2023

January

• John Donne 12 Jan
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Donne (1573-1631), known now as one of England’s finest poets of love and notable in his own time as an astonishing preacher.
  820 English and Old English literatures
• Rawls’ Theory of Justice 19 Jan
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss A Theory of Justice by John Rawls (1921 - 2002) which has been called the most influential book in twentieth century political philosophy.
  320 Political science
• Superconductivity 26 Jan
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the discovery made in 1911 by the Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes (1853-1926).
  530 Physics

February

• Tycho Brahe 2 Feb
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pioneering Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe (1546 - 1601) whose charts offered an unprecedented level of accuracy.
  520 Astronomy
• Chartism 9 Feb
  On 21 May 1838 an estimated 150,000 people assembled on Glasgow Green for a mass demonstration.
  940 History of Europe
• Stevie Smith 16 Feb
  In 1957 Stevie Smith published a poetry collection called Not Waving But Drowning - and its title poem gave us a phrase which has entered the language.
  820 English and Old English literatures
• Paul Erdős 23 Feb
  Paul Erdos (1913 - 1996) is one of the most celebrated mathematicians of the 20th century.
  510 Mathematics

March

• Megaliths 2 Mar
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss megaliths - huge stones placed in the landscape, often visually striking and highly prominent.
  930 History of the Ancient World
• The Ramayana 9 Mar
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Ramayana, the ancient Hindu epic which is regarded as one of the greatest works of world literature.
  290 Other religions
• Mercantilism 16 Mar
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how, between the 16th and 18th centuries, Europe was dominated by an economic way of thinking called mercantilism.
  330 Economics
• Solon the Lawgiver 23 Mar
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Solon, who was elected archon or chief magistrate of Athens in 594 BC: some see him as the father of Athenian democracy.
  930 History of the Ancient World
• A Room of One’s Own 30 Mar
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Virginia Woolf’s highly influential essay on women and literature, which considers both literary history and future opportunity.
  820 English and Old English literatures

April

• Cnut 6 Apr
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Danish prince who became a very effective King of England in 1016.
  940 History of Europe
• The Battle of Crécy 13 Apr
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the brutal events of 26 August 1346, when the armies of France and England met in a funnel-shaped valley outside the town of Crecy in northern France.
  940 History of Europe
• Linnaeus 20 Apr
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, ideas and legacy of the pioneering Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus (1707 - 1778).
  570 Biology
• Walt Whitman 27 Apr
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the highly influential American poet Walt Whitman.
  810 American literature in English

May

• The Dead Sea Scrolls 4 May
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the revelatory collection of Biblical texts, legal documents, community rules and literary writings.
  290 Other religions
• The Shimabara Rebellion 11 May
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Christian uprising in Japan and its profound and long-term consequences.
  950 History of Asia
• Virgil’s Georgics 18 May
  In the year 29 BC the great Roman poet Virgil published these lines: Blessed is he who has succeeded in learning the laws of nature’s working, has cast beneath his feet all fear and fate’s implacable decree, and the howl of insatiable Death.
  870 Latin and Italic literatures
• Louis XIV: The Sun King 25 May
  In 1661 the 23 year-old French king Louis the XIV had been on the throne for 18 years when his chief minister, Cardinal Mazarin, died.
  940 History of Europe

June

• Mitochondria 1 Jun
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the power-packs within cells in all complex life on Earth.
  570 Biology
• Oedipus Rex 8 Jun
  Sophocles’ play Oedipus Rex begins with a warning: the murderer of the old king of Thebes, Laius, has never been identified or caught, and he’s still at large in the city.
  880 Classical and modern Greek literatures
• Death in Venice 15 Jun
  Death in Venice is Thomas Mann’s most famous - and infamous - novella.
  830 German and related literatures
• Elizabeth Anscombe 22 Jun
  In 1956 Oxford University awarded an honorary degree to the former US president Harry S.
  170 Ethics
• Jupiter 29 Jun
  Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system, and it’s hard to imagine a world more alien and different from Earth.
  520 Astronomy

September

• Albert Einstein 14 Sep
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the man who, in 1905, produced several papers that were to change the world of physics and whose name went on to become a byword for genius.
  530 Physics
• The Seventh Seal 21 Sep
  In the 1000th edition of In Our Time, Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss arguably the most celebrated film of the Swedish director Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007).
  790 Recreational and performing arts
• The Economic Consequences of the Peace 28 Sep
  In an extended version of the programme that was broadcast, Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the influential book John Maynard Keynes wrote in 1919 after he resigned in protest from his role at the Paris Peace Conference.
  940 History of Europe

October

• Plankton 5 Oct
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the tiny drifting organisms in the oceans that sustain the food chain for all the lifeforms in the water and so for the billions of people who, in turn, depend on the seas for their diet.
  570 Biology
• The Federalist Papers 12 Oct
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay’s essays written in 1787/8 in support of the new US Constitution.
  340 Law
• Julian of Norwich 19 Oct
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the anchoress and mystic who, in the late fourteenth century, wrote about her visions of Christ suffering, in a work since known as Revelations of Divine Love.
  240 Christian practice and observance
• Germinal 26 Oct
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Emile Zola’s greatest literary success, his thirteenth novel in a series exploring the extended Rougon-Macquart family.
  840 French and related literatures

November

• Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics 2 Nov
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aristotle’s ideas on what happiness means and how to live a good life.
  170 Ethics
• The Barbary Corsairs 9 Nov
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the North African privateers who, until their demise in the nineteenth century, were a source of great pride and wealth in their home ports, where they sold the people and goods they’d seized from Christian European ships and coastal towns.
  960 History of Africa
• The Theory of the Leisure Class 16 Nov
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the most influential work of Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929).
  330 Economics
• Marguerite de Navarre 23 Nov
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Marguerite, Queen of Navarre (1492 - 1549), author of the Heptameron, a major literary landmark in the French Renaissance.
  840 French and related literatures
• Edgar Allan Poe 30 Nov
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Poe (1809-1849), the American author who is famous for his Gothic tales of horror, madness and the dark interiors of the mind, such as The Fall of the House of Usher and The Tell-Tale Heart.
  810 American literature in English

December

• Karl Barth 7 Dec
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most influential theologians of the twentieth century.
  230 Christianity
• Tiberius 14 Dec
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Roman emperor Tiberius.
  930 History of the Ancient World
• Vincent van Gogh 21 Dec
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Dutch artist famous for starry nights and sunflowers, self portraits and simple chairs.
  750 Painting
• Twelfth Night, or What You Will 28 Dec
  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of Shakespeare’s great comedies, which plays in the space between marriage, love and desire.
  820 English and Old English literatures