In Our Time: Culture

BBC Radio 4

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HISTORY

Popular culture, poetry, music and visual arts and the roles they play in our society.

6 DAYS AGO

Little Women

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Louisa May Alcott's 1868 novel, credited with starting the new genre of young adult fiction. When Alcott (1832-88) wrote Little Women, she only did so as her publisher refused to publish her father's book otherwise and as she hoped it would make money. It made Alcott's fortune. This coming of age story of Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy March, each overcoming their own moral flaws, has delighted generations of readers and was so popular from the start that Alcott wrote the second part in 1869 and further sequels and spin-offs in the coming years. Her work has inspired countless directors, composers and authors to make many reimagined versions ever since, with the sisters played by film actors such as Katherine Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, Winona Ryder, Claire Danes, Kirsten Dunst, Saoirse Ronan and Emma Watson. With Bridget Bennett Professor of American Literature and Culture at the University of Leeds Erin Forbes Senior Lecturer in African American and U.S. Literature at the University of Bristol And Tom Wright Reader in Rhetoric and Head of the Department of English Literature at the University of Sussex Producer: Simon Tillotson Reading list: Louisa May Alcott (ed. Madeline B Stern), Behind a Mask: The Unknown Thrillers of Louisa May Alcott (William Morrow & Co, 1997) Kate Block, Jenny Zhang, Carmen Maria Machado and Jane Smiley, March Sisters: On Life, Death, and Little Women (Library of America, 2019) Anne Boyd Rioux, Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy: The Story of Little Women and Why It Still Matters (W. W. Norton & Company, 2018) Azelina Flint, The Matrilineal Heritage of Louisa May Alcott and Christina Rossetti (Routledge, 2021) Robert Gross, The Transcendentalists and Their World (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022) John Matteson, Eden’s Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father (W. W. Norton & Company, 2007) Bethany C. Morrow, So Many Beginnings: A Little Women Remix (St Martin’s Press, 2021) Anne K. Phillips and Gregory Eiselein (eds.), Critical Insights: Louisa May Alcott (Grey House Publishing Inc, 2016) Harriet Reisen, Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women (Picador, 2010) Daniel Shealy (ed.), Little Women at 150 (University of Mississippi Press, 2022) Elaine Showalter, A Jury of Her Peers: American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx (Virago, 2009) Simon Sleight and Shirleene Robinson (eds.), Children, Childhood and Youth in the British World (Palgrave, 2016), especially “The ‘Willful’ Girl in the Anglo-World: Sentimental Heroines and Wild Colonial Girls” by Hilary Emmett Madeleine B. Stern, Louisa May Alcott: A Biography (first published 1950; Northeastern University Press, 1999) In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

48 min
7 NOV

Robert Graves

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the author of 'I, Claudius' who was also one of the finest poets of the twentieth century. Robert Graves (1895 -1985) placed his poetry far above his prose. He once declared that from the age of 15 poetry had been his ruling passion and that he lived his life according to poetic principles, writing in prose only to pay the bills and that he bred the pedigree dogs of his prose to feed the cats of his poetry. Yet it’s for his prose that he’s most famous today, including 'I Claudius', his brilliant account of the debauchery of Imperial Rome, and 'Goodbye to All That', the unforgettable memoir of his early life including the time during the First World War when he was so badly wounded at the Somme that The Times listed him as dead. With Paul O’Prey Emeritus Professor of Modern Literature at the University of Roehampton, London Fran Brearton Professor of Modern Poetry at Queen’s University, Belfast And Bob Davis Professor of Religious and Cultural Education at the University of Glasgow Producer: Simon Tillotson Robert Graves (ed. Paul O'Prey), In Broken Images: Selected Letters of Robert Graves 1914-1946 (Hutchinson, 1982) Robert Graves (ed. Paul O'Prey), Between Moon and Moon: Selected letters of Robert Graves 1946-1972 (Hutchinson, 1984) Robert Graves (ed. Beryl Graves and Dunstan Ward), The Complete Poems (Penguin Modern Classics, 2003) Robert Graves, I, Claudius (republished by Penguin, 2006) Robert Graves, King Jesus (republished by Penguin, 2011) Robert Graves, The White Goddess (republished by Faber, 1999) Robert Graves, The Greek Myths (republished by Penguin, 2017) Robert Graves (ed. Michael Longley), Selected Poems (Faber, 2013) Robert Graves (ed. Fran Brearton, intro. Andrew Motion), Goodbye to All That: An Autobiography: The Original Edition (first published 1929; Penguin Classics, 2014) William Graves, Wild Olives: Life in Majorca with Robert Graves (Pimlico, 2001) Richard Perceval Graves, Robert Graves: The Assault Heroic, 1895-1926 (Macmillan, 1986, vol. 1 of the biography) Richard Perceval Graves, Robert Graves: The Years with Laura, 1926-1940 (Viking, 1990, vol. 2 of the biography) Richard Perceval Graves, Robert Graves and the White Goddess, 1940-1985 (Orion, 1995, vol. 3 of the biography) Miranda Seymour: Robert Graves: Life on the Edge (Henry Holt & Co, 1995) In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

55 min
25 JUL

Monet in England

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of the great French Impressionist Claude Monet (1840-1926) in London, initially in 1870 and then from 1899. He spent his first visit in poverty, escaping from war in France, while by the second he had become so commercially successful that he stayed at the Savoy Hotel. There, from his balcony, he began a series of almost a hundred paintings that captured the essence of this dynamic city at that time, with fog and smoke almost obscuring the bridges, boats and Houses of Parliament. The pollution was terrible for health but the diffraction through the sooty droplets offered an ever-changing light that captivated Monet, and he was to paint the Thames more than he did his water lilies or haystacks or Rouen Cathedral. On his return to France, Monet appeared to have a new confidence to explore an art that was more abstract than impressionist. With Karen Serres Senior Curator of Paintings at the Courtauld Gallery, London Curator of the exhibition 'Monet and London. Views of the Thames' Frances Fowle Professor of Nineteenth-Century Art at the University of Edinburgh and Senior Curator of French Art at the National Galleries of Scotland And Jackie Wullschläger Chief Art Critic for the Financial Times and author of ‘Monet, The Restless Vision’ In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production Producer: Simon Tillotson Studio production: John Goudie Reading list: Caroline Corbeau Parsons, Impressionists in London: French Artists in Exile 1870-1904 (Tate Publishing, 2017) Frances Fowle, Monet and French Landscape: Vétheuil and Normandy (National Galleries of Scotland, 2007), especially the chapter ‘Making Money out of Monet: Marketing Monet in Britain 1870-1905’ Robert Gordon and Andrew Forge, Monet (Harry N. Abrams, 1983) Paul Hayes Tucker, Monet in the ’90s: The Series Paintings (Yale University Press, 1990) Paul Hayes Tucker, Monet in the 20th Century (Yale University Press, 1998) Katharine A. Lochnan, Turner, Whistler, Monet (Tate Publishing, 2005) Nicholas Reed, Monet and the Thames: Paintings and Modern Views of Monet’s London (Lilburne Press, 1998) Grace Seiberling, Monet in London (High Museum of Art, 1988) Karen Serres, Frances Fowle and Jennifer A. Thompson, Monet and London: Views of the Thames (Paul Holberton Publishing, 2024 – catalogue to accompany Courtauld Gallery exhibition) Charles Stuckey, Monet: A Retrospective (Random House, 1985) Daniel Wildenstein, Monet: The Triumph of Impressionism (first published 1996; Taschen, 2022) Jackie Wullschläger, Monet: The Restless Vision (Allen Lane, 2023)

51 min
11 JUL

Fielding's Tom Jones

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss "The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling" (1749) by Henry Fielding (1707-1754), one of the most influential of the early English novels and a favourite of Dickens. Coleridge wrote that it had one of the 'three most perfect plots ever planned'. Fielding had made his name in the theatre with satirical plays that were so painful for their targets in government that, from then until the 1960s, plays required approval before being staged; seeking other ways to make a living, Fielding turned to law and to fiction. 'Tom Jones' is one of the great comic novels, with the tightness of a farce and the ambition of a Greek epic as told by the finest raconteur. While other authors might present Tom as a rake and a libertine, Fielding makes him the hero for his fundamental good nature, so offering a caution not to judge anyone too soon, if ever. With Judith Hawley Professor of 18th Century Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London Henry Power Professor of English Literature at the University of Exeter And Charlotte Roberts Associate Professor of English Literature at University College London Producer: Simon Tillotson In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production Reading list: Martin C. Battestin with Ruthe R. Battestin, Henry Fielding: A Life (Routledge, 1989) J. M. Beattie, The First English Detectives: The Bow Street Runners and the Policing of London, 1750–1840 (Oxford University Press, 2012) S. Dickie, Cruelty and Laughter: Forgotten Comic Literature and the Unsentimental Eighteenth Century (University of Chicago Press, 2011) J.A. Downie (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the Eighteenth-Century Novel (Oxford University Press, 2020) Henry Fielding (ed. John Bender and Simon Stern), The History of Tom Jones (Oxford University Press, 2008) Henry Fielding (ed. Tom Keymer), The Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon (Penguin Classics, 1996) Ronald Paulson, The Life of Henry Fielding: A Critical Biography (Wiley Blackwell, 2000) Henry Power, Epic into Novel: Henry Fielding, Scriblerian Satire, and the Consumption of Classical Literature (Oxford University Press, 2015) Claude Rawson, Henry Fielding and the Augustan Ideal under Stress (first published 1972; Routledge, 2021) Claude Rawson (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Henry Fielding (Cambridge University Press, 2007)

55 min
6 JUN

Sir Thomas Wyatt

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss 'the greatest poet of his age', Thomas Wyatt (1503 -1542), who brought the poetry of the Italian Renaissance into the English Tudor world, especially the sonnet, so preparing the way for Shakespeare and Donne. As an ambassador to Henry VIII and, allegedly, too close to Anne Boleyn, he experienced great privilege under intense scrutiny. Some of Wyatt's poems, such as They Flee From Me That Sometime Did Me Seek, are astonishingly fresh and conversational and yet he wrote them under the tightest constraints, when a syllable out of place could have condemned him to the Tower. With Brian Cummings 50th Anniversary Professor of English at the University of York Susan Brigden Retired Fellow at Lincoln College, University of Oxford And Laura Ashe Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford Producer: Simon Tillotson In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production Reading list: Thomas Betteridge and Suzannah Lipscomb (eds.), Henry VIII and the Court: Art, Politics and Performance (Routledge, 2016) Susan Brigden, Thomas Wyatt: The Heart’s Forest (Faber, 2012) Nicola Shulman, Graven with Diamonds: The Many Lives of Thomas Wyatt: Courtier, Poet, Assassin, Spy (Short Books, 2011) Chris Stamatakis, Sir Thomas Wyatt and the Rhetoric of Rewriting (Oxford University Press, 2012) Patricia Thomson (ed.), Thomas Wyatt: The Critical Heritage (Routledge, 1995) Greg Walker, Writing Under Tyranny: English Literature and the Henrician Reformation (Oxford University Press, 2005) Thomas Wyatt (ed. R. A. Rebholz), The Complete Poems (Penguin, 1978)

58 min
23 MAY

Bertolt Brecht

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the greatest European playwrights of the twentieth century. The aim of Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) was to make the familiar ‘strange’: with plays such as Mother Courage and The Caucasian Chalk Circle he wanted his audience not to sit back but to engage, observe and discover the contradictions in life, and act on what they learnt. He developed this approach in turbulent times, from Weimar Germany to the rise of the Nazis, to exile in Scandinavia and America and then post-war life in East Berlin, and he has since inspired dramatists around the world. With Laura Bradley Professor of German and Theatre at the University of Edinburgh David Barnett Professor of Theatre at the University of York And Tom Kuhn Professor of Twentieth Century German Literature, Emeritus Fellow of St Hugh's College, University of Oxford Producer: Simon Tillotson In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio production Reading list: David Barnett, Brecht in Practice: Theatre, Theory and Performance (Bloomsbury, 2014) David Barnett, A History of the Berliner Ensemble (Cambridge University Press, 2015) Laura Bradley and Karen Leeder (eds.), Brecht and the GDR: Politics, Culture, Posterity (Camden House, 2015) Laura Bradley, ‘Training the Audience: Brecht and the Art of Spectatorship’ (The Modern Language Review, 111, 2016) Bertolt Brecht (ed. Marc Silberman, Tom Kuhn and Steve Giles), Brecht on Theatre (Bloomsbury, 2014) Bertolt Brecht (ed. Tom Kuhn, Steve Giles and Marc Silberman), Brecht on Performance (Bloomsbury, 2014) Bertolt Brecht (trans. Tom Kuhn and David Constantine), The Collected Poems of Bertolt Brecht (Norton Liveright, 2018) which includes the poem ‘Spring 1938’ read by Tom Kuhn in this programme Stephen Brockmann (ed.), Bertolt Brecht in Context (Cambridge University Press, 2021) Meg Mumford, Bertolt Brecht (Routledge, 2009) Stephen Parker, Bertolt Brecht: A Literary Life (Bloomsbury, 2014) Ronald Speirs, Brecht’s Poetry of Political Exile (Cambridge University Press, 2000) David Zoob, Brecht: A Practical Handbook (Nick Hern Books, 2018)

1 hr
9 MAY

Lysistrata

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aristophanes' comedy in which the women of Athens and Sparta, led by Lysistrata, secure peace in the long-running war between them by staging a sex strike. To the men in the audience in 411BC, the idea that peace in the Peloponnesian War could be won so easily was ridiculous and the thought that their wives could have so much power over them was even more so. However Aristophanes' comedy also has the women seizing the treasure in the Acropolis that was meant to fund more fighting in an emergency, a fund the Athenians had recently had to draw on. They were in a perilous position and, much as they might laugh at Aristophanes' jokes, they knew there were real concerns about the actual cost of the war in terms of wealth and manpower. With Paul Cartledge AG Leventis Senior Research Fellow of Clare College, University of Cambridge Sarah Miles Associate Professor in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at Durham University And James Robson Professor of Classical Studies at the Open University Producer: Simon Tillotson Reading list: Aristophanes (ed. Jeffrey Henderson), Lysistrata (Oxford University Press, 1987) Aristophanes (ed. Jeffrey Henderson), Three Plays by Aristophanes: Staging Women (Routledge, 2010) Aristophanes (ed. Jeffrey Henderson), Birds; Lysistrata; Women at the Thesmophoria (Loeb Classical Library series, Harvard University Press, 2014) Aristophanes (ed. Alan H. Sommerstein), Lysistrata and Other Plays: The Acharnians; The Clouds; Lysistrata (Penguin, 2002) Aristophanes (ed. Alan H. Sommerstein), Lysistrata (Aris & Phillips, 1998) Paul Cartledge, Aristophanes and his Theatre of the Absurd (Bristol Classical Press, 1999) Kenneth Dover, Aristophanic Comedy (University of California Press, 1972) Germaine Greer, Lysistrata: The Sex Strike: After Aristophanes (Aurora Metro Press, 2000) Tony Harrison, The Common Chorus: A Version of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata (Faber & Faber, 1992) Douglas M. MacDowell, Aristophanes and Athens: An Introduction to the Plays (Oxford University Press, 1995) S. Douglas Olson (ed.), Ancient Comedy and Reception: Essays in Honor of Jeffrey Henderson (De Gruyter, 2013), especially 'She (Don't) Gotta Have It: African-American reception of Lysistrata' by Kevin Wetmore James Robson, Aristophanes: Lysistrata, Bloomsbury ancient comedy companions (Bloomsbury, 2023) James Robson, Aristophanes: An Introduction (Duckworth, 2009) Ralph M. Rosen and Helene P. Foley (eds.), Aristophanes and Politics. New Studies (Brill, 2020) Donald Sells, Parody, Politics and the Populace in Greek Old Comedy (Bloomsbury, 2018) David Stuttard (ed.), Looking at Lysistrata: Eight Essays and a New Version of Aristophanes' Provocative Comedy (Bristol Classical Press, 2010)

55 min
25 APR

The Kalevala

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Finnish epic poem that first appeared in print in 1835 in what was then the Grand Duchy of Finland, part of the Russian Empire and until recently part of Sweden. The compiler of this epic was a doctor, Elias Lönnrot (1802-1884), who had travelled the land to hear traditional poems about mythical heroes being sung in Finnish, the language of the peasantry, and writing them down in his own order to create this landmark work. In creating The Kalevala, Lönnrot helped the Finns realise they were a distinct people apart from Sweden and Russia, who deserved their own nation state and who came to demand independence, which they won in 1917. With Riitta Valijärvi Associate Professor in Finnish and Minority Languages at University College London Thomas Dubois The Halls-Bascom Professor of Scandinavian Folklore and Literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison And Daniel Abondolo Formerly Reader in Hungarian at University College London Producer: Simon Tillotson Reading list: Nigel Fabb, What is Poetry? Language and Memory in the Poems of the World (Cambridge University Press, 2015) Frog, Satu Grünthal, Kati Kallio and Jarkko Niemi (eds), Versification: Metrics in Practice (Finnish Literature Society, 2021) Riho Grünthal et al., ‘Drastic demographic events triggered the Uralic spread’ (Diachronica, Volume 39, Issue 4, Aug 2022) Lauri Honko (ed.), The Kalevala and the World's Traditional Epics (Finnish Literature Society, 2002) The Kalevala Heritage: Archive Recordings of Ancient Finnish Songs. Online Catalogue no. ODE8492. Mauri Kunnas, The Canine Kalevala (Otava Publishing, 1992) Kuusi, Matti, et al. (eds.), Finnish Folk Poetry: Epic (Finnish Literature Society, 1977) Elias Lönnrot (trans. John Martin Crawford), Kalevala: The Epic Poem of Finland (first published 1887; CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2017) Elias Lönnrot (trans. W. F. Kirby), Kalevala: The Land of the Heroes (first published by J.M. Dent & Sons, 1907, 2 vols.; ‎ Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd, 2000) Elias Lönnrot (trans. Francis Peabody Magoun Jr.), The Kalevala, or Poems of the Kaleva District (Harvard University Press, 1963) Elias Lönnrot (trans. Eino Friberg), The Kalevala: Epic of the Finnish People (Otava Publishing, 1988) Elias Lönnrot (trans. Keith Bosley), The Kalevala: An Epic Poem after Oral Tradition (Oxford University Press, 1989) Kirsti Mäkinen, Pirkko-Liisa Surojegin, Kaarina Brooks, An Illustrated Kalevala: Myths and Legends from Finland (Floris Books, 2020) Sami Makkonen, Kalevala: The Graphic Novel (Ablaze, 2024) Juha Y. Pentikäinen (trans. Ritva Poom), Kalevala Mythology, (Indiana University Press, 1999) Tina K. Ramnarine, Ilmatar’s Inspirations: Nationalism, Globalization and the Changing Soundscapes of Finnish Folk Music (University of Chicago Press, 2003) Jonathan Roper (ed.), Alliteration in Culture (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), especially chapter 12 ‘Alliteration in (Balto-) Finnic Languages’ by Frog and Eila Stepanova Karl Spracklen, Metal Music and the Re-imagining of Masculinity, Place, Race and Nation (Emerald Publishing, 2020), especially the chapter ‘Finnish Folk Metal: Raising Drinking Horns in Mainstream Metal’ Leea Virtanen and Thomas A. DuBois, Finnish Folklore: Studia Fennica Folkloristica 9 (Finnish Literature Society, 2000)

50 min

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Popular culture, poetry, music and visual arts and the roles they play in our society.

Creator

BBC Radio 4
Years Active

2011 - 2024
Episodes

289
Rating

Clean
Show Website

In Our Time: Culture
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BBC Studios Distribution Limited has identified itself as a trader for this podcast and confirmed that this product or service complies with European Union law. Address 1 Television Centre 101 Wood Lane London London W12 7FA United Kingdom Phone Number +44 7590176301 Email greg.styger@bbc.com