Popular culture, poetry, music and visual arts and the roles they play in our society.
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of the 18th-century writer Fanny Burney.
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the ancient Greek poet Sappho.
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the epic Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Bruegel's painting The Fight Between Carnival and Lent.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss The Trial, by Franz Kafka.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aesop, legendary author of the famous collection of fables
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Rudyard Kipling.
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs Dalloway.
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the 18th-century Bluestocking Society.
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the ancient Egyptian poem The Tale of Sinuhe.
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Laurence Sterne's comic novel Tristram Shandy.
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Shakespeare's The Tempest.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aristotle's Poetics.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Roman satire.
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Evelyn Waugh's comic novel Decline and Fall.
Melvyn considers the impact of the invention of the book.
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Icelandic sagas.
How the invention of writing influenced the spread of religion.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aldous Huxley's dystopian 1932 novel Brave New World.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Queen Zenobia, who led a rebellion against Ancient Rome.
Melvyn Bragg examines Dante’s ‘Inferno’, a medieval journey through Hell’s nine circles
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss George Eliot's 1861 novel Silas Marner.
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Byron's poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage.