In Our Time 4k16t

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the decisive role of one of the great 20th Century physicists in solving the question of nuclear fission. It is said that Meitner (1878-1968) made this breakthrough over Christmas 1938 while she was sitting on a Sweden during a snowy walk with her nephew Otto Frisch (1904-79). Both were Jewish-Austrian refugees who had only recently escaped from Nazi . Others had already broken uranium into the smaller atom barium, but could not explain what they found; was the larger atom bursting, or the smaller atom being chipped off or was something else happening? They turned to Meitner. She, with Frisch, deduced the nucleus really was splitting like a drop of water into a dumbbell shape, with the electrical charges at each end forcing the divide, something previously thought impossible, and they named this ‘fission’. This was a crucial breakthrough for which Meitner was eventually widely recognised if not at first. With Jess Wade A Royal Society University Research Fellow and Lecturer in Functional Materials at Imperial College, London Frank Close Professor Emeritus of Theoretical Physics and Fellow Emeritus at Exeter College, University of Oxford And Steven Bramwell Director of the London Centre for Nanotechnology and Professor of Physics at University College London Producer: Simon Tillotson Reading list: Frank Close, Destroyer of Worlds: The Deep History of the Nuclear Age, 1895-1965 (Allen Lane, 2025) Ruth Lewin Sime, Lise Meitner: A Life in Physics (University of California Press, 1996) Marissa Moss, The Woman Who Split the Atom: The Life of Lise Meitner (Abrams Books, 2022) Patricia Rife, Lise Meitner and the Dawn of the Nuclear Age (Birkha Verlag, 1999) In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Korea's brief but significant period as an empire as it moved from the 500-year-old dynastic Joseon monarchy towards modernity. It was in October 1897 that King Gojong declared himself Emperor, seizing his chance when the once-dominant China lost to Japan in the First Sino-Japanese War. The king wanted to have the same status as the neighbouring Russian, Chinese and Japanese Emperors, to shore up a bid for Korean independence and sovereignty when the world’s major powers either wanted to open Korea up to trade or to colonise it. The Korean Empire lasted only thirteen years, yet it was a time of great transformation for this state and the whole region with lasting consequences in the next century… With Nuri Kim Associate Professor in Korean Studies at the faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Wolfson College Holly Stephens Lecturer in Japanese and Korean Studies at the University of Edinburgh And Derek Kramer Lecturer in Korean Studies at the University of Sheffield Producer: Simon Tillotson Reading list: Isabella Bird Bishop, Korea and her Neighbors: A Narrative of Travel, With an of the Recent Vicissitudes and Present Position of the Country (first published 1898; Forgotten Books, 2019) Vipan Chandra, Imperialism, Resistance and Reform in Late Nineteenth-Century Korea: Enlightenment and the Independence Club (University of California, Institute of East Asian Studies, 1988) Peter Duus, The Abacus and the Sword: The Japanese Penetration of Korea, 1859-1910 (University of California Press, 1995) Carter J. Eckert, Offspring of Empire: The Koch'ang Kims and the Colonial Origins of Korean Capitalism, 1876–1910 (University of Washington Press, 1991) George L. Kallander, Salvation through Dissent: Tonghak Heterodoxy and Early Modern Korea (University of Hawaii Press, 2013) Kim Dong-no, John B. Duncan and Kim Do-hyung (eds.), Reform and Modernity in the Taehan Empire (Jimoondang, 2006) Kirk W. Larsen, Tradition, Treaties, and Trade: Qing Imperialism and Chosŏn Korea, 1850-1910 (Harvard University Asia Center, 2008) Yumi Moon, Populist Collaborators: The Ilchinhoe and the Japanese Colonization of Korea, 1896-1910 (Cornell University Press, 2013) Sung-Deuk Oak, The Making of Korean Christianity: Protestant Encounters with Korean Religions, 1876-1915 (Baylor University Press, 2013) Eugene T. Park, A Family of No Prominence: The Descendants of Pak Tŏkhwa and the Birth of Modern Korea (Stanford University Press, 2020) Michael E. Robinson, Korea’s Twentieth-Century Odyssey: A Short History (University of Hawaii Press, 2007) Andre Schmid, Korea Between Empires, 1895-1919 (Columbia University Press, 2002) Vladimir Tikhonov, Social Darwinism and Nationalism in Korea: The Beginnings, 1880s-1910s (Brill, 2010) In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the great figures in world literature. The French playwright Molière (1622-1673) began as an actor, aiming to be a tragedian, but he was stronger in comedy, touring with a troupe for 13 years until Louis XIV summoned him to audition at the Louvre and gave him his break. It was in Paris and at Versailles that Molière wrote and performed his best known plays, among them Tartuffe, Le Misanthrope and Le Malade Imaginaire, and in time he was so celebrated that French became known as The Language of Molière. With Noel Peacock Emeritus Marshall Professor in French Language and Literature at the University of Glasgow Jan Clarke Professor of French at Durham University And Joe Harris Professor of Early Modern French and Comparative Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London Producer: Simon Tillotson Reading list: David Bradby and Andrew Calder (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Molière (Cambridge University Press, 2006) Jan Clarke (ed.), Molière in Context (Cambridge University Press, 2022) Georges Forestier, Molière (Gallimard, 2018) Michael Hawcroft, Molière: Reasoning with Fools (Oxford University Press, 2007) John D. Lyons, Women and Irony in Molière’s Comedies of Mariage (Oxford University Press, 2023) Robert McBride and Noel Peacock (eds.), Le Nouveau Moliériste (11 vols., University of Glasgow Presw, 1994- ) Larry F. Norman, The Public Mirror: Molière and the Social Commerce of Depiction (University of Chicago Press, 1999) Noel Peacock, Molière sous les feux de la rampe (Hermann, 2012) Julia Prest, Controversy in French Drama: Molière’s Tartuffe and the Struggle for Influence (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) Virginia Scott, Molière: A Theatrical Life (Cambridge University Press, 2020) In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

Melvyn Bragg and guests explore typology, a method of biblical interpretation that aims to meaningfully link people, places, and events in the Hebrew Bible, what Christians call the Old Testament, with the coming of Christ in the New Testament. Old Testament figures like Moses, Jonah, and King David were regarded by Christians as being ‘types’ or symbols of Jesus. This way of thinking became hugely popular in medieval Europe, Renaissance England and Victorian Britain, as Christians sought to make sense of their Jewish inheritance - sometimes rejecting that inheritance with antisemitic fervour. It was a way of seeing human history as part of a divine plan, with ancient events prefiguring more modern ones, and it influenced debates about the relationship between metaphor and reality in the bible, in literature, and in art. It also influenced attitudes towards reality, time and history. With Miri Rubin, Professor of Medieval and Early Modern History at Queen Mary, University of London Harry Spillane, Munby Fellow in Bibliography at Cambridge and Research Fellow at Darwin College And Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe, Associate Professor in Patristics at Cambridge. Producer: Eliane Glaser Reading list: A. C. Charity, Events and their Afterlife: The Dialectics of Christian Typology in the Bible and Dante (first published 1966; Cambridge University Press, 2010) Margaret Christian, Spenserian Allegory and Elizabethan Biblical Exegesis: The Context for 'The Faerie Queene' (Manchester University Press, 2016) Dagmar Eichberger and Shelley Perlove (eds.), Visual Typology in Early Modern Europe: Continuity and Expansion (Brepols, 2018) Tibor Fabiny, The Lion and the Lamb: Figuralism and Fulfilment in the Bible, Art and Literature (Palgrave Macmillan, 1992) Tibor Fabiny, ‘Typology: Pros and Cons in Biblical Hermeneutics and Literary Criticism’ (Academia, 2018) Northrop Frye, The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (first published 1982; Mariner Books, 2002) Leonhard Goppelt (trans. Donald H. Madvig), Typos: The Typological Interpretation of the Old Testament in the New (William B Eerdmans Publishing Co, 1982) Paul J. Korshin, Typologies in England, 1650-1820 (first published in 1983; Princeton University Press, 2014) Judith Lieu, Image and Reality: The Jews in the World of the Christians in the Second Century (T & T Clark International, 1999) Sara Lipton, Images of Intolerance: The Representation of Jews and Judaism in the Bible Moralisee (University of California Press, 1999) Montague Rhodes James and Kenneth Harrison, A Guide to the Windows of King's College Chapel (first published in 1899; Cambridge University Press, 2010) J. W. Rogerson and Judith M. Lieu (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Biblical Studies (Oxford University Press, 2008) In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio production

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the best known events and figures in Irish history. In 1014 Brian Boru, High King of Ireland, defeated the Hiberno-Norse forces of Sigtrygg Silkbeard and allies near their Dublin stronghold, with Brian losing his life on the day of battle. Soon chroniclers in Ireland and abroad were recording and retelling the events, raising the status of Brian Boru as one who sacrificed himself for Ireland, Christ-like, a connection reinforced by the battle taking place on Good Friday. While some of the facts are contested, the Battle of Clontarf became a powerful symbol of what a united Ireland could achieve by force against invaders. With Seán Duffy Professor of Medieval Irish and Insular History at Trinity College Dublin Máire Ní Mhaonaigh Professor of Celtic and Medieval Studies at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge And Alex Woolf Professor of Medieval Studies at the University of St Andrews Producer: Simon Tillotson Reading list: Howard B. Clarke, Sheila Dooley and Ruth Johnson, Dublin and the Viking World (O'Brien Press Ltd, 2018) Howard B. Clarke and Ruth Johnson (ed.), The Vikings in Ireland and Beyond: Before and After Clontarf (Four Courts Press, 2015) Clare Downham, ‘The Battle of Clontarf in Irish History and Legend’ (History Ireland 13, No. 5, 2005) Seán Duffy, Brian Boru and the Battle of Clontarf (Gill & Macmillan, 2014) Seán Duffy (ed.), Medieval Dublin XVI: Proceedings of Clontarf 1014–2014: National Conference Marking the Millennium of the Battle of Clontarf (Four Courts Press, 2017) Colmán Etchingham, ‘North Wales, Ireland and the Isles: The Insular Viking Zone’ (Peritia 15, 2001) Colmán Etchingham, Jón Viðar Sigurðsson, Máire Ní Mhaonaigh and Elizabeth Ashman Rowe, Norse-Gaelic s in a Viking World (Brepols N.V., 2019) David Griffiths, Vikings of the Irish Sea (The History Press, 2nd ed., 2025) James Henthorn Todd (ed. and trans.), Cogadh Gaedhel re Gallaibh: The War of the Gaedhil with the Gaill, or, the Invasions of Ireland by the Danes and other Norsemen (first published 1867; Cambridge University Press, 2012) Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, Brian Boru: Ireland's greatest king? (The History Press, 2006) Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, ‘Tales of Three Gormlaiths in Medieval Irish Literature’ (Ériu 52, 2002) Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, ‘Cogad Gáedel re Gallaib: Some Dating Consierations’ (Peritia 9, 1995) Brendan Smith, The Cambridge History of Ireland, vol. 1, 600–1550 (Cambridge University Press, 2018), especially ‘The Scandinavian Intervention’ by Alex Woolf In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the brothers Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus whose names are entwined with the end of Rome's Republic and the rise of the Roman Emperors. As tribunes, they brought popular reforms to the Roman Republic at the end of the 2nd century BC. Tiberius (c163-133BC) brought in land reform so every soldier could have his farm, while Gaius (c154-121BC) offered cheap grain for Romans and targeted corruption among the elites. Those elites saw the reforms as such a threat that they had the brothers killed: Tiberius in a shocking murder led by the Pontifex Maximus, the high priest, in 133BC and Gaius 12 years later with the senate's approval. This increase in political violence was to destabilise the Republic, forever tying the Gracchi to the question of why Rome’s Republic gave way to the Rome of Emperors. With Catherine Steel Professor of Classics at the University of Glasgow Federico Santangelo Professor of Ancient History at Newcastle University And Kathryn Tempest Lecturer in Roman History at the University of Leicester Producer: Simon Tillotson Reading list: Appian (trans. John Carter), The Civil Wars (Penguin Classics, 2005) Valentina Arena, Jonathan R. W. Prag and Andrew Stiles, A Companion to the Political Culture of the Roman Republic (Wiley-Blackwell, 2022), especially the chapter by Lea Beness and Tom Hillard R. Cristofoli, A. Galimberti and F. Rohr Vio (eds.), Costruire la Memoria: Uso e abuso della storia fra tarda repubblica e primo principato (L'Erma di Bretschneider, 2017), especially ‘The 'Tyranny' of the Gracchi and the Concordia of the Optimates: An Ideological Construct.’ by Francisco Pina Polo Suzanne Dixon, Cornelia: Mother of the Gracchi, (Routledge, 2007) Peter Garnsey and Dominic Rathbone, ‘The Background to the Grain Law of Gaius Gracchus’ (Journal of Roman Studies 75, 1985) O. Hekster, G. de Kleijn and D. Slootjes (eds.), Crises and the Roman Empire (Brill, 2007), especially ‘Tiberius Gracchus, Land and Manpower’ by John W. Rich Josiah Osgood, Rome and the Making of a World State, 150 BCE-20 CE (Cambridge University Press, 2018) Plutarch (trans. Ian Scott-Kilvert and Christopher Pelling), Rome in Crisis (Penguin Classics, 2010) Plutarch (trans. Robin Waterfield, ed. Philip A. Stadter), Roman Lives (Oxford University Press, 2008) Nathan Rosenstein, ‘Aristocrats and Agriculture in the Middle and Late Republic’ (Journal of Roman Studies 98, 2008) A. N. Sherwin-White, ‘The Lex Repetundarum and the Political Ideas of Gaius Gracchus’ (Journal of Roman Studies 72, 1982) Catherine Steel, The End of the Roman Republic, 146 to 44 BC: Conquest and Crisis (Edinburgh University Press, 2013) David Stockton, The Gracchi (Oxford University Press, 1979) In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961), who was part of the movement known as phenomenology. While less well-known than his contemporaries Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, his popularity has increased among philosophers in recent years. Merleau-Ponty rejected Rene Descartes’ division between body and mind, arguing that the way we perceive the world around us cannot be separated from our experience of inhabiting a physical body. Merleau-Ponty was interested in the down-to-earth question of what it is actually like to live in the world. While performing actions as simple as brushing our teeth or patting a dog, we shape the world and, in turn, the world shapes us. With Komarine Romdenh-Romluc Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Sheffield Thomas Baldwin Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of York And Timothy Mooney Associate Professor of Philosophy at University College, Dublin Produced by Eliane Glaser Reading list: Peter Antich, Motivation and the Primacy of Perception: Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Knowledge (Ohio University Press, 2021) Dimitris Apostolopoulos, Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Language (Rowman and Littlefield, 2019) Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being and Apricot Cocktails (Chatto and Windus, 2016) Thomas Baldwin (ed.), Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Basic Writings (Routledge, 2004) Thomas Baldwin (ed.), Reading Merleau-Ponty (Routledge, 2007) Renaud Barbaras (trans. Ted Toadvine and Leonard Lawlor), The Being of the Phenomenon: Merleau-Ponty’s Ontology (Indiana University Press, 2004). Anya Daly, Merleau-Ponty and the Ethics of Intersubjectivity (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) M. C. Dillon, Merleau-Ponty’s Ontology (Northwestern University Press, 1998, 2nd ed.) Maurice Merleau-Ponty (trans. Alden L. Fisher), The Structure of Behavior (first published 1942; Beacon Press, 1976) Maurice Merleau-Ponty (trans. Donald Landes), Phenomenology of Perception (first published 1945; Routledge, 2011) Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Sense and Non-Sense (first published 1948; Northwestern University Press, 1964) Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Signs (first published 1960; Northwestern University Press, 1964) Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible (first published 1964; Northwestern University Press, 1968) Maurice Merleau-Ponty (trans. Oliver Davis with an introduction by Thomas Baldwin), The World of Perception (Routledge, 2008) Ariane Mildenberg (ed.), Understanding Merleau-Ponty, Understanding Modernism (Bloomsbury, 2019) Timothy Mooney, Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception: On the Body Informed (Cambridge University Press, 2023) Katherine J. Morris, Starting with Merleau-Ponty (Continuum, 2012) Komarine Romdenh-Romluc, Merleau-Ponty and Phenomenology of Perception (Routledge, 2011) Komarine Romdenh-Romluc, The Routledge Guidebook to Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception (Routledge, 2011) Jean-Paul Sartre (trans. Benita Eisler), Situations (Hamish Hamilton, 1965) Hilary Spurling, The Girl from the Fiction Department (Penguin, 2003) Jon Stewart (ed.), The Debate Between Sartre and Merleau-Ponty (Northwestern University Press, 1998) Ted Toadvine, Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy of Nature (Northwestern University Press, 2009) Kerry Whiteside, Merleau-Ponty and the Foundation of an Existential Politics (Princeton University Press, 1988) Iris Marion Young, On Female Body Experience: “Throwing Like a Girl” and Other Essays (Oxford University Press, 2005) In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most energetic, varied and innovative playwrights of his time. Thomas Middleton (1580-1627) worked across the London stages both alone and with others from Dekker and Rowley to Shakespeare and more. Middleton’s range included raucous city comedies such as A Chaste Maid in Cheapside and chilling revenge tragedies like The Changeling and The Revenger’s Tragedy, some with the main adult companies and some with child actors playing the scheming adults. Middleton seemed to be everywhere on the Jacobean stage, mixing warmth and cruelty amid laughter and horror, and even Macbeth’s witches may be substantially his work. With Emma Smith Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Hertford College, University of Oxford Lucy Munro Professor of Shakespeare and Early Modern Literature at Kings College London And Michelle O’Callaghan Professor of Early Modern Literature at the University of Reading Producer: Simon Tillotson Reading list: Swapan Chakravorty, Society and Politics in the Plays of Thomas Middleton (Clarendon Press, 1996) Suzanne Gossett (ed.), Thomas Middleton in Context (Cambridge University Press, 2011) R.V. Holdsworth (ed.), Three Jacobean Revenge Tragedies: A Selection of Critical Essays (Macmillan, 1990), especially ‘Calvinist Psychology in Middleton’s Tragedies’ by John Stachniewski Mark Hutchings and A. A. Bromham, Middleton and His Collaborators (Northcote House, 2007) Gordon McMullan and Kelly Stage (eds.), The Changeling: The State of Play (The Arden Shakespeare, 2022) Lucy Munro, Shakespeare in the Theatre: The King's Men (The Arden Shakespeare, 2020) David Nicol, Middleton & Rowley: Forms of Collaboration in the Jacobean Playhouse (University of Toronto Press, 2012) Michelle O’Callaghan, Thomas Middleton: Renaissance Dramatist (Edinburgh University Press, 2009) Gary Taylor and Trish Thomas Henley (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Thomas Middleton (Oxford University Press, 2012) In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

Melvyn Bragg and guests explore the history and reputation of the Persian ruler Cyrus the Great. Cyrus the Second of Persia as he was known then was born in the sixth century BCE in Persis which is now in Iran. He was the founder of the first Persian Empire, the largest empire at that point in history, spanning more than two million square miles. His story was told by the Greek historians Herodotus and Xenophon, and in the Hebrew bible he is praised for freeing the Jewish captives in Babylon. But the historical facts are intertwined with fiction. Cyrus proclaimed himself ‘king of the four corners of the world’ in the famous Cyrus Cylinder, one of the most ired objects in the British Museum. It’s been called by some the first bill of human rights, but that’s a label which has been disputed by most scholars today. With Mateen Arghandehpour, a researcher for the Invisible East Project at Oxford University, Lindsay Allen, Senior Lecturer in Ancient Greek and Near Eastern History at King’s College London, And Lynette Mitchell, Professor Emerita in Classics and Ancient History at Exeter University. Producer: Eliane Glaser Reading list: Pierre Briant (trans. Peter T. Daniels), From Cyrus to Alexander: A History of the Persian Empire (Eisenbrauns, 2002) John Curtis and Nigel Tallis (eds.), Forgotten Empire: The World of Ancient Persia (The British Museum Press, 2005) Irving Finkel (ed.), The Cyrus Cylinder: The King of Persia’s Proclamation from Ancient Babylon (I.B.Tauris, 2013) Lisbeth Fried, ‘Cyrus the Messiah? The Historical Background to Isaiah 45:1’ (Harvard Theological Review 95, 2002) M. Kozuh, W.F. Henkelman, C.E. Jones and C. Woods (eds.), Extraction and Control: Studies in Honour of Matthew W. Stolper (Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 2014), especially the chapter ‘Cyrus the Great, exiles and foreign gods: A comparison of Assyrian and Persian policies in subject nations’ by R. J. van der Spek Lynette Mitchell, Cyrus the Great: A Biography of Kingship (Routledge, 2023) Michael Roaf, Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East (Facts On File, 1990) Vesta Sarkosh Curtis and Sarah Stewart (eds.), Birth of the Persian Empire (I.B.Tauris, 2005), especially the chapter ‘Cyrus the Great and the kingdom of Anshan’ by D.T. Potts Matt Waters, King of the World: The Life of Cyrus the Great (Oxford University Press, 2022) In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio production

Since plants have to mate and produce offspring while rooted to the spot, they have to be pollinated – by wind, water, or animals – most commonly insects. They use a surprising array of tricks to attract pollinators: striking colours, iridescent light effects, and enticing scents, to name but a few. Insects, on the other hand, do not seek to pollinate plants – they are looking for food; so plants make sure it’s worth their while. Insects are also remarkably sophisticated in their ability to find, recognise and find their way inside flowers. So pollination has evolved as a complex dance between plants and pollinators that is essential for life on earth to continue. With Beverley Glover, Director of the Cambridge University Botanic Garden Jane Memmott, Professor of Ecology at the University of Bristol And Lars Chittka, Professor of Sensory and Behavioural Ecology at Queen Mary, University of London. Producer: Eliane Glaser Reading list: Stephen L Buchmann and Gary Paul Nabhan, The Forgotten Pollinators (Island Press, 1997) Lars Chittka, The Mind of a Bee (Princeton University Press, 2023) Steven Falk, Field Guide to the Bees of Britain and Ireland (British Wildlife Publishing, 2015) Francis S. Gilbert (illustrated by Steven J. Falk), Hoverflies: Naturalists' Handbooks vol. 5 (Pelagic Publishing, 2015) Dave Goulson, A Sting in the Tale: My Adventures with Bumblebees (Vintage, 2014) Edwige Moyroud and Beverley J. Glover, ‘The evolution of diverse floral morphologies’ (Current Biology vol 11, 2017) Jeff Ollerton, Birds and Flowers: An Intimate 50 Million Year Relationship (Pelagic Publishing, 2024) Alan E. Stubbs and Steven J. Falk, British Hoverflies (‎British Entomological & Natural History Society, 2002) Timothy Walker, Pollination: The Enduring Relationship Between Plant and Pollinator (Princeton University Press, 2020) In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Hindu goddess Kali, often depicted as dark blue, fierce, defiant, revelling in her power, and holding in her four or more arms a curved sword and a severed head with a cup underneath to catch the blood. She may have her tongue out, to catch more blood spurting from her enemies, be wearing a garland of more severed heads and a skirt of severed hands and yet she is also a nurturing mother figure, known in West Bengal as ‘Maa Kali’ and she can be fiercely protective. Sometimes she is shown as young and conventionally beautiful and at other times as old, emaciated and hungry, so defying any narrow definition. With Bihani Sarkar Senior Lecturer in Comparative Non-Western Thought at Lancaster University Julius Lipner Professor Emeritus of Hinduism and the Comparative Study of Religion at the University of Cambridge And Jessica Frazier Lecturer in the Study of Religion at the University of Oxford and fellow at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies During this discussion, Julius Lipner reads a translation of a poem by Kamalakanta (c.1769–1821) "Is my black Mother Syama really black?" This translation is by Rachel Fell McDermott and can be found in her book Singing to the Goddess, Poems to Kali and Uma from Bengal (Oxford University Press, 2001) Producer: Simon Tillotson Reading list: Mandakranta Bose (ed.), The Goddess (Oxford University Press, 2018) John S. Hawley and Donna M. Wulff (eds.), Devi: Goddesses of India (University of California Press, 1996) Knut A. Jacobsen (ed.), Brill's Encyclopedia of Hinduism, vol 1 (Brill, 2025) David Kinsley, Hindu Goddesses: Visions of the Divine Feminine in the Hindu Religious Tradition (University of California Press, 1986), especially chapter 8 Rachel Fell McDermott and Jeffrey J. Kripal (eds.), Encountering Kālī in the margins, at the center, in the west (University of California Press, 2003) In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the renowned and versatile Irish writer Oliver Goldsmith (1728 - 1774). There is a memorial to him in Westminster Abbey’s Poet’s Corner written by Dr Johnson, celebrating Goldsmith's life as a poet, natural philosopher and historian. To this could be added ‘playwright’ and ‘novelist’ and ‘science writer’ and ‘pamphleteer’ and much besides, as Goldsmith explored so many different outlets for his talents. While he began on Grub Street in London, the centre for jobbing writers scrambling for paid work, he became a great populariser and compiler of new ideas and knowledge and achieved notable successes with poems such as The Deserted Village, his play She Stoops to Conquer and his short novel The Vicar of Wakefield. With David O’Shaughnessy Professor of Eighteenth-Century Studies at the University of Galway Judith Hawley Professor of Eighteenth-Century Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London And Michael Griffin Professor of English at the University of Limerick Producer: Simon Tillotson Reading list: Norma Clarke, Brothers of the Quill: Oliver Goldsmith in Grub Street (Harvard University Press, 2016) Leo Damrosch, The Club: Johnson, Boswell, and the Friends Who Shaped an Age (Yale University Press, 2019) Oliver Goldsmith (ed. Aileen Douglas and Ian Campbell Ross), The Vicar of Wakefield: A Tale, Supposed to Be Written by Himself (first published 1766; Cambridge University Press, 2024) Oliver Goldsmith (ed. Arthur Friedman), The Vicar of Wakefield (first published 1766; Oxford University Press, 2008) Oliver Goldsmith (ed. Arthur Friedman), The Collected Works of Oliver Goldsmith, 5 vols (Clarendon Press, 1966) Oliver Goldsmith (ed. Robert L. Mack), Oliver Goldsmith: Everyman’s Poetry, No. 30 (Phoenix, 1997) Oliver Goldsmith (ed. James Ogden), She Stoops to Conquer (first performed 1773; Methuen Drama, 2003) Oliver Goldsmith (ed. James Watt), The Citizen of the World (first published 1762; Cambridge University Press, 2024) Oliver Goldsmith (ed. Nigel Wood), She Stoops to Conquer and Other Comedies (first performed 1773; Oxford University Press, 2007) Michael Griffin and David O’Shaughnessy (eds.), Oliver Goldsmith in Context (Cambridge University Press, 2024) Michael Griffin and David O’Shaughnessy (eds.), The Letters of Oliver Goldsmith (Cambridge University Press, 2018) Roger Lonsdale (ed.), The Poems of Gray, Collins and Goldsmith (Longmans, 1969) In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio production

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Catherine of Aragon (1485-1536), the youngest child of the newly dominant Spanish rulers Ferdinand and Isabella. When she was 3, her parents contracted her to marry Arthur, Prince of Wales, the heir to the Tudor king Henry VII in order to strengthen Spain's alliances, since Henry's kingdom was a longstanding trade partner and an enemy of Spain's greatest enemy, . For the next decade Catherine had the best humanist education available, preparing her for her expected life as queen and drawing inspiration from her warrior mother. She arrived in London to be married when she was 15 but within a few months she was widowed, her situation uncertain and left relatively impoverished for someone of her status. Rather than return home, Catherine stayed and married her late husband's brother, Henry VIII. In her view and that of many around her, she was an exemplary queen and, even after Henry VIII had arranged the annulment of their marriage for the chance of a male heir with Anne Boleyn, Catherine continued to consider herself his only queen. With Lucy Wooding Langford Fellow and Tutor in History at Lincoln College, University of Oxford and Professor of Early Modern History at Oxford Maria Hayward Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Southampton And Gonzalo Velasco Berenguer Lecturer in Global Medieval and Early Modern History at the University of Bristol Producer: Simon Tillotson In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production Reading list: Michelle Beer, Queenship at the Renaissance Courts of Britain: Catherine of Aragon and Margaret Tudor, 1503-1533 (Royal Historical Society, 2018) G. R. Bernard, The King's Reformation: Henry VIII and the Remaking of the English Church (Yale University Press, 2007) José Luis Colomer and Amalia Descalzo (eds.), Spanish Fashion at the Courts of Early Modern Europe (Centro de Estudios Europa Hispanica, 2014), especially vol 2, 'Spanish Princess or Queen of England? The Image, Identity and Influence of Catherine of Aragon at the Courts of Henry VII and Henry VIII' by Maria Hayward Theresa Earenfight, Catherine of Aragon: Infanta of Spain, Queen of England (Penn State University Press, 2022) John Edwards, Ferdinand and Isabella: Profiles In Power (Routledge, 2004) Garrett Mattingley, Catherine of Aragon (first published 1941; Random House, 2000) J. J. Scarisbrick, Henry VIII (first published 1968; Yale University Press, 1997) David Starkey, Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII (Vintage, 2004) Giles Tremlett, Catherine of Aragon: Henry's Spanish Queen (Faber & Faber, 2011) Juan Luis Vives (trans. Charles Fantazzi), The Education of a Christian Woman: A Sixteenth-Century Manual (University of Chicago Press, 2000) Patrick Williams, Catherine of Aragon: The Tragic Story of Henry VIII's First Unfortunate Wife (Amberley Publishing, 2013) Lucy Wooding, Henry VIII (Routledge, 2009)

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the architect Sir John Soane (1753 -1837), the son of a bricklayer. He rose up the ranks of his profession as an architect to see many of his designs realised to great acclaim, particularly the Bank of England and the Law Courts at Westminster Hall, although his work on both of those has been largely destroyed. He is now best known for his house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields in London, which he remodelled and crammed with antiquities and artworks: he wanted visitors to experience the house as a dramatic grand tour of Europe in microcosm. He became professor of architecture at the Royal Academy, and in a series of influential lectures he set out his belief in the power of buildings to enlighten people about “the poetry of architecture”. Visitors to the museum and his other works can see his trademark architectural features such as his shallow dome, which went on to inspire Britain's red telephone boxes. With: s Sands, the Curator of Drawings and Books at Sir John Soane’s Museum Frank Salmon, Associate Professor of the History of Art at the University of Cambridge and Director of the Ax:son Johnson Centre for the Study of Classical Architecture And Gillian Darley, historian and author of Soane's biography. Producer: Eliane Glaser In Our time is a BBC Studios Audio production. Reading list: Barry Bergdoll, European Architecture 1750-1890 (Oxford University Press, 2000) Bruce Boucher, John Soane's Cabinet of Curiosities: Reflections on an Architect and His Collection (Yale University Press, 2024) Oliver Bradbury, Sir John Soane’s Influence on Architecture from 1791: An Enduring Legacy (Routledge, 2015) Gillian Darley, John Soane: An Accidental Romantic (Yale University Press, 1999) Ptolemy Dean, Sir John Soane and the Country Estate (Ashgate, 1999) Ptolemy Dean, Sir John Soane and London (Lund Humphries, 2006) Helen Dorey, John Soane and J.M.W. Turner: Illuminating a Friendship (Sir John Soane’s Museum, 2007) Tim Knox, Sir John Soane’s Museum (Merrell, 2015) Brian Lukacher, Joseph Gandy: An Architectural Visionary in Georgian England (Thames and Hudson, 2006) Susan Palmer, At Home with the Soanes: Upstairs, Downstairs in 19th Century London (Pimpernel Press, 2015) s Sands, Architectural Drawings: Hidden Masterpieces at Sir John Soane’s Museum (Batsford, 2021) Sir John Soane’s Museum, A Complete Description (Sir John Soane’s Museum, 2018) Mary Ann Stevens and Margaret Richardson (eds.), John Soane Architect: Master of Space and Light (Royal Academy Publications, 1999) John Summerson, Architecture in Britain 1530-1830 (9th edition, Yale University Press, 1993) A.A. Tait, Robert Adam: Drawings and Imagination (Cambridge University Press, 1993) John H. Taylor, Sir John Soane’s Greatest Treasure: The Sarcophagus of Seti I (Pimpernel Press, 2017) David Watkin, Sir John Soane: Enlightenment Thought and the Royal Academy Lectures (Cambridge University Press, 1996) David Watkin, Sir John Soane: The Royal Academy Lectures (Cambridge University Press, 2000) John Wilton-Ely, Piranesi, Paestum & Soane (Prestel, 2013)

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss a story that circulated widely in the middle ages about a highly learned woman who lived in the ninth century, dressed as a man, travelled to Rome, and was elected Pope. Her papacy came to a dramatic end when it was revealed that she was a woman, a discovery that is said to have occurred when she gave birth in the street. The story became a popular cautionary tale directed at women who attempted to transgress traditional roles, and it famously blurred the boundary between fact and fiction. The story lives on as the subject of recent novels, plays and films. With: Katherine Lewis, Honorary Professor of Medieval History at the University of Lincoln and Research Associate at the University of York Laura Kalas, Senior Lecturer in Medieval English Literature at Swansea University And Anthony Bale, Professor of Medieval & Renaissance English at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Girton College. Producer: Eliane Glaser Reading list: Alain Boureau (trans. Lydia G. Cochrane), The Myth of Pope Joan (University of Chicago Press, 2001) Stephen Harris and Bryon L. Grisby (eds.), Misconceptions about the Middle Ages (Routledge, 2008), especially 'The Medieval Popess' by Vincent DiMarco Valerie R. Hotchkiss, Clothes Make the Man: Female Cross Dressing in Medieval Europe (Routledge, 1996) Jacques Le Goff, Heroes and Marvels of the Middle Ages (Reaktion, 2020), especially the chapter ‘Pope Joan’ Marina Montesano, Cross-dressing in the Middle Ages (Routledge, 2024) Joan Morris, Pope John VIII - An English Woman: Alias Pope Joan (Vrai, 1985) Thomas F. X. Noble, ‘Why Pope Joan?’ (Catholic Historical Review, vol. 99, no.2, 2013) Craig M. Rustici, The Afterlife of Pope Joan: Deploying the Popess Legend in Early Modern England (University of Michigan Press, 2006) In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio production

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Plato's Crito and Phaedo, his s of the last days of Socrates in prison in 399 BC as he waited to be executed by drinking hemlock. Both works show Socrates preparing to die in the way he had lived: doing philosophy. In the Crito, Plato shows Socrates arguing that he is duty bound not to escape from prison even though a bribe would open the door, while in the Phaedo his argument is for the immortality of the soul which, at the point of death, might leave uncorrupted from the 'prison' of his body, the one escape that truly mattered to Socrates. His example in his last days has proved an inspiration to thinkers over the centuries and in no small way has helped ensure the strength of his reputation. With Angie Hobbs Professor of the Public Understanding of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield Fiona Leigh Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at University College London And James Warren Professor of Ancient Philosophy at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge Producer: Simon Tillotson Reading list: David Ebrey, Plato’s Phaedo: Forms, Death and the Philosophical Life (Cambridge University Press, 2023) Dorothea Frede, ‘The Final Proof of the Immortality of the Soul in Plato’s Phaedo 102a-107a’ (Phronesis 23, 1978) W. K. C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 4, Plato: The Man and his Dialogues, Earlier Period (Cambridge University Press, 2008) Verity Harte, ‘Conflicting Values in Plato’s Crito’ (Archiv. für Geschichte der Philosophie 81, 1999) Angie Hobbs, Why Plato Matters Now (Bloomsbury, forthcoming 2025), especially chapter 5 Rachana Kamtekar (ed.), Plato’s Euthyphro, Apology and Crito: Critical Essays (Rowman and Littlefield, 2004) Richard Kraut, Socrates and the State (Princeton University Press, 1984) Melissa Lane, ‘Argument and Agreement in Plato’s Crito’ (History of Political Thought 19, 1998) Plato (trans. Chris Emlyn-Jones and William Preddy), Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo and Phaedrus (Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, 2017) Plato (trans. G. M. A. Grube and John Cooper), The Trial and Death of Socrates: Euthyphro Apology, Crito, Phaedo (Hackett, 2001) Plato (trans. Christopher Rowe), The Last Days of Socrates: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo (Penguin, 2010) Donald R. Robinson (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Socrates (Cambridge University Press, 2011) David Sedley and Alex Long (eds.), Plato: Meno and Phaedo (Cambridge University Press, 2010) James Warren, ‘Forms of Agreement in Plato’s Crito’ (Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 123, Issue 1, April 2023) Robin Waterfield, Why Socrates Died: Dispelling the Myths (Faber and Faber, 2010) In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most consequential battles of recent centuries. On 20th September 1792 at Valmy, 120 miles to the east of Paris, the army of the French Revolution faced Prussians, Austrians and French royalists heading for Paris to free Louis XVI and restore his power and end the Revolution. The professional soldiers in the French army were ed by citizens singing the Marseillaise and their refusal to give ground prompted their opponents to retreat when they might have stayed and won. The French success was transformative. The next day, back in Paris, the National Convention abolished the monarchy and declared the new Republic. Goethe, who was at Valmy, was to write that from that day forth began a new era in the history of the world. With Michael Rowe Reader in European History at King’s College London Heidi Mehrkens Lecturer in Modern European History at the University of Aberdeen And Colin Jones Professor Emeritus of History at Queen Mary, University of London Producer: Simon Tillotson Reading list T. C. W. Blanning, The French Revolutionary Wars, 1787-1802 (Hodder Education, 1996) Elizabeth Cross, ‘The Myth of the Foreign Enemy? The Brunswick Manifesto and the Radicalization of the French Revolution’ (French History 25/2, 2011) Charles J. Esdaile, The Wars of the French Revolution, 1792-1801 (Routledge, 2018) John A. Lynn, ‘Valmy’ (MHQ: Quarterly Journal of Military History, Fall 1992) Munro Price, The Fall of the French Monarchy: Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette and the baron de Breteuil (Macmillan, 2002) Simon Schama, Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution (Penguin Books, 1989) Samuel F. Scott, From Yorktown to Valmy: The Transformation of the French Army in an Age of Revolution (University Press of Colorado, 1998) Marie-Cécile Thoral, From Valmy to Waterloo: at War, 1792–1815 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss slime mould, a basic organism that grows on logs, cowpats and compost heaps. Scientists have found difficult to categorise slime mould: in 1868, the biologist Thomas Huxley asked: ‘Is this a plant, or is it an animal? Is it both or is it neither?’ and there is a great deal scientists still don’t know about it. But despite not having a brain, slime mould can solve complex problems: it can find the most efficient way round a maze and has been used to map Tokyo’s rail network. Researchers are using it to help find treatments for cancer, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease, and computer scientists have designed an algorithm based on slime mould behaviour to learn about dark matter. It’s even been sent to the international space station to help study the effects of weightlessness. With Jonathan Chubb Professor of Quantitative Cell Biology at University College, London Elinor Thompson Reader in microbiology and plant science at the University of Greenwich And Merlin Sheldrake Biologist and writer Producer: Eliane Glaser In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio production

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss eighteenth century 'vase-mania'. In the second half of the century, inspired by archaeological discoveries, the Grand Tour and the founding of the British Museum, parts of the British public developed a huge enthusiasm for vases modelled on the ancient versions recently dug up in Greece. This enthusiasm amounted to a kind of ‘vase-mania’. Initially acquired by the aristocracy, Josiah Wedgwood made these vases commercially available to an emerging aspiring middle class eager to display a piece of the Classical past in their drawing rooms. In the midst of a rapidly changing Britain, these vases came to symbolise the birth of European Civilisation, the epitome of good taste and the timelessness that would later be celebrated by John Keats in his Ode on a Grecian Urn. With Jenny Uglow Writer and Biographer Rosemary Sweet Professor of Urban History at the University of Leicester And Caroline McCaffrey-Howarth Lecturer in the History of Art at the University of Edinburgh Producer: Eliane Glaser Reading list: Viccy Coltman, Fabricating the Antique: Neoclassicism in Britain 1760–1800 (University of Chicago Press, 2006) David Constantine, Fields of Fire: A Life of Sir William Hamilton (Phoenix, 2002) Tristram Hunt, The Radical Potter: Josiah Wedgwood and the Transformation of Britain (Allen Lane, 2021) Ian Jenkins and Kim Sloan (eds), Vases and Volcanoes: Sir William Hamilton and his Collection (British Museum Press, 1996) Berg Maxine, Luxury and Pleasure in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Oxford University Press, 2005) Iris Moon, Melancholy Wedgwood (MIT Press, 2024) Rosemary Sweet, Grand Tour: The British in Italy, c.1690–1820 (Cambridge University Press, 2012) Jenny Uglow, The Lunar Men: The Friends who Made the Future (Faber and Faber, 2003) In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio production

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Greek biographer Plutarch (c46 AD-c120 AD) and especially his work 'Parallel Lives' which has shaped the way successive generations see the Classical world. Plutarch was clear that he was writing lives, not histories, and he wrote these very focussed s in pairs to contrast and compare the characters of famous Greeks and Romans, side by side, along with their virtues and vices. This focus on the inner lives of great men was to fascinate Shakespeare, who drew on Plutarch considerably when writing his Julius Caesar, Coriolanus, Timon of Athens and Antony and Cleopatra. While few followed his approach of setting lives in pairs, Plutarch's work was to influence countless biographers especially from the Enlightenment onwards. With Judith Mossman Professor Emerita of Classics at Coventry University Andrew Erskine Professor of Ancient History at the University of Edinburgh And Paul Cartledge AG Leventis Senior Research Fellow of Clare College, University of Cambridge Producer: Simon Tillotson Reading list: Mark Beck (ed.), A Companion to Plutarch (Wiley-Blackwell, 2014) Colin Burrow, Shakespeare and Classical Antiquity (Oxford University Press, 2013), especially chapter 6 Raphaëla Dubreuil, Theater and Politics in Plutarch’s Parallel Lives (Brill, 2023) Tim Duff, Plutarch’s Lives: Exploring Virtue and Vice (Oxford University Press, 1999) Noreen Humble (ed.), Plutarch’s Lives: Parallelism and Purpose (Classical Press of Wales, 2010) Robert Lamberton, Plutarch (Yale University Press, 2002) Hugh Liebert, Plutarch's Politics: Between City and Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2016) Christopher Pelling, Plutarch and History (Classical Press of Wales, 2002) Plutarch (trans. Robin Waterfield), Greek Lives (Oxford University Press, 2008) Plutarch (trans. Robin Waterfield), Roman Lives (Oxford University Press, 2008) Plutarch (trans. Robin Waterfield), Hellenistic Lives (Oxford University Press, 2016) Plutarch (trans. Ian Scott-Kilvert), The Rise and Fall of Athens: Nine Greek Lives (Penguin, 2023) Plutarch (trans. Ian Scott-Kilvert), The Age of Alexander: Nine Greek Lives (Penguin, 2011) Plutarch (trans. Richard Talbert), On Sparta (Penguin, 2005) Plutarch (trans. Christopher Pelling), The Rise of Rome (Penguin, 2013) Plutarch (trans. Christopher Pelling), Rome in Crisis: Nine Lives (Penguin, 2010) Plutarch (trans. Rex Warner), The Fall of the Roman Republic: Six Lives (Penguin, 2006) Plutarch (trans. Thomas North, ed. Judith Mossman), The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans (Wordsworth, 1998) Geert Roskam, Plutarch (Cambridge University Press, 2021) D. A. Russell, Plutarch (2nd ed., Bristol Classical Press, 2001) Philip A. Stadter, Plutarch and his Roman Readers (Oxford University Press, 2014) s B. Titchener and Alexei V. Zadorojnyi (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Plutarch (Cambridge University Press, 2023) In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production