The Bodleian Libraries (BODcasts)

Lecturer and conductor Dr Paul Coones delivers a lecture celebrating the 200th birthday of Richard Wagner. The talk is preceded by Siegried's Horn Call played by Sophie Dillon and includes the rarely performed Kinder-Katechismus zu Kosel's Geburtstag.

Judith Priestman, curator of literary manuscripts at the Bodleian library, discusses the World Book Day 2010 Tolkien exhibition, at which a selection of J.R.R. Tolkien's original artwork for The Hobbit, was on display to the public.

Chinese Artist Xu Bing gives a talk on the subject of his art and the kind of artist he is.

Art critic Brian Sewell talks to Sir Roy Strong as part of the Times Literary Festival 2013. Art historian, writer and broadcaster Sir Roy Strong has enjoyed half a century as one of the leading figures in Britain's art world. The former director of the National Portrait Gallery and Victoria and Albert Museum talks to art critic Brian Sewell about his early years before he rose to fame, which he describes in his new book, Self-Portrait as a Young Man. Strong tells of his social origins in suburban North London, his grammar school and university education, and of the development of his lifelong passion for the culture and history of England. The world he describes is one dominated by hierarchy and class up which the new 'meritocrats' like himself and Alan Bennett began to climb. It is also a time of big change as the drab London of the 1950s turns into the swinging sixties.

Giles Bergel and Andrew Zisserman from the Broadside Ballad Connections project demonstrate new image matching software that allows researchers to track images across early forms of printed literature. Visit http://ballads.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/.

Professor Kathyrn Sutherland from the University of Oxford talks around the manuscripts of Jane Austen, what we can learn from them about her family life but also her writing style and techniques.

Professor Kathryn Sutherland from the University of Oxford talks about some of Jane Austen's manuscripts from the novel 'The Watsons' and what we can learn about her from these.

Alan Garner gives an illustrated lecture on the Legend of Alderley. This version of the myth of the Sleeping Hero is rooted to places on Alderley Edge in Cheshire, where Alan Garner grew up.

The earliest printers spread from Mainz in Germany where Gutenberg first had his printing house to Venice, Rome, Paris, and the Netherlands. Examples from all of these centres of 15th-century printing are found in Bodleian collections.

Special footage celebrating the launch of Talking about Detective Fiction by PD James, the latest Bodleian Library publication. PD James is donating all royalties from the hardback edition to the Bodleian and hopes it will encourage further philanthropy.