The myth of westphalia, an wer talking its legacy then, the legacy for international relation specialists and for historians of diplomacy has been enormous. I think there's another story also to speak of, which we've mentioned in passing. In our time with melvin bragg, is produced by simon tillotson, a new inour time, book marking the programme's twentieth birthday - available now. Next week it's sir gawaine and the green knight, the great mediaeval poem set at camelot at christmas and lost for hundreds of years.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the war in Europe which begain in 1618 and continued on such a scale and with such devastation that its like was not seen for another three hundred years. It pitched Catholics against Protestants, Lutherans against Calvinists and Catholics against Catholics across the Holy Roman Empire, drawing in their neighbours and it lasted for thirty gruelling years, from the Defenestration of Prague to the Peace of Westphalia of 1648. Many more civilians died than soldiers, and famine was so great that even cannibalism was excused. This topic was chosen from several hundred suggested by listeners this autumn.
The image above is a detail from a painting of The Battle of White Mountain on 7-8 November 1620, by Pieter Snayers (1592-1667)
With
Peter Wilson
Chichele Professor of the History of War at the University of Oxford
Ulinka Rublack
Professor of Early Modern European History at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of St John’s College
And
Toby Osborne
Associate Professor in History at Durham University
Producer: Simon Tillotson