Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of Shakespeare's greatest tragedies. Read more
now playing
Macbeth
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of Shakespeare's greatest tragedies.
Deism
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most disruptive ideas of the Enlightenment.
Alan Turing
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the short, brilliant life of computer science's founder.
Maria Theresa
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the woman who ruled Austria, shaking up the European order
Piers Plowman
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss William Langland's celebrated poem, written around 1370.
Mary Astell
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosopher Mary Astell (1666 – 1731).
Albrecht Dürer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and timeless works of the great German artist.
The Zong Massacre
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the infamous drowning of enslaved Africans in 1781.
Fernando Pessoa
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great Portuguese poet and his many literary personas.
John Wesley and Methodism
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Wesley's role in the rise of Methodism in the 18th Century
The Cultural Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Mao's uprising against his own party from 1966-76
Eclipses
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the scientific advances gained from studying eclipses.
The Great Gatsby
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Fitzgerald's celebrated novel of the Jazz Age.
The Plague of Justinian
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the scale and impact of the plague that raged in 541AD.
Saint Cuthbert
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life of one of England's most revered saints.
Emilie du Châtelet
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss an astonishing mathematician of the French Enlightenment.
The Rosetta Stone
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the deciphering of hieroglyphs, secret for 1,500 years.
Medieval Pilgrimage
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Christian pilgrimage in Europe in the Middle Ages.
Marcus Aurelius
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and meditations of 'the last good Roman emperor'.
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Coleridge's famous poem of a sailor who shot an albatross.
The Late Devonian Extinction
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the five major extinction events on Earth so far.
The Bacchae
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the revenge of Dionysus on Thebes in Euripides' tragedy.
David Ricardo
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Ricardo's argument on free trade after the Napoleonic wars
The Russo-Japanese War
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 1904-5 clash of Japanese and Russian empires.
Pierre-Simon Laplace
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great French mathematician behind metrication.
Arianism
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss an orthodox form of Christianity that became a heresy.
The Franco-American Alliance 1778
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the French fight against Britain in America and its impact
Ovid
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most influential poets of Rome's Augustan Age.
The Second Barons' War
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simon de Montfort's fatal struggle with Henry III's forces
Longitude
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the idea of longitude and the race to calculate it at sea.
Journey to the West
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great novel from the Ming Era, with its heroic Monkey.