew on the Russian Revolution of 1917, on Stalin's cult of personality and the purges. The leaders on Animal Farm are pigs, the secret police are attack dogs, the supporters who drown out debate with "four legs good, two legs bad" are sheep.
At first, London publishers did not want to touch Orwell's work out of sympathy for the USSR, an ally of Britain in the Second World War, but the Cold War gave it a new audience and Animal Farm became a commercial as well as a critical success.
Featuring:
Steven Connor - Grace 2 Professor of English at the University of Cambridge
Mary Vincent - Professor of Modern European History at the University of Sheffield
Robert Colls - Professor of Cultural History at De Montfort University
Producer: Simon Tillotson
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in September 2016.
52 min
September 22, 2016 Zeno's Paradoxes
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 third of his choices, we hear Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Greek philosophy.
Their topic is Zeno of Elea, a pre-Socratic philosopher from c490-430 BC whose paradoxes were described by Bertrand Russell as "immeasurably subtle and profound." The best known argue against motion, such as that of an arrow in flight which is at a series of different points but moving at none of them, or that of Achilles who, despite being the faster runner, will never catch up with a tortoise with a head start. Aristotle and Aquinas engaged with these, as did Russell, yet it is still debatable whether Zeno's Paradoxes have been resolved.
With
Marcus du Sautoy
Professor of Mathematics and Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford
Barbara Sattler
Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of St Andrews
and
James Warren
Reader in Ancient Philosophy at the University of Cambridge
Producer: Simon Tillotson
In Our Time is a BBC Studios 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
47 min
July 07, 2016 The Invention of Photography
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the development of photography in the 1830s, when techniques for 'drawing with light' evolved to the stage where, in 1839, both Louis Daguerre and William Henry Fox Talbot made claims for its invention. These followed the development of the camera obscura, and experiments by such as Thomas Wedgwood and Nicéphore Niépce, and led to rapid changes in the 1840s as more people captured images with the daguerreotype and calotype. These new techniques changed the aesthetics of the age and, before long, inspired claims that painting was now dead.
With
Simon Schaffer
Professor of the History of Science at the University of Cambridge
Elizabeth Edwards
Emeritus Professor of Photographic History at De Montfort University
And
Alison Morrison-Low,
Research Associate at National Museums Scotland
Producer: Simon Tillotson.
49 min