The Metaphysical Poets
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Metaphysical poets, a diffuse group of 17th century writers including John Donne, Andrew Marvell and George Herbert. Mourning the death of a good friend in 1631, th...
19 Jun 200842min
The Riddle of the Sands
Melvyn Bragg and guests discusses the prescient thriller ‘The Riddle of the Sands’ about the decline Anglo-German relations before the First World War. In 1903 an Englishman called Charles Caruthers w...
12 Jun 200842min
Lysenkoism
Melvyn Bragg and guests delve into the dark world of genetics under Joseph Stalin in discussing the career of Trofim Lysenko. In 1928, as America lurched towards the Wall Street Crash, Joseph Stalin r...
5 Jun 200842min
Probability
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the strange mathematics of probability where heads or tails is a simple question with a far from simple answer. Gambling may be as old as the hills but probability as a...
29 Mai 200842min
The Black Death
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how the Black Death influenced the structure and ideas of Medieval Europe. In October 1347, a Genoese trading ship arrived at the busy port of Messina in Sicily and doc...
22 Mai 200842min
The Library at Nineveh
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Library at Nineveh, a treasure house of Assyrian ideas from the 7th Century BC. In 1849 a young English adventurer called Henry Layard started digging into a small ...
15 Mai 200842min
The Brain
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of ideas about the human brain. Since time immemorial people have puzzled over the brain and its functions. In the 5th century BC the Greek physician Hippo...
8 Mai 200842min
The Enclosures of the 18th Century
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the enclosure movement of the 18th and 19th centuries. In the early 19th century, the Northamptonshire poet John Clare took a good look at the countryside and didn’t l...
1 Mai 200842min
