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What is a nation, what is its significance, and to what problems of life is its persistence a response? Read by Leighton Pugh.

Image: Lucas Cranach's The Crossing of the Red Sea, 1530. Credit: Heritage Image Partnership Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo

The biggest division in modern society is between the meritocracy and the people, the cognitive elite and the masses, the exam-passers and the exam-flunkers. Read by Leighton Pugh.

Image: Caricature of a Cambridge University library in the Georgian era. Credit: Thomas Rowlandson / Alamy Stock Photo

How did our ancestors think? Read by Leighton Pugh.

Image: A play is performed in an ancient Greek theatre. Credit: Classic Image / Alamy Stock Photo 

There is no linear, moral progress in knowledge and science. Read by Leighton Pugh.

Image: Triple-microscope made by the optician Camille Sebastien Nachet in Paris. Credit: gameover / Alamy Stock Photo

The mistake many Western countries make is to take Russia largely at face value. Read by Leighton Pugh.

Image: Nesting Russian dolls showing former leaders. Credit: Mr Standfast / Alamy Stock Photo 

The story of first millennium Europe is one of remarkable economic change and demographic upheaval; a precocious analogue to the modern era of globalisation. Read by Leighton Pugh.

Image: Charlemagne. Credit: The Picture Art Collection / Alamy Stock Photo