In Our Time

Is it always better to be just than unjust? That is the central question of Plato's Republic, discussed here by Melvyn Bragg and guests. Writing in c380BC, Plato applied this question both to the individual and the city-state, considering earlier and current forms of government in Athens and potential forms, in which the ideal city might be ruled by philosophers. The Republic is arguably Plato's best known and greatest work, a dialogue between Socrates and his companions, featuring the allegory of the cave and ideas about immortality of the soul, the value of poetry to society, and democracy's vulnerability to a clever demagogue seeking tyranny.With Angie Hobbs Professor of the Public Understanding of Philosophy at the University of SheffieldMM McCabe Professor of Ancient Philosophy Emerita at King's College LondonandJames Warren Fellow of Corpus Christi College and a Reader in Ancient Philosophy at the University of Cambridge Producer: Simon Tillotson.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Alexander Pushkin's verse novel, the story of Eugene Onegin, widely regarded as his masterpiece. Pushkin (pictured above) began this in 1823 and worked on it over the next ten years, while moving around Russia, developing the central character of a figure all too typical of his age, the so-called superfluous man. Onegin is cynical, disillusioned and detached, his best friend Lensky is a romantic poet and Tatyana, whose love for Onegin is not returned until too late, is described as a poetic ideal of a Russian woman, and they are shown in the context of the Russian landscape and society that has shaped them. Onegin draws all three into tragic situations which, if he had been willing and able to act, he could have prevented, and so becomes the one responsible for the misery of himself and others as well as the death of his friend.With Andrew Kahn Professor of Russian Literature at the University of Oxford and Fellow of St Edmund HallEmily Finer Lecturer in Russian and Comparative Literature at the University of St Andrewsand Simon Dixon The Sir Bernard Pares Professor of Russian History at University College LondonProducer: Simon Tillotson.

Lawrence Goldman, a historian at the University of London, along with Mara Keire from Oxford and Christopher Phelps from Nottingham, dive deep into the significance of the American Populist movement during the Gilded Age. They discuss the challenges faced by struggling farmers and their formation of the People's Party as a political response. The conversation highlights how themes of race and class intertwined with economic issues, and they even explore how 'The Wizard of Oz' symbolizes these populist ideals, revealing the enduring impact of this movement on American society.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and works of Christine de Pizan, who wrote at the French Court in the late Middle Ages and was celebrated by Simone de Beauvoir as the first woman to 'take up her pen in defence of her sex.' She wrote across a broad range, and was particularly noted for challenging the depiction of women by famous writers such as Jean de Meun, author of the Romance of the Rose. She has been characterised as an early feminist who argued that women could play a much more important role in society than the one they were allotted, reflected in arguably her most important work, The Book of the City of Ladies, a response to the seemingly endless denigration of women in popular texts of the time.The image above, of Christine de Pizan lecturing, is (c)The British Library Board. Harley 4431, f.259v.With Helen Swift Associate Professor of Medieval French at the University of Oxford and Fellow of St Hilda's CollegeMiranda Griffin Lecturer in French and Fellow of St Catharine's College, Cambridgeand Marilynn Desmond Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Binghamton UniversityProducer: Simon Tillotson.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss enzymes, the proteins that control the speed of chemical reactions in living organisms. Without enzymes, these reactions would take place too slowly to keep organisms alive: with their actions as catalysts, changes which might otherwise take millions of years can happen hundreds of times a second. Some enzymes break down large molecules into smaller ones, like the ones in human intestines, while others use small molecules to build up larger, complex ones, such as those that make DNA. Enzymes also help keep cell growth under control, by regulating the time for cells to live and their time to die, and provide a way for cells to communicate with each other. With Nigel Richards Professor of Biological Chemistry at Cardiff UniversitySarah Barry Lecturer in Chemical Biology at King's College LondonAnd Jim Naismith Director of the Research Complex at Harwell Bishop Wardlaw Professor of Chemical Biology at the University of St Andrews Professor of Structural Biology at the University of OxfordProducer: Simon Tillotson.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the flourishing of the idea of Purgatory from C12th, when it was imagined as a place alongside Hell and Heaven in which the souls of sinners would be purged of those sins by fire. In the West, there were new systems put in place to pray for the souls of the dead, on a greater scale, with opportunities to buy pardons to shorten time in Purgatory. The idea was enriched with visions, some religious and some literary; Dante imagined Purgatory as a mountain in the southern hemisphere, others such as Marie de France told of The Legend of the Purgatory of Saint Patrick, in which the entrance was on Station Island in County Donegal. This idea of purification by fire had appalled the Eastern Orthodox Church and was one of the factors in the split from Rome in 1054, but flourished in the West up to the reformations of C16th when it was again particularly divisive.WithLaura Ashe Associate Professor of English and fellow of Worcester College at the University of OxfordMatthew Treherne Professor of Italian Literature at the University of LeedsandHelen Foxhall Forbes Associate Professor of Early Medieval History at Durham UniversityProducer: Simon Tillotson.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) and his extraordinary contribution to medicine and science. It is said few people have saved more lives than Pasteur. A chemist, he showed that otherwise identical molecules could exist as 'left' and 'right-handed' versions and that molecules produced by living things were always left-handed. He proposed a germ theory to replace the idea of spontaneous generation. He discovered that microorganisms cause fermentation and disease. He began the process named after him, pasteurisation, heating liquids to 50-60 C to kill microbes. He saved the beer and wine industries in France when they were struggling with microbial contamination. He saved the French silk industry when he found a way of protecting healthy silkworm eggs from disease. He developed vaccines against anthrax and rabies and helped establish immunology. Many of his ideas were developed further after his lifetime, but one of his legacies was a charitable body, the Pasteur Institute, to continue research into infectious disease.With Andrew Mendelsohn Reader in the School of History at Queen Mary, University of LondonAnne Hardy Honorary Professor at the Centre for History in Public Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicineand Michael Worboys Emeritus Professor in the History of Science, Technology and Medicine at the University of Manchester Producer: Simon Tillotson.

To celebrate Melvyn Bragg’s 27 years presenting In Our Time, five well-known fans of the programme have chosen their favourite episodes. Comedian Frank Skinner has picked the episode on the life and work of the poet Emily Dickinson and recorded an introduction to it. (This introduction will be available on BBC Sounds and the In Our Time webpage shortly after the broadcast and will be longer than the version broadcast on Radio 4). Emily Dickinson was arguably the most startling and original poet in America in the C19th. According to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, her correspondent and mentor, writing 15 years after her death, "Few events in American literary history have been more curious than the sudden rise of Emily Dickinson into a posthumous fame only more accentuated by the utterly recluse character of her life and by her aversion to even a literary publicity." That was in 1891 and, as more of Dickinson's poems were published, and more of her remaining letters, the more the interest in her and appreciation of her grew. With her distinctive voice, her abundance, and her exploration of her private world, she is now seen by many as one of the great lyric poets. With Fiona Green Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Jesus CollegeLinda Freedman Lecturer in English and American Literature at University College LondonandParaic Finnerty Reader in English and American Literature at the University of PortsmouthProducer: Simon Tillotson.Reading list:Christopher Benfey, A Summer of Hummingbirds: Love, Art and Scandal in the Intersecting Worlds of Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Martin Johnson Heade (Penguin Books, 2009)Jed Deppman, Marianne Noble and Gary Lee Stonum (eds.), Emily Dickinson and Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 2013)Judith Farr, The Gardens of Emily Dickinson (Harvard University Press, 2005)Judith Farr, The Passion of Emily Dickinson (Harvard University Press, 1992)Paraic Finnerty, Emily Dickinson’s Shakespeare (University of Massachusetts Press, 2006)Ralph William Franklin (ed.), The Master Letters of Emily Dickinson (University Massachusetts Press, 1998)Ralph William Franklin (ed.), The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Variorum Edition (Harvard University Press, 1998)Linda Freedman, The Myth of the Fall in Nineteenth-Century Literature (Oxford University Press, 2025), especially chapter 3.Linda Freedman, Emily Dickinson and the Religious Imagination (Cambridge University Press, 2011)Gudrun Grabher, Roland Hagenbüchle and Cristanne Miller (eds.), The Emily Dickinson Handbook (University of Massachusetts Press, 1998)Alfred Habegger, My Wars are Laid Away in Books: The Early Life of Emily Dickinson (Random House, 2001)Ellen Louise Hart and Martha Nell Smith (eds.), Open Me Carefully: Emily Dickinson’s Intimate Letters to Susan Huntington Dickinson (Paris Press, 1998)Virginia Jackson, Dickinson’s Misery: A Theory of Lyric Reading (Princeton University Press, 2013)Thomas H. Johnson (ed.), Emily Dickinson: Selected Letters (first published 1958; Harvard University Press, 1986)Thomas H. Johnson (ed.), Poems of Emily Dickinson (first published 1951; Faber & Faber, 1976)Thomas Herbert Johnson and Theodora Ward (eds.), The Letters of Emily Dickinson (Belknap Press, 1958)Benjamin Lease, Emily Dickinson’s Readings of Men and Books (Palgrave Macmillan, 1990)Mary Loeffelholz, The Value of Emily Dickinson (Cambridge University Press, 2016)James McIntosh, Nimble Believing: Dickinson and the Unknown (University of Michigan Press, 2000)Marietta Messmer, A Vice for Voices: Reading Emily Dickinson’s Correspondence (University of Massachusetts Press, 2001)Cristanne Miller (ed.), Emily Dickinson's Poems: As She Preserved (Harvard University Press, 2016)Cristanne Miller, Reading in Time: Emily Dickinson in the Nineteenth Century (University of Massachusetts Press, 2012)Elizabeth Phillips, Emily Dickinson: Personae and Performance (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1988)Eliza Richards (ed.), Emily Dickinson in Context (Cambridge University Press, 2013)Richard B. Sewall, The Life of Emily Dickinson (first published 1974; Harvard University Press, 1998)Marta L. Werner, Emily Dickinson’s Open Folios: Scenes of Reading, Surfaces of Writing (University of Michigan Press, 1996)Brenda Wineapple, White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson (Anchor Books, 2009)Shira Wolosky, Emily Dickinson: A Voice of War (Yale University Press, 1984)This episode was first broadcast in May 2017.Spanning history, religion, culture, science and philosophy, In Our Time from BBC Radio 4 is essential listening for the intellectually curious. In each episode, host Melvyn Bragg and expert guests explore the people, ideas, events and discoveries that have shaped our worldIn Our Time is a BBC Studios production

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss The Battle of Lincoln on 20th May 1217, when two armies fought to keep, or to win, the English crown. This was a struggle between the Angevin and Capetian dynasties, one that followed Capetian successes over the Angevins in France. The forces of the new boy-king, Henry III, attacked those of Louis of France, the claimant backed by rebel Barons. Henry's regent, William Marshal, was almost seventy when he led the charge on Lincoln that day, and his victory confirmed his reputation as England's greatest knight. Louis sent to France for reinforcements but in August these, too, were defeated at sea, at the Battle of Sandwich. As part of the peace deal, Henry reissued Magna Carta, which King John had granted in 1215 but soon withdrawn, and Louis went home, leaving England's Anglo-French rulers more Anglo and less French than he had planned. The image above is by Matthew Paris (c1200-1259) from his Chronica Majora (MS 16, f. 55v) and appears with the kind permission of the Master and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, CambridgeWithLouise Wilkinson Professor of Medieval History at Canterbury Christ Church UniversityStephen Church Professor of Medieval History at the University of East AngliaandThomas Asbridge Reader in Medieval History at Queen Mary, University of LondonProducer: Simon Tillotson.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the text and context of The Book of the Dead, also known as the Book of Coming Forth by Day, the ancient Egyptian collections of spells which were intended to help the recently deceased navigate the underworld. They flourished under the New Kingdom from C16th BC until the end of the Ptolemaic era in C1st BC, and drew on much earlier traditions from the walls of pyramids and on coffin cases. Almost 200 spells survive, though no one collection contains all of them, and one of the best known surrounds the weighing of the heart, the gods' final judgement of the deceased's life.With John Taylor Curator at the Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan at the British MuseumKate Spence Senior Lecturer in Egyptian Archaeology at Cambridge University and Fellow of Emmanuel Collegeand Richard Parkinson Professor of Egyptology at the University of Oxford and Fellow of the Queen's CollegeProducer: Simon Tillotson.