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In Our Time

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	Melvyn Bragg and guests investigate the history of ideas. Thursday 9.00-9.45am, repeated 9.30pm.

	Culture Archive
	You can listen again to all the programmes online. The most recent programmes appear at the top of the page.


	Elizabethan and Jacobean Revenge Tragedy - theatre of blood The Augustan Age - art and propaganda at the birth of the Roman Empire The Building of St Petersburg - "a window through which Russia looks on Europe" Brave New World - would Soma, free love and the feelies be so bad? The School of Athens - picturing Greece in Renaissance minds The Library of Alexandria - of all the books in all the world...

	The Waste Land and Modernity - "I will show you fear in a handful of dust" The Brothers Grimm: fairy tales, Grimm - but not as we know them A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift - 18th century satire gets close to the bone The Baroque - the misshapen pearl of Europe Dante's Inferno - to Hell and back The Metaphysical Poets - sex and death in the 17th century The Music of the Spheres - a dose of heavenly harmonies The Riddle of the Sands - how Britain learned to fear the Germans The Library at Nineveh - treasure trove of Assyrian ideas

	Yeats and Irish Politics - "a terrible beauty is born" The Greek Myths - soap opera of the gods King Lear - Shakespeare's finest fairy tale The Fisher King - the wound that does not heal Albert Camus - Rebel with a Cause The Prelude - the greatest poem in the English language? Taste - the good, the bad and the ugly in 18th century Britain The Arabian Nights - the art of story-telling Divine Right of Kings - "there's such divinity doth hedge a king"

	The Trial of Madame Bovary - "Madame Bovary, c'est moi!" The Pilgrim Fathers - the original American dream Renaissance Astrology - 'we are merely the stars' tennis balls, struck and bandied which way please them' Victorian Pessimism - fear and loathing in the late 19th century Greek and Roman Love Poetry - the pursuit of the Beloved from Sappho to Catullus Epistolary Literature - great novels of fictional letters Heart of Darkness - one of the most influential novels of the 20th century Borges - the life and work of Argentina's best loved short story writer Hell - its representation through the ages

	Alexander Pope - 'short is my date, but deathless my renown' Greek Comedy - sing as you revel and rout Pastoral Literature - the romantic idealisation of the countryside Uncle Tom's Cabin - the novel that started the American Civil War Faeries - supernatural creatures that are neither gods nor humans Goethe - formation of a German cultural icon The Carolingian Renaissance - the revival of early medieval Western Europe Don Quixote - Spanish romance and the first novel Geoffrey Chaucer - the first Great English Poet

	Aeschylus' Oresteia - the birth of tragedy Samuel Johnson and His Circle - life with the professional man of letters Christopher Marlowe - poet, spy, atheist, murder victim? Merlin - the original Welsh wizard Paganism in the Renaissance - how the classical gods returned to the Christian cities The Scriblerus Club - the satirists-in-chief of the 18th century The Aeneid - the Roman history of the world Archaeology and Imperialism - conquest of the past

	John Ruskin - a different kind of Victorian Modernist Utopias - the original 21st century Faust - the original pact with the Devil The Han Synthesis - creating the Chinese cosmos Politeness - the great 18th century craze The Odyssey - Homer's epic tale of Odysseus' return home Renaissance Magic - the great passion of the age The Later Romantics - the world of Byron, Keats and Shelley The Mughal Empire - the glory of India The Sublime - defining the state of awe Sensation- the best sellers of the 19th century.

	Bohemianism - a life of art, freedom & poverty Youth - from Adonis to James Dean Proust - his life and work Originality - is it just a romantic notion? The Epic - from Homer to Joyce The Scottish Enlightenment - how enlightened? Cultural Imperialism - should we try to prevent it? Richard Wagner - his influence on the German spirit. The Grand Tour - what drove this desire for travel? Tolstoy - the influence of the Russian Novel The Artist - a special kind of human being?