Milton
Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the poet John Milton. If it wasn't for the poet Andrew Marvell we wouldn't have his later works; Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained and Samson ...
7 Mar 200228min
Virtue
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of virtue. When Socrates asked the question ‘How should man live?’ Plato and Aristotle answered that man should live a life of virtue. Plato claimed there w...
28 Feb 200242min
The Celts
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Celts. Around 400 BC a great swathe of Western Europe from Ireland to Southern Russia was dominated by one civilisation. Perched on the North Western fringe of this...
21 Feb 200242min
Anatomy
Melvyn Bragg examines the history of mankind's quest to understand the human body. The Greeks thought we were built like pigs, and when Renaissance man first cut his sacred flesh it was an act of here...
14 Feb 200228min
The Universe's Shape
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the shape of the universe. In the Beginning, runs one account, was the Big Bang. All matter in existence today originated around 13 billion years ago in a phenomenally...
7 Feb 200228min
Yeats and Mysticism
Melvyn Bragg explores the strange and mystical world of the poet W B Yeats. Celtic folklore, the Theosophical society, the Golden Dawn group, seances and a wife who communicated with the spirit world ...
31 Jan 200228min
Happiness
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss whether 'happiness' means living a life of pleasure, or of virtue. It is an old question, and the Roman poet Horace attempted to answer it when he wrote; 'Not the owne...
24 Jan 200228min
Catharism
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Cathars, a medieval European Christian sect accused of heresy. In 1215 Pope Innocent III called the greatest meeting of Catholic minds for a hundred years. He hoped...
17 Jan 200242min
