Engelsberg Ideas Podcasts Engelsberg Ideas Podcasts

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 

Vanessa Harding on the God-fearing diarist Nehemiah Wallington whose personality was far removed from the cosmopolitanism of Samuel Pepys, his fast-living contemporary. Read by Sebastian Brown.

Image: An excerpt from Nehemiah Wallington's diary, dated 1654. Credit: Folger Shakespeare Library. 

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

Self-interest, imperial competition and new threats in Europe - T.G. Otte examines the complex 120-year long history of the Entente Cordiale with EI's senior editor, Paul Lay.

Image: First prize winner at the Covent Garden fancy dress ball in 1905, a lady dressed in an elaborate costume as the Entente Cordiale. Credit: Chronicle / 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 

Peter Frankopan on the Byzantine princess Anna Komnene who, banished to a convent for her political ambition, devoted her gifts of observation to charting the fortunes of her father's empire – etching her legacy as Europe's first female historian. Read by Sebastian Brown.

Image: Anna Komnene, a Byzantine princess and scholar. Credit: history_docu_photo / Alamy Stock Photo