2009

January

• The Consolations of Philosophy 1 Jan
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the consolation of Philosophy.
  180 Ancient, medieval, and Eastern philosophy
• Darwin: On the Origins of Charles Darwin 5 Jan
  To celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin in 2009 and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species, Melvyn Bragg presents a series about Darwin’s life and work.
  570 Biology
• Darwin: The Voyage of the Beagle 6 Jan
  To celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species, Melvyn Bragg presents a series about Darwin’s life and work.
  570 Biology
• Darwin: On the Origin of Species 7 Jan
  To celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species, Melvyn Bragg presents a series about Darwin’s life and work.
  570 Biology
• Darwin: Life After Origins 8 Jan
  To celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin in 2009 and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species, Melvyn Bragg presents a series about Darwin’s life and work.
  570 Biology
• Thoreau and the American Idyll 15 Jan
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 19th century American writer and philosopher, Henry David Thoreau.
  810 American literature in English
• History of History 22 Jan
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how the writing of history has changed over time, from ancient epics to medieval hagiographies and modern deconstructions.
  900 History
• Swift’s A Modest Proposal 29 Jan
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most brilliant and shocking satires ever written in English - Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal.
  820 English and Old English literatures

February

• The Brothers Grimm 5 Feb
  Melvyn Bragg discusses the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm with Juliette Wood, Marina Warner and Tony Phelan.
  390 Customs, etiquette and folklore
• Carthage’s Destruction 12 Feb
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Destruction of Carthage.
  930 History of the Ancient World
• The Observatory at Jaipur 19 Feb
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Observatory in Jaipur with its vast and beautiful instruments built to make astronomical measurements of the stars.
  520 Astronomy
• The Waste Land and Modernity 26 Feb
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss TS Eliot’s seminal poem The Waste Land and its ambivalence to the modern world of technology, democracy and capitalism that was being forged around it.
  820 English and Old English literatures

March

• The Measurement Problem in Physics 5 Mar
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the deepest problems in contemporary physics.
  530 Physics
• The Library of Alexandria 12 Mar
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Library at Alexandria.
  020 Library and information sciences
• The Boxer Rebellion 19 Mar
  In the hot summer of 1900, Peking, the capital of China, was under heavy siege.
  950 History of Asia
• The School of Athens 26 Mar
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss The School of Athens - the fresco painted by the Italian Renaissance painter, Raphael, for Pope Julius II’s private library in the Vatican.
  750 Painting

April

• Baconian Science 2 Apr
  In the introduction to Thomas Spratt’s History of the Royal Society, there is a poem about man called Francis Bacon which declares ‘Bacon, like Moses, led us forth at last, The barren wilderness he past, Did on the very border stand Of the blest promis’d land, And from the mountain’s top of his exalted wit, Saw it himself, and shew’d us it’.
  500 Science
• Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World 9 Apr
  In Act V Scene I of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, the character Miranda declares ‘O wonder! How many Godly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O Brave new world! That has such people in it!’.
  820 English and Old English literatures
• Suffragism 16 Apr
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss suffragism, a name for the various movements to get the vote for women in the 19th and early-20th century.
  320 Political science
• The Building of St Petersburg 23 Apr
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the building of St Petersburg, Peter the Great’s showcase city for a modern, European Russia.
  940 History of Europe
• The Vacuum of Space 30 Apr
  The idea that there is a nothingness at the heart of nature has exercised philosophers and scientists for millennia, from Thales’s belief that all matter was water to Newton’s concept of the Ether and Einstein’s idea of Space-Time.
  530 Physics

May

• The Magna Carta 7 May
  The Magna Carta has been cited ever since its issue in 1215 as a foundation stone of English liberties.
  340 Law
• The Siege of Vienna 14 May
  Melvyn Bragg and guests Andrew Wheatcroft, Claire Norton and Jeremy Black discuss the Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1683, when the Ottoman Empire tried to capture the capital city of the Hapsburg monarchs.
  940 History of Europe
• The Whale - A History 21 May
  The ancestor of all whales alive today was a small, land-based mammal with cloven hoofs, perhaps like a pig or a big mole.
  590 Animals (Zoology)
• St Paul 28 May
  the influence of St Paul on the early Christian church and on Christian theology generally.
  220 The Bible

June

• The Trial of Charles I 4 Jun
  Melvyn Bragg and guests Justin Champion, Diane Purkiss and David Wootton discuss the trial of Charles I, recounting the high drama in Westminster Hall and the ideas that led to the execution.
  940 History of Europe
• The Augustan Age 11 Jun
  the political regime and cultural influence of the Roman Emperor Augustus.
  930 History of the Ancient World
• Elizabethan Revenge 18 Jun
  Elizabethan and Jacobean revenge tragedy.
  820 English and Old English literatures
• Sunni and Shia Islam 25 Jun
  Melvyn Bragg and guests Amira Bennison, Robert Gleave and Hugh Kennedy discuss the split between the Sunni and the Shia.
  290 Other religions

July

• Logical Positivism 2 Jul
  Melvyn Bragg discusses Logical Positivism, the eye-wateringly radical early 20th century philosophical movement.
  140 Philosophical schools of thought
• Ediacara Biota 9 Jul
  the Ediacara Biota, the Precambrian life forms which vanished 542 million years ago, and whose discovery proved Darwin right in a way he never imagined.
  560 Fossils and prehistoric life

September

• St Thomas Aquinas 17 Sep
  Melvyn Bragg discusses the life, works and enduring influence of the medieval philosopher and theologian St Thomas Aquinas.
  180 Ancient, medieval, and Eastern philosophy
• Calculus 24 Sep
  Melvyn Bragg discusses the epic feud between Sir Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz over who invented an astonishingly powerful new mathematical tool - calculus.
  510 Mathematics

October

• Akhenaten 1 Oct
  During his reign, Akhenaten embarked on a profoundly radical project: he set out to transform his people’s deepest religious beliefs, moving from a polytheistic tradition to the elevation of a single solar god, Aten.
  930 History of the Ancient World
• The Dreyfus Affair 8 Oct
  the Dreyfus Affair, the 1890s scandal which divided opinion in France for a generation.
  940 History of Europe
• The Death of Elizabeth I 15 Oct
  By the spring of 1603, Elizabeth had been Queen for 44 years, and it was clear that she would leave no heir.
  940 History of Europe
• The Geological Formation of Britain 22 Oct
  Around 600 million years ago the island that we now call Britain was in two parts, far to the south of the Equator.
  550 Earth sciences and geology
• Schopenhauer 29 Oct
  Melvyn Bragg and guests AC Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile and Christopher Janaway discuss the dark, pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer.
  190 Modern Western Philosophy

November

• The Siege of Munster 5 Nov
  In the early 16th century, the Protestant Reformation revolutionised Christian belief.
  940 History of Europe
• Radiation 12 Nov
  Today the word ‘radiation’ conjures up images of destruction.
  530 Physics
• Sparta 19 Nov
  Sparta, the militaristic Ancient Greek city-state, and the political ideas it spawned.
  930 History of the Ancient World
• Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man 26 Nov
  A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce’s groundbreaking 1916 novel about growing up in Catholic Ireland.
  820 English and Old English literatures

December

• The Silk Road 3 Dec
  Melvyn Bragg and guests Tim Barrett, Naomi Standen and Frances Wood discuss the Silk Road, the trade routes which spanned Asia for over a thousand years, carrying Buddhism to China and paper-making and gunpowder westwards.
  950 History of Asia
• Pythagoras 10 Dec
  The Ancient Greek mathematician Pythagoras is probably best known for the theorem concerning right-angled triangles that bears his name.
  180 Ancient, medieval, and Eastern philosophy
• The Samurai 24 Dec
  The Samurai have a fearsome historical reputation as a suicidally brave caste of Japanese warriors.
  950 History of Asia
• Mary Wollstonecraft 31 Dec
  Melvyn Bragg and guests John Mullan, Karen O’Brien and Barbara Taylor discuss the life and ideas of the pioneering British Enlightenment thinker Mary Wollstonecraft.
  190 Modern Western Philosophy