Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss fungi. Read more
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Fungi
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss fungi.
Rosalind Franklin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pioneering scientist Rosalind Franklin.
Sun Tzu and The Art of War
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the influential ancient Chinese work on military strategy.
The Highland Clearances
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss evictions and migrations in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Augustine's Confessions
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss St Augustine's account of his conversion to Christianity.
Tocqueville: Democracy in America
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Alexis de Tocqueville's analysis of American democracy.
Roman Slavery
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the relationship between slavery and the power of Rome.
George and Robert Stephenson
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss George and Robert Stephenson and the birth of railways.
Middlemarch
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss George Eliot's greatest novel, published 1871-72.
The Proton
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Proton, found in the nuclei of all elements.
The Almoravid Empire
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the great empires of the Islamic west.
The Mabinogion
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the medieval Welsh stories of Celtic mythology.
The Emancipation of the Serfs
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the freeing of a third of Russians from serfdom in 1861.
Margaret of Anjou
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Queen of England at the start of the Wars of the Roses
Henrik Ibsen
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the playwright and his tragedies of middle-class life.
Persepolis
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Achaemenid Empire's great ceremonial capital.
Montesquieu
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss republicanism, despotism and the separation of powers.
Echolocation
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how some animals sense their world with sound not sight.
The Mexican-American War
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 1846-48 war that cost Mexico half its territory.
William Morris
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss a great cultural figure of the 19th century.
The Iliad
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the epic poem on the wrath of Achilles in the Trojan War.
Automata
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of machines imitating living beings.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the German theologian, killed for plotting against Hitler
Edith Wharton
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Wharton's novels of America's Gilded Age.
Is Shakespeare History? The Plantagenets
Melvyn Bragg discusses the impact of Shakespeare's approach to history (programme 1 of 2)
Is Shakespeare History? The Romans
Melvyn Bragg discusses the impact of Shakespeare's approach to history (programme 2 of 2).
The Fable of the Bees
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Mandeville's work on the public benefit of private vices.
Free Radicals
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the molecules linked to cell functioning and ageing
Marie Antoinette
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Austrian princess, guillotined as Queen of France.
Horace
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Roman poet Horace, who flourished under Augustus.
Hope
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosophy of hope - a weakness or a strength?