In Our Time: Culture

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Hardy (1840 -1928) and his commitment to poetry, which he prized far above his novels. In the 1890s, once he had earned enough from his fiction, Hardy stopped writing novels altogether and returned to the poetry he had largely put aside since his twenties. He hoped that he might be ranked one day alongside Shelley and Byron, worthy of inclusion in a collection such as Palgrave's Golden Treasury which had inspired him. Hardy kept writing poems for the rest of his life, in different styles and metres, and he explored genres from nature, to war, to epic. Among his best known are what he called his Poems of 1912 to 13, responding to his grief at the death of his first wife, Emma (1840 -1912), who he credited as the one who had made it possible for him to leave his work as an architect's clerk and to write the novels that made him famous.WithMark Ford Poet, and Professor of English and American Literature, University College London.Jane Thomas Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Hull and Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the University of LeedsAnd Tim Armstrong Professor of Modern English and American Literature at Royal Holloway, University of LondonProducer: Simon Tillotson

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Austrian-born film director Fritz Lang (1890-1976), who was one of the most celebrated film-makers of the 20th century. He worked first in Weimar Germany, creating a range of films including the startling and subversive Mabuse the Gambler and the iconic but ruinously expensive Metropolis before arguably his masterpiece, M, with both the police and the underworld hunting for a child killer in Berlin, his first film with sound. The rise of the Nazis prompted Lang's move to Hollywood where he developed some of his Weimar themes in memorable and disturbing films such as Fury and The Big Heat. With Stella Bruzzi Professor of Film and Dean of Arts and Humanities at University College LondonJoe McElhaney Professor of Film Studies at Hunter College, City University of New YorkAndIris Luppa Senior Lecturer in Film Studies in the Division of Film and Media at London South Bank UniversityProducer: Simon Tillotson

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Charles Dickens' novella, written in 1843 when he was 31, which has become intertwined with his reputation and with Christmas itself. Ebenezer Scrooge is the miserly everyman figure whose joyless obsession with money severs him from society and his own emotions, and he is only saved after recalling his lonely past, seeing what he is missing now and being warned of his future, all under the guidance of the ghosts of Christmases Past, Present and Yet To Come. Redeemed, Scrooge comes to care in particular about one of the many minor characters in the story who make a great impact, namely Tiny Tim, the disabled child of the poor and warm-hearted Cratchit family, with his cry, "God bless us, every one!"WithJuliet John Professor of English Literature and Dean of Arts and Social Sciences at City, University of LondonJon Mee Professor of Eighteenth-Century Studies at the University of YorkAndDinah Birch Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Cultural Engagement and Professor of English Literature at the University of LiverpoolProducer: Simon Tillotson

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the British phase of a movement that spread across Europe in the mid-19th and early 20th centuries. Influenced by Charles Baudelaire and by Walter Pater, these Decadents rejected the mainstream Victorian view that art needed a moral purpose, and valued instead the intense sensations art provoked, celebrating art for art’s sake. Oscar Wilde was at its heart, Aubrey Beardsley adorned it with his illustrations and they, with others, provoked moral panic with their supposed degeneracy. After burning brightly, the movement soon lost its energy in Britain yet it has proved influential.The illustration above, by Beardsley, is from the cover of the first edition of The Yellow Book in April 1894.WithNeil Sammells Professor of English and Irish Literature and Deputy Vice Chancellor at Bath Spa UniversityKate Hext Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of ExeterAndAlex Murray Senior Lecturer in English at Queen’s University, BelfastProducer: Simon Tillotson

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss an early masterpiece of French epic poetry, from the 12th Century. It is a reimagining of Charlemagne’s wars in Spain in the 8th Century in which Roland, his most valiant knight, chooses death before dishonour, guarding the army’s rear from a pagan ambush as it heads back through the Roncesvalles Pass in the Pyrenees. If he wanted to, Roland could blow on his oliphant, his elephant tusk horn, to summon help by calling back Charlemagne's army, but according to his values that would bring shame both on him and on France, and he would rather keep killing pagans until he is the last man standing and the last to die.The image above is taken from an illustration of Charlemagne finding Roland after the Battle of Roncevaux/Roncesvalles, from 'Les Grandes Chroniques de France', c.1460 by Jean Fouquet, Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, Ms Fr 6465 f.113 With Laura Ashe Professor of English Literature and Fellow in English at Worcester College, University of OxfordMiranda Griffin Assistant Professor of Medieval French at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Murray Edwards CollegeAndLuke Sunderland Professor in the School of Modern Languages and Cultures at Durham UniversityStudio producer: John Goudie

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the author and philosopher Iris Murdoch (1919 - 1999). In her lifetime she was most celebrated for her novels such as The Bell and The Black Prince, but these are now sharing the spotlight with her philosophy. Responding to the horrors of the Second World War, she argued that morality was not subjective or a matter of taste, as many of her contemporaries held, but was objective, and good was a fact we could recognize. To tell good from bad, though, we would need to see the world as it really is, not as we want to see it, and her novels are full of characters who are not yet enlightened enough to do that.WithAnil Gomes Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy at Trinity College, University of OxfordAnne Rowe Visiting Professor at the University of Chichester and Emeritus Research Fellow with the Iris Murdoch Archive Project at Kingston UniversityAndMiles Leeson Director of the Iris Murdoch Research Centre and Reader in English Literature at the University of ChichesterProducer: Simon Tillotson

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Anne Bronte's second novel, published in 1848, which is now celebrated alongside those of her sisters but which Charlotte Bronte tried to suppress as a 'mistake'. It examines the life of Helen, who has escaped her abusive husband Arthur Huntingdon with their son to live at Wildfell Hall as a widow under the alias 'Mrs Graham', and it exposes the men in her husband's circle who gave her no choice but to flee. Early critics attacked the novel as coarse, as misrepresenting male behaviour, and as something no woman or girl should ever read; soon after Anne's death, Charlotte suggested the publisher should lose it for good. In recent decades, though, its reputation has climbed and it now sits with Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights as one of the great novels by the Bronte sisters.The image above shows Tara Fitzgerald as Helen Graham in a 1996 BBC adaptation.WithAlexandra Lewis Lecturer in English and Creative Writing at the University of Newcastle (Australia)Marianne Thormählen Professor Emerita in English Studies, Lund UniversityAndJohn Bowen Professor of Nineteenth Century Literature at the University of YorkProducer: Simon Tillotson

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Greek writer known as the father of histories, dubbed by his detractors as the father of lies. Herodotus (c484 to 425 BC or later) was raised in Halicarnassus in modern Turkey when it was part of the Persian empire and, in the years after the Persian Wars, set about an inquiry into the deep background to those wars. He also aimed to preserve what he called the great and marvellous deeds of Greeks and non-Greeks, seeking out the best evidence for past events and presenting the range of evidence for readers to assess. Plutarch was to criticise Herodotus for using this to promote the least flattering accounts of his fellow Greeks, hence the 'father of lies', but the depth and breadth of his Histories have secured his reputation from his lifetime down to the present day.WithTom Harrison Professor of Ancient History at the University of St AndrewsEsther Eidinow Professor of Ancient History at the University of BristolAndPaul Cartledge A. G. Leventis Senior Research Fellow at Clare College, University of CambridgeProducer: Simon Tillotson

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the collection of poems published in 1609 by Thomas Thorpe: Shakespeare’s Sonnets, “never before imprinted”. Yet, while some of Shakespeare's other poems and many of his plays were often reprinted in his lifetime, the Sonnets were not a publishing success. They had to make their own way, outside the main canon of Shakespeare’s work: wonderful, troubling, patchy, inspiring and baffling, and they have appealed in different ways to different times. Most are addressed to a man, something often overlooked and occasionally concealed; one early and notorious edition even changed some of the pronouns. With:Hannah Crawforth Senior Lecturer in Early Modern Literature at King’s College LondonDon Paterson Poet and Professor of Poetry at the University of St AndrewsAndEmma Smith Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Hertford College, OxfordProducer: Simon Tillotson

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of one of the great historians, best known for his History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (published 1776-89). According to Gibbon (1737-94) , the idea for this work came to him on 15th of October 1764 as he sat musing amidst the ruins of Rome, while barefooted friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter. Decline and Fall covers thirteen centuries and is an enormous intellectual undertaking and, on publication, it became a phenomenal success across Europe. The image above is of Edward Gibbon by Henry Walton, oil on mahogany panel, 1773.WithDavid Womersley The Thomas Wharton Professor of English Literature at St Catherine’s College, University of OxfordCharlotte Roberts Lecturer in English at University College LondonAnd Karen O’Brien Professor of English Literature at the University of OxfordProducer: Simon Tillotson