On Liberty

15 Jan, 2026 320 Political science

Journalist, author and historian Misha Glenny presents his first edition of In Our Time, succeeding Melvyn Bragg who retired from this role last summer. Misha and his guests discuss the landmark work On Liberty by John Stuart Mill, published in 1859 and the increasing recognition for his wife Harriet Taylor Mill’s contribution. The subject matter of the essay is ‘civil or social liberty: the nature and limits of the power which can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual’ and it argues that the sole end for which mankind may interfere with the liberty of action of anyone is self-protection and even then only to prevent harm to others. This essay became enormously popular and a foundational text for liberalism.

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Guests

  • Helen McCabe No other episodes
    Professor of Political Theory at the University of Nottingham
  • Mark Philp 2 episodes
    Emeritus Professor of History and Politics at the University of Warwick
  • Piers Norris Turner No other episodes
    Associate Professor of Philosophy at The Ohio State University

Reading list

  • Harriet Taylor Mill, Complete Works
    Jo Ellen Jacobs (ed.) (Indiana University Press, 1998)
  • A Moralist In and Out of Parliament: John Stuart Mill at Westminster, 1865-1868
    Bruce L. Kinzer, Ann P. Robson and John M. Robson (University of Toronto Press, 1992) Google Books →
  • A Companion to Mill
    Christopher Macleod and Dale Miller (eds.) (Wiley, 2016) Google Books →
  • John Stuart Mill, Socialist
    Helen McCabe (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2021) Google Books →
  • Harriet Taylor Mill
    Helen McCabe (Cambridge, 2023) Google Books →
  • The Arguments of On Liberty: Mill's Institutional Designs
    Piers Norris Turner (Nineteenth-Century Prose 47 (1), 2020)
  • John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor Mill, On Liberty with Related Writings
    Piers Norris Turner et al (eds.) (Hackett Publishing, forthcoming 2026)
  • John Stuart Mill: Autobiography
    Mark Philp (ed.) (Oxford University Press, 2018)
  • John Stuart Mill: On Liberty, Utilitarianism and other Essays
    Mark Philp and Frederick Rosen (eds.) (Oxford University Press, 2015)
  • Mill
    Frederick Rosen (Oxford University Press, 2013)
  • The Philosophy of John Stuart Mill
    Alan Ryan (Palgrave MacMillan, 1998) Google Books →
  • Reformulating Mill's Harm Principle
    Ben Saunders (Mind 125/500, 2016)
  • Why Read Mill Today?
    John Skorupski (Routledge, 2006) Google Books →
  • John Stuart Mill
    William Stafford (Red Globe Press, 1998) Google Books →
  • Mill: On Liberty: A Critical Guide
    C. L. Ten (ed.) (Cambridge University Press, 2008)
  • John Stuart Mill's Political Thought: A Bicentennial Reassessment
    Nadia Urbinati and Alex Zakaras (eds.) (Cambridge University Press, 2007) Google Books →

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Programme ID: m002pqnc

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002pqnc

Auto-category: 320.51 (Liberalism)