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IN OUR TIME
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The big ideas which form the intellectual agenda of our age are illuminated by some of the best minds in the world. Melvyn Bragg and three guests investigate the history of ideas and debate their application in modern life. |
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PRESENTER |
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BIOGRAPHY |
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| "I'm fascinated by the fact that we live in a time when so many people are doing fantastic work, and thinking in areas which it's not remotely possible for me to keep up with & and these people are prepared to talk about it. They're prepared to come on In Our Time and other programmes on Radio 4 and try and talk to the rest of us ..." |
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LATEST PROGRAMME |
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MARRIAGE
To have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part.
These marriage vows have been recited at church weddings since 1552, whenever two individuals have willingly pledged to enter into a relationship for life. But before the wedding service was written into the Book of Common Prayer, marriages were much more informal: couples could simply promise themselves to one another at any time or place and the spoken word was as good as the written contract.
The ancients permitted polygamy and the taking of concubines so how did monogamy come to be the favoured mode in the West? Were procreation, financial stability, companionship, or love the the reasons to get married? And what role has the state and the church played in legislating on personal affairs?
Guests
Janet Soskice
Reader in Modern Theology and Philosophical Theology, Cambridge University
Frederik Pedersen
Lecturer in History, Aberdeen University
Christina Hardyment
Social historian and journalist
Next week: The Artist
Plato would have had artists thrown out of his Republic, but the image of the artist as potential subversive has often sat alongside that of the artist as promoter of the great and the good. In the Renaissance, artists like Michelangelo and Petrarch were lauded for their unique genius, and by the time of the Romantics, Shelley is able to describe poets as the "unacknowledged legislators of the world". Have artists always been regarded mad, bad and dangerous to know, or has the perception of the artist’s place in society changed over time? Joining Melvyn Bragg to explore the artist’s status will be Emma Barker, Tim Blanning and Tom Healy.
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