Explore the Orkneyinga Saga, a blend of myth and history detailing Viking activities and alliances in Orkney. Uncover the significance of Orkney as a strategic hub for Viking raids and the unique structure of the earldom. Dive into the themes of Christian beliefs and Viking traditions in the construction of the Cathedral of St Agnes. Analyze the historical accuracy of the saga and the portrayal of Scandinavian society. Discover the roles of women and the transition of Vikings from raiders to settlers in Orkney.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the canonical figures from the history of political thought. Marsilius of Padua (c1275 to c1343) wrote 'Defensor Pacis' (The Defender of the Peace) around 1324 when the Papacy, the Holy Roman Emperor and the French King were fighting over who had supreme power on Earth. In this work Marsilius argued that the people were the source of all power and they alone could elect a leader to act on their behalf; they could remove their leaders when they chose and, afterwards, could hold them to account for their actions. He appeared to favour an elected Holy Roman Emperor and he was clear that there were no grounds for the Papacy to have secular power, let alone gather taxes and wealth, and that clerics should return to the poverty of the Apostles. Protestants naturally found his work attractive in the 16th Century when breaking with Rome. In the 20th Century Marsilius has been seen as an early advocate for popular sovereignty and republican democracy, to the extent possible in his time.With Annabel Brett Professor of Political Thought and History at the University of CambridgeGeorge Garnett Professor of Medieval History and Fellow and Tutor at St Hugh’s College, University of OxfordAnd Serena Ferente Professor of Medieval History at the University of AmsterdamProducer: Simon Tillotson In Our Time is a BBC Sounds Audio ProductionReading list: Richard Bourke and Quentin Skinner (eds), Popular Sovereignty in Historical Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2016), especially 'Popolo and law in Marsilius and the jurists' by Serena FerenteJ. Canning, Ideas of Power in the Late Middle Ages, 1296-1417 (Cambridge University Press, 2011)H.W.C. Davis (ed.), Essays in Mediaeval History presented to Reginald Lane Poole (Clarendon Press, 1927), especially ‘The authors cited in the Defensor Pacis’ by C.W. Previté-OrtonGeorge Garnett, Marsilius of Padua and ‘The Truth of History’ (Oxford University Press, 2006) J.R. Hale, J.R.L. Highfield and B. Smalley (eds.), Europe in the Late Middle Ages (Faber and Faber, 1965), especially ‘Marsilius of Padua and political thought of his time’ by N. RubinsteinJoel Kaye, 'Equalization in the Body and the Body Politic: From Galen to Marsilius of Padua’ (Mélanges de l'Ecole Française de Rome 125, 2013)Xavier Márquez (ed.), Democratic Moments: Reading Democratic Texts (Bloomsbury, 2018), especially ‘Consent and popular sovereignty in medieval political thought: Marsilius of Padua’s Defensor pacis’ by T. Shogimen Marsiglio of Padua (trans. Cary J. Nederman), Defensor Minor and De Translatione Imperii (Cambridge University Press, 1993)Marsilius of Padua (trans. Annabel Brett), The Defender of the Peace (Cambridge University Press, 2005)Gerson Moreño-Riano (ed.), The World of Marsilius of Padua (Brepols, 2006)Gerson Moreno-Riano and Cary J. Nederman (eds), A Companion to Marsilius of Padua (Brill, 2012)A. Mulieri, S. Masolini and J. Pelletier (eds.), Marsilius of Padua: Between history, Politics, and Philosophy (Brepols, 2023)C. Nederman, Community and Consent: The Secular Political Theory of Marsiglio of Padua’s Defensor Pacis (Rowman and Littlefield, 1995)Vasileios Syros, Marsilius of Padua at the Intersection of Ancient and Medieval Traditions of Political Thought (University of Toronto Press, 2012)

Explore the life of Empress Dowager Cixi, a powerful figure in the Chinese court who ruled for almost fifty years. Delve into her strategic political maneuvers, challenges faced as a female leader, and her role in navigating China's modernization amidst Western pressures and internal turmoil. Discuss the self-strengthening movement, the Sino-Japanese War, Boxer Rebellion, and the lasting impact of her rule on China's history.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Napoleon Bonaparte's temporary return to power in France in 1815, following his escape from exile on Elba . He arrived with fewer than a thousand men, yet three weeks later he had displaced Louis XVIII and taken charge of an army as large as any that the Allied Powers could muster individually. He saw that his best chance was to pick the Allies off one by one, starting with the Prussian and then the British/Allied armies in what is now Belgium. He appeared to be on the point of victory at Waterloo yet somehow it eluded him, and his plans were soon in tatters. His escape to America thwarted, he surrendered on 15th July and was exiled again but this time to Saint Helena. There he wrote his memoirs to help shape his legacy, while back in Europe there were still fears of his return.With Michael Rowe Reader in European History at Kings College LondonKatherine Astbury Professor of French Studies at the University of WarwickAndZack White Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow at the University of PortsmouthProducer: Simon Tillotson In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio production.Reading list:Katherine Astbury and Mark Philp (ed.), Napoleon's Hundred Days and the Politics of Legitimacy (Palgrave, 2018)Jeremy Black, The Battle of Waterloo: A New History (Icon Books, 2010)Michael Broers, Napoleon: The Decline and Fall of an Empire: 1811-1821 (Pegasus Books, 2022)Philip Dwyer, Citizen Emperor: Napoleon in power 1799-1815 (Bloomsbury, 2014)Charles J. Esdaile, Napoleon, France and Waterloo: The Eagle Rejected (Pen & Sword Military, 2016)Gareth Glover, Waterloo: Myth and Reality (Pen & Sword Military, 2014)Sudhir Hazareesingh, The Legend of Napoleon (Granta, 2014)John Hussey, Waterloo: The Campaign of 1815, Volume 1, From Elba to Ligny and Quatre Bras (Greenhill Books, 2017)Andrew Roberts, Napoleon the Great (Penguin Books, 2015)Brian Vick, The Congress of Vienna: Power and Politics after Napoleon (Harvard University Press, 2014) Zack White (ed.), The Sword and the Spirit: Proceedings of the first ‘War & Peace in the Age of Napoleon’ Conference (Helion and Company, 2021)

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the last pagan ruler of the Roman Empire. Fifty years after Constantine the Great converted to Christianity and introduced a policy of tolerating the faith across the empire, Julian (c.331 - 363 AD) aimed to promote paganism instead, branding Constantine the worst of all his predecessors. Julian was a philosopher-emperor in the mould of Marcus Aurelius and was noted in his lifetime for his letters and his satires, and it was his surprising success as a general in his youth in Gaul that had propelled him to power barely twenty years after a rival had slaughtered his family. Julian's pagan mission and his life were brought to a sudden end while on campaign against the Sasanian Empire in the east, but he left so much written evidence of his ideas that he remains one of the most intriguing of all the Roman emperors and a hero to the humanists of the Enlightenment. With James Corke-Webster Reader in Classics, History and Liberal Arts at King’s College, LondonLea Niccolai Assistant Professor in Classics at the University of Cambridge and Fellow and Director of Studies in Classics, Trinity College And Shaun Tougher Professor of Late Roman and Byzantine History at Cardiff UniversityProducer: Simon TillotsonReading list:Polymnia Athanassiadi, Julian: An Intellectual Biography (first published 1981; Routledge, 2014)Nicholas Baker-Brian and Shaun Tougher (eds.), Emperor and Author: The Writings of Julian the Apostate (Classical Press of Wales, 2012)Nicholas Baker-Brian and Shaun Tougher (eds.), The Sons of Constantine, AD 337-361: In the Shadows of Constantine and Julian, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020)G.W. Bowersock, Julian the Apostate (first published 1978; Harvard University Press, 1997)Susanna Elm, Sons of Hellenism, Fathers of the Church: Emperor Julian, Gregory of Nazianzus, and the Vision of Rome (University of California Press, 2012)Ari Finkelstein, The Specter of the Jews: Emperor Julian and the Rhetoric of Ethnicity in Syrian Antioch (University of California Press, 2018)David Neal Greenwood, Julian and Christianity: Revisiting the Constantinian Revolution (Cornell University Press, 2021)Lea Niccolai, Christianity, Philosophy, and Roman Power: Constantine, Julian, and the Bishops on Exegesis and Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2023)Stefan Rebenich and Hans-Ulrich Wiemer (eds), A Companion to Julian the Apostate (Brill, 2020)Rowland Smith, Julian’s Gods: Religion and Philosophy in the Thought and Action of Julian the Apostate (Routledge, 1995)H.C. Teitler, The Last Pagan Emperor: Julian the Apostate and the War against Christianity (Oxford University Press, 2017)Shaun Tougher, Julian the Apostate (Edinburgh University Press, 2007)W. C. Wright, The Works of Emperor Julian of Rome (Loeb, 1913-23)

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the revolt that broke out in 1871 in Algeria against French rule, spreading over hundreds of miles and countless towns and villages before being brutally suppressed. It began with the powerful Cheikh Mokrani and his family and was taken up by hundreds of thousands, becoming the last major revolt there before Algeria’s war of independence in 1954. In the wake of its swift suppression though came further waves of French migrants to settle on newly confiscated lands, themselves displaced by French defeat in Europe and the loss of Alsace-Lorraine, and their arrival only increased tensions. The Mokrani Revolt came to be seen as a watershed between earlier Ottoman rule and full national identity, an inspiration to nationalists in the 1950s.WithNatalya Benkhaled-Vince Associate Professor of the History of Modern France and the Francophone World, Fellow of University College, University of OxfordHannah-Louise Clark Senior Lecturer in Global Economic and Social History at the University of GlasgowAnd Jim House Senior Lecturer in French and Francophone History at the University of Leeds Producer: Simon Tillotson Reading list: Mahfoud Bennoune, The Making of Contemporary Algeria: 1830-1987 (Cambridge University Press, 1988)Julia Clancy-Smith, Rebel and Saint: Muslim Notables, Populist Protest, Colonial Encounters, Algeria and Tunisia 1800–1904 (University of California Press, 1994) Hannah-Louise Clark, ‘The Islamic Origins of the French Colonial Welfare State: Hospital Finance in Algeria’ (European Review of History, vol. 28, nos 5-6, 2021)Hannah-Louise Clark, ‘Of jinn theories and germ theories: translating microbes, bacteriological medicine, and Islamic law in Algeria’ (Osiris, vol. 36, 2021)Brock Cutler, Ecologies of Imperialism in Algeria (University of Nebraska Press, 2023) Didier Guignard, 1871: L’Algérie sous Séquestre (CNRS Éditions, 2023)Idir Hachi, ‘Histoire social de l’insurrection de 1871 et du procès de ses chefs (PhD diss., University of Aix-Marseille, 2017) Abdelhak Lahlou, Idir Hachi, Isabelle Guillaume, Amélie Gregório and Peter Dunwoodie, ‘L'insurrection kabyle de 1871’ (Etudes françaises volume 57, no 1, 2021)James McDougall, A History of Algeria (Cambridge University Press (2017)John Ruedy, Modern Algeria: The Origins and Development of a Nation (Indiana University Press, 2005, 2nd edition)Jennifer E Sessions, By Sword and Plow: France and the Conquest of Algeria (Cornell University Press, 2011)Samia Touati, ‘Lalla Fatma N’Soumer, 1830–1863: Spirituality, Resistance and Womanly Leadership in Colonial Algeria (Societies vol. 8, no. 4, 2018)Natalya Vince, Our Fighting Sisters: Nation, Memory and Gender in Algeria, 1954-2012 (Manchester University Press, 2015)

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the infamous assault of an army of the Holy Roman Emperor on the city of Rome in 1527. The troops soon broke through the walls of this holy city and, with their leader shot dead early on, they brought death and destruction to the city on an epic scale. Later writers compared it to the fall of Carthage or Jerusalem and soon the mass murder, torture, rape and looting were followed by disease which was worsened by starvation and opened graves. It has been called the end of the High Renaissance, a conflict between north and south, between Lutherans and Catholics, and a fulfilment of prophecy of divine vengeance and, perhaps more persuasively, a consequence of military leaders not feeding or paying their soldiers other than by looting. WithStephen Bowd Professor of Early Modern History at the University of EdinburghJessica Goethals Associate Professor of Italian at the University of AlabamaAnd Catherine Fletcher Professor of History at Manchester Metropolitan UniversityProducer: Simon TillotsonReading list:Stephen Bowd, Renaissance Mass Murder: Civilians and Soldiers during the Italian Wars (Oxford University Press, 2018)Benvenuto Cellini, Autobiography (Penguin Classics, 1999)Benvenuto Cellini (trans. Julia Conaway Bondanella and Peter Bondanella), My Life (Oxford University Press, 2009)André Chastel (trans. Beth Archer), The Sack of Rome 1527 (Princeton University Press, 1983Catherine Fletcher, The Beauty and the Terror: An Alternative History of the Italian Renaissance (Bodley Head, 2020)Kenneth Gouwens and Sheryl E. Reiss (eds), The Pontificate of Clement VII: History, Politics, Culture (Routledge, 2005)Francesco Guicciardini (trans. Sidney Alexander), The History of Italy (first published 1561; Princeton University Press, 2020)Luigi Guicciardini (trans. James H. McGregor), The Sack of Rome (first published 1537; Italica Press, 2008)Judith Hook, The Sack of Rome (2nd edition, Palgrave Macmillan, 2004)Geoffrey Parker, Emperor: A New Life of Charles V (Yale University Press, 2019)

Dive into the intriguing world of the Hanseatic League, the medieval trade powerhouse that stretched from Iceland to Novgorod. Discover how its German-speaking merchants gained powerful tax exemptions and monopolies. Learn about the League's influence over rulers, serving as crucial financiers in times of war. Despite its remarkable reach, witness its decline as nation-states emerged and competition surged. Explore the League's cultural exchanges and conflicts as it navigated the complexities of medieval trade, leaving a lasting impact on commerce.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the woman who inspired one of the best known artefacts from ancient Egypt. The Bust of Nefertiti is multicoloured and symmetrical, about 49cm/18" high and, despite the missing left eye, still holds the gaze of onlookers below its tall, blue, flat topped headdress. Its discovery in 1912 in Amarna was kept quiet at first but its display in Berlin in the 1920s caused a sensation, with replicas sent out across the world. Ever since, as with Tutankhamun perhaps, the concrete facts about Nefertiti herself have barely kept up with the theories, the legends and the speculation, reinvigorated with each new discovery. WithAidan Dodson Honorary Professor of Egyptology at the University of BristolJoyce Tyldesley Professor of Egyptology at the University of ManchesterAnd Kate Spence Senior Lecturer in Egyptian Archaeology at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Emmanuel CollegeProducer: Simon TillotsonReading list:Dorothea Arnold (ed.), The Royal Women of Amarna: Images of Beauty from Ancient Egypt (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1996) Norman de Garis Davies, The Rock Tombs of el-Amarna (6 vols. Egypt Exploration Society, 1903-1908) Aidan Dodson, Amarna Sunset: Nefertiti, Tutankhamun, Ay, Horemheb and the Egyptian Counter-reformation. (American University in Cairo Press, 2009 Aidan Dodson, Nefertiti, Queen and Pharaoh of Egypt: her life and afterlife (American University in Cairo Press, 2020)Aidan Dodson, Tutankhamun: King of Egypt: his life and afterlife (American University in Cairo Press, 2022)Barry Kemp, The City of Akhenaten and Nefertiti: Amarna and Its People (Thames and Hudson, 2012)Dominic Montserrat, Akhenaten: History, Fantasy and Ancient Egypt (Routledge, 2002)Friederike Seyfried (ed.), In the Light of Amarna: 100 Years of the Nefertiti Discovery (Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussamlung Staatlich Museen zu Berlin/ Michael Imhof Verlag, 2013)Joyce Tyldesley, Tutankhamun: Pharaoh, Icon, Enigma (Headline, 2022) Joyce Tyldesley, Nefertiti’s Face: The Creation of an Icon (Profile Books, 2018)Joyce Tyldesley, Nefertiti: Egypt’s Sun Queen (Viking, 1998)

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Roman emperor Tiberius. When he was born in 42BC, there was little prospect of him ever becoming Emperor of Rome. Firstly, Rome was still a Republic and there had not yet been any Emperor so that had to change and, secondly, when his stepfather Augustus became Emperor there was no precedent for who should succeed him, if anyone. It somehow fell to Tiberius to develop this Roman imperial project and by some accounts he did this well, while to others his reign was marked by cruelty and paranoia inviting comparison with Nero.WithMatthew Nicholls Senior Tutor at St. John’s College, University of OxfordShushma Malik Assistant Professor of Classics and Onassis Classics Fellow at Newnham College at the University of CambridgeAnd Catherine Steel Professor of Classics at the University of GlasgowProducer: Simon TillotsonReading list:Edward Champlin, ‘Tiberius the Wise’ (Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte, 57.4, 2008)Alison E. Cooley, ‘From the Augustan Principate to the invention of the Age of Augustus’ (Journal of Roman Studies 109, 2019)Alison E. Cooley, The Senatus Consultum de Cn. Pisone Patre: text, translation, and commentary (Cambridge University Press, 2023)Eleanor Cowan, ‘Tiberius and Augustus in Tiberian Sources’ (Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte, 58.4, 2009)Cassius Dio (trans. C. T. Mallan), Roman History: Books 57 and 58: The Reign of Tiberius (Oxford University Press, 2020)Rebecca Edwards, ‘Tacitus, Tiberius and Capri’ (Latomus, 70.4, 2011)A. Gibson (ed.), The Julio-Claudian Succession: Reality and Perception of the Augustan Model (Brill, 2012), especially ‘Tiberius and the invention of succession’ by C. VoutJosephus (trans. E. Mary Smallwood and G. Williamson), The Jewish War (Penguin Classics, 1981)Barbara Levick, Tiberius the Politician (Routledge, 1999)E. O’Gorman, Tacitus’ History of Political Effective Speech: Truth to Power (Bloomsbury, 2019)Velleius Paterculus (trans. J. C. Yardley and Anthony A. Barrett), Roman History: From Romulus and the Foundation of Rome to the Reign of the Emperor Tiberius (Hackett Publishing, 2011)R. Seager, Tiberius (2nd ed., Wiley-Blackwell, 2005)David Shotter, Tiberius Caesar (Routledge, 2005) Suetonius (trans. Robert Graves), The Twelve Caesars (Penguin Classics, 2007)Tacitus (trans. Michael Grant), The Annals of Imperial Rome (Penguin Classics, 2003)