Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Northumbrian man who, for 500 years, was the pre-eminent English saint, to be matched only by Thomas Becket after his martyrdom in 1170. Now at Durham, Cuthbert was buried first on Lindisfarne in 687AD, where monks shared vivid stories of his sanctifying miracles, his healing, and his power over nature, and his final tomb became a major site of pilgrimage. In his lifetime he was both hermit and kingmaker, bishop and travelling priest, and the many accounts we have of him, including two by Bede, tell us much of the values of those who venerated him so soon after his death.The image above is from a stained glass window in the south aisle of the nave in Durham Cathedral: 'St Cuthbert praying before his cell in the Farne Island'With Jane Hawkes Professor of Medieval Art History at the University of YorkSarah Foot The Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History at the University of Oxford and Canon of Christ Church CathedralAnd John Hines Professor of Archaeology at Cardiff UniversityProducer: Simon Tillotson

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the plague that broke out in Constantinople 541AD, in the reign of Emperor Justinian. According to the historian Procopius, writing in Byzantium at the time, this was a plague by which the whole human race came near to being destroyed, embracing the whole world, and blighting the lives of all mankind. The bacterium behind the Black Death has since been found on human remains from that time, and the symptoms described were the same, and evidence of this plague has since been traced around the Mediterranean and from Syria to Britain and Ireland. The question of how devastating it truly was, though, is yet to be resolved.With John Haldon Professor of Byzantine History and Hellenic Studies Emeritus at Princeton UniversityRebecca Flemming Senior Lecturer in Classics at the University of CambridgeAndGreg Woolf Director of the Institute of Classical Studies, University of LondonProducer: Simon Tillotson

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss F Scott Fitzgerald’s finest novel, published in 1925, one of the great American novels of the twentieth century. It is told by Nick Carraway, neighbour and friend of the mysteriously wealthy Jay Gatsby. In the age of jazz and prohibition, Gatsby hosts lavish parties at his opulent home across the bay from Daisy Buchanan, in the hope she’ll attend one of them and they can be reunited. They were lovers as teenagers but she had given him up for a richer man who she soon married, and Gatsby is obsessed with winning her back.The image above is of Robert Redford as Gatsby in a scene from the film 'The Great Gatsby', 1974. WithSarah Churchwell Professor of American Literature and Public Understanding of the Humanities at the University of LondonPhilip McGowan Professor of American Literature at Queen’s University, BelfastAndWilliam Blazek Associate Professor and Reader in American Literature at Liverpool Hope UniversityProduced by Simon Tillotson and Julia Johnson

Solar and lunar eclipses are discussed, highlighting their scientific significance, rarity, and transformative experience. The evolution of understanding eclipses is explored from supernatural interpretations to scientific knowledge. Eclipses on other planets, measuring distances using eclipses, personal experiences, and the awe-inspiring spectacles are also discussed. The chapter introduces a new podcast and features advertisements for Aramco and 'Good Bad Billionaire'.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Chairman Mao and the revolt he led within his own party from 1966, setting communists against each other, to renew the revolution that he feared had become too bourgeois and to remove his enemies and rivals. Universities closed and the students formed Red Guard factions to attack the 'four olds' - old ideas, culture, habits and customs - and they also turned on each other, with mass violence on the streets and hundreds of thousands of deaths. Over a billion copies of Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book were printed to support his cult of personality, before Mao himself died in 1976 and the revolution came to an end.The image above is of Red Guards, holding The Little Red Book, cheering Mao during a meeting to celebrate the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution at Tiananmen Square, Beijing, August 1966 WithRana Mitter Professor of the History and Politics of Modern China and Fellow of St Cross College, University of OxfordSun Peidong Visiting Professor at the Center for International Studies at Sciences Po, ParisAndJulia Lovell Professor in Modern Chinese History and Literature at Birkbeck, University of LondonProduced by Simon Tillotson and Julia Johnson

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss John Wesley (1703 - 1791) and the movement he was to lead and inspire. As a student, he was mocked for approaching religion too methodically and this jibe gave a name to the movement: Methodism. Wesley took his ideas out across Britain wherever there was an appetite for Christian revival, preaching in the open, especially the new industrial areas. Others spread Methodism too, such as George Whitefield, and the sheer energy of the movement led to splits within it, but it soon became a major force. With Stephen Plant Dean and Runcie Fellow at Trinity Hall at the University of CambridgeEryn White Reader in Early Modern History at Aberystwyth UniversityAnd William Gibson Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Oxford Brookes University and Director of the Oxford Centre for Methodism and Church HistoryProduced by Simon Tillotson and Julia Johnson

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Portuguese poet Pessoa (1888-1935) who was largely unknown in his lifetime but who, in 1994, Harold Bloom included in his list of the 26 most significant western writers since the Middle Ages. Pessoa wrote in his own name but mainly in the names of characters he created, each with a distinctive voice and biography, which he called heteronyms rather than pseudonyms, notably Ricardo Reis, Alberto Caeiro, Álvaro de Campos and one who was closer to Pessoa's own identity, Bernardo Soares. Most of Pessoa's works were unpublished at his death, discovered in a trunk; as more and more was printed and translated, his fame and status grew.WithCláudia Pazos-Alonso Professor of Portuguese and Gender Studies and Senior Research Fellow at Wadham College, University of OxfordJuliet Perkins Visiting Senior Research Fellow in Portuguese Studies at King’s College LondonAndPaulo de Medeiros Professor of English and Comparative Literary Studies at the University of WarwickProducer: Simon Tillotson

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the notorious events off Jamaica in 1781 and their background. The British slave ship Zong, having sailed across the Atlantic towards Jamaica, threw 132 enslaved Africans from its human cargo into the sea to drown. Even for a slave ship, the Zong was overcrowded; those murdered were worth more to the ship dead than alive. The crew said there was not enough drinking water to go round and they had no choice, which meant they could claim for the deaths on insurance. The main reason we know of this atrocity now is that the owners took their claim to court in London, and the insurers were at first told to pay up as if the dead slaves were any other lost goods, not people. Abolitionists in Britain were scandalised: if courts treated mass murder in the slave trade as just another business transaction and not a moral wrong, the souls of the nation would be damned. But nobody was ever prosecuted.The image above is of sailors throwing slaves overboard, from Torrey's 'American Slave Trade', 1822WithVincent Brown Charles Warren Professor of American History and Professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard UniversityBronwen Everill Class of 1973 Lecturer in History and Fellow at Gonville & Caius College, University of CambridgeAnd Jake Subryan Richards Assistant Professor of History at the London School of EconomicsStudio production: Hannah Sander Producer: Simon Tillotson

Discussing the life and works of Albrecht Dürer, a great German artist known for his powerful images. Topics include his woodcut of a rhinoceros, watercolour of a young hare, drawing of praying hands, and stunning self-portraits. Also, his journey to become a skilled painter and printmaker, his woodcut marketing success, and the terrifying aspects of his artwork including his engraving of 'The Knight, Death, and the Devil'. Delving into his contrasting sides as a meticulous scholar and extravagant individual, and exploring the effects of a recurring fever on his output and lifelong dedication to art.

The philosopher Mary Astell (1666 – 1731) has been described as “the first English feminist”. Born in Newcastle in relatively poor circumstances in the aftermath of the upheaval of the English Civil War and the restoration of the monarchy, she moved to London as a young woman and became part of an extraordinary circle of intellectual and aristocratic women. In her pioneering publications, she argued that women’s education should be expanded, that men and women’s minds were the same and that no woman should be forced to marry against her will. Perhaps her most famous quotation is: “If all Men are born Free, why are all Women born Slaves?” Today, she is one of just a handful of female philosophers to be featured in the multi-volume Cambridge History of Political Thought. The image above is from Astell's "Reflections upon Marriage", 3rd edition, 1706, held by the British Library (Shelfmark 8415.bb.27)With:Hannah Dawson Senior Lecturer in the History of Ideas at King’s College LondonMark Goldie Professor Emeritus of Intellectual History at the University of CambridgeTeresa Bejan Associate Professor of Political Theory at Oriel College, University of OxfordProducer: Simon Tillotson