In Our Time: History

Misha Glenny and guests discuss the origins and evolution of an alliance which transformed the geopolitics of the classical world: the Delian League. Since the start of the 5th Century BCE, city states across Greece had been fighting a series of armed conflicts in the Greco-Persian Wars. After the defeat of a second Persian invasion in 478 BCE, a league of cities across Greece came together and formed a new alliance led by Athens. That alliance is now known as the Delian League, after the island of Delos where it was established. In the following decades, Athens used the Delian League to grow its own wealth and formidable naval power. Cities which tried to leave the alliance found themselves violently put down and their lands confiscated by the Athenians. What had begun as a cooperative alliance sworn to resist the Persian Empire gradually started to seem like it may have created another imperial power: the Athenian Empire.WithLeah Lazar Lecturer in Hellenistic Culture at the University of ManchesterPolly Low Professor in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at the University of DurhamAndPaul Cartledge AG Leventis Senior Research Fellow of Clare College, University of CambridgeProducer: Martha OwenAristophanes (trans. David Barrett and Alan H. Sommerstein), The Birds and Other Plays (Penguin Classics, 2003)Mary Beard, The Parthenon (Profile Books, 2010)M. Canevaro and D. M. Lewis, 'Between ‘The Character of the Athenian Empire’ and The Origins of the Peloponnesian War (and beyond): The Popularity of the Athenian Empire Revisited' (Polis 41:1, 2024)Paul Cartledge, Ancient Greece: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2011)Lisa Kallet and John H. Kroll, The Athenian Empire: Using Coins as Sources (Cambridge University Press, 2020)Leah Lazar, Athenian Power in the Fifth Century BC (Oxford University Press, 2024)Polly Low (ed.), The Athenian Empire (Edinburgh University Press, 2008)Malcolm F. McGregor, The Athenians and their Empire (UBC Press, 1987)Robin Osborne (ed. and trans.), The Athenian Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2023)P. J. Rhodes, The Athenian Empire (Clarendon Press, 1985)Thucydides (trans. Robin Waterfield, introduced by Polly Low), The History of the Peloponnesian War (Basic Books, 2025)Thucydides (ed. Robert B Strassler), The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War (Free Press, 1998)Thucydides (trans. Rex Warner), History of the Peloponnesian War (Penguin Books, 2000)Thucydides (trans. Martin Hammond), The Peloponnesian War (Oxford University Press, 2009)In Our Time is a BBC Studios productionSpanning history, religion, culture, science and philosophy, In Our Time from BBC Radio 4 is essential listening for the intellectually curious. In each episode, host Misha Glenny and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.

Misha Glenny and guests discuss the group which came to be known as the Levellers and emerged during what would become arguably one of the bloodiest and most turbulent periods of English history. After the First English Civil War, the Levellers started calling for reforms to achieve legal and social equality. They pushed for a new constitution, extended franchise, popular sovereignty, and religious toleration. To do this, the Levellers pioneered the use of pamphlets and petitions, as well as taking to the streets in their thousands to demonstrate wearing their signature sea-green ribbons and sprigs of rosemary. To some they were radical, and to others not radical enough. Though the Leveller movement itself may have been short-lived, the arguments that they made have both inspired and challenged generations since.WithTeresa Bejan Professor of Political Theory and Fellow of Oriel College, University of OxfordTed Vallance Professor of History and Dean of Research and Doctoral Study at the University of RoehamptonAndClare Jackson Honorary Professor of Early Modern History and Walter Grant Scott Fellow in History at Trinity Hall, University of CambridgeProducer: Martha OwenReading list:Teresa M. Bejan, First Among Equals: Visions of Equality before Egalitarianism (Belknap Press, forthcoming in 2026)Michael Braddick, The Common Freedom of the People: John Lilburne and the English Revolution (Oxford University Press, 2018)Rachel Foxley, The Levellers; Radical Political Thought in the English Revolution (Manchester University Press, 2013)Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down (Penguin, 1972)Ann Hughes, Gender and the English Revolution (Routledge, 2011)John Rees, The Leveller Revolution: Radical Political Organisation in England, 1640-1650 (Verso Books, 2016)John Rees (ed.), John Lilburne and the Levellers: Reappraising the Roots of English Radicalism 400 years on (Routledge, 2017), including 'Reborn John: The Eighteenth-Century Afterlife of John Lilburne' by Edward VallanceAndrew Sharp (ed.), The English Levellers (Cambridge University Press, 1998)Edward Vallance, A Radical History of Britain: Visionaries, Rebels and Revolutionaries - the men and women who fought for our freedoms (Abacus, 2010)Blair Worden, Roundhead Reputations: The English Civil Wars and The Passions of Posterity (Penguin, 2002)In Our Time is a BBC Studios productionSpanning history, religion, culture, science and philosophy, In Our Time from BBC Radio 4 is essential listening for the intellectually curious. In each episode, host Misha Glenny and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Greek biographer Plutarch (c46 AD-c120 AD) and especially his work 'Parallel Lives' which has shaped the way successive generations see the Classical world. Plutarch was clear that he was writing lives, not histories, and he wrote these very focussed accounts in pairs to contrast and compare the characters of famous Greeks and Romans, side by side, along with their virtues and vices. This focus on the inner lives of great men was to fascinate Shakespeare, who drew on Plutarch considerably when writing his Julius Caesar, Coriolanus, Timon of Athens and Antony and Cleopatra. While few followed his approach of setting lives in pairs, Plutarch's work was to influence countless biographers especially from the Enlightenment onwards.WithJudith Mossman Professor Emerita of Classics at Coventry UniversityAndrew Erskine Professor of Ancient History at the University of EdinburghAnd Paul Cartledge AG Leventis Senior Research Fellow of Clare College, University of CambridgeProducer: Simon TillotsonReading list:Mark Beck (ed.), A Companion to Plutarch (Wiley-Blackwell, 2014)Colin Burrow, Shakespeare and Classical Antiquity (Oxford University Press, 2013), especially chapter 6Raphaëla Dubreuil, Theater and Politics in Plutarch’s Parallel Lives (Brill, 2023)Tim Duff, Plutarch’s Lives: Exploring Virtue and Vice (Oxford University Press, 1999)Noreen Humble (ed.), Plutarch’s Lives: Parallelism and Purpose (Classical Press of Wales, 2010)Robert Lamberton, Plutarch (Yale University Press, 2002)Hugh Liebert, Plutarch's Politics: Between City and Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2016)Christopher Pelling, Plutarch and History (Classical Press of Wales, 2002)Plutarch (trans. Robin Waterfield), Greek Lives (Oxford University Press, 2008) Plutarch (trans. Robin Waterfield), Roman Lives (Oxford University Press, 2008) Plutarch (trans. Robin Waterfield), Hellenistic Lives (Oxford University Press, 2016)Plutarch (trans. Ian Scott-Kilvert), The Rise and Fall of Athens: Nine Greek Lives (Penguin, 2023) Plutarch (trans. Ian Scott-Kilvert), The Age of Alexander: Nine Greek Lives (Penguin, 2011) Plutarch (trans. Richard Talbert), On Sparta (Penguin, 2005)Plutarch (trans. Christopher Pelling), The Rise of Rome (Penguin, 2013) Plutarch (trans. Christopher Pelling), Rome in Crisis: Nine Lives (Penguin, 2010)Plutarch (trans. Rex Warner), The Fall of the Roman Republic: Six Lives (Penguin, 2006)Plutarch (trans. Thomas North, ed. Judith Mossman), The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans (Wordsworth, 1998)Geert Roskam, Plutarch (Cambridge University Press, 2021)D. A. Russell, Plutarch (2nd ed., Bristol Classical Press, 2001)Philip A. Stadter, Plutarch and his Roman Readers (Oxford University Press, 2014)Frances B. Titchener and Alexei V. Zadorojnyi (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Plutarch (Cambridge University Press, 2023)In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 2000-year-old device which transformed our understanding of astronomy in ancient Greece. In 1900 a group of sponge divers found the wreck of a ship off the coast of the Greek island of Antikythera. Among the items salvaged was a corroded bronze object, the purpose of which was not at first clear. It turned out to be one of the most important discoveries in marine archaeology. Over time, researchers worked out that it was some kind of astronomical analogue computer, the only one to survive from this period as bronze objects were so often melted down for other uses. In recent decades, detailed examination of the Antikythera Mechanism using the latest scientific techniques indicates that it is a particularly intricate tool for showing the positions of planets, the sun and moon, with a complexity and precision not surpassed for over a thousand years.With Mike Edmunds Emeritus Professor of Astrophysics at Cardiff UniversityJo Marchant Science journalist and author of 'Decoding the Heavens' on the Antikythera MechanismAnd Liba Taub Professor Emerita in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge and Visiting Scholar at the Deutsches Museum, MunichProducer: Simon Tillotson In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio ProductionReading list:Derek de Solla Price, Gears from the Greeks: The Antikythera Mechanism (American Philosophical Society Press, 1974)M. G. Edmunds, ‘The Antikythera mechanism and the mechanical universe’ (Contemp. Phys. 55, 2014) M.G. Edmunds, ’The Mechanical Universe’ (Astronomy & Geophysics, 64, 2023)James Evans and J. Lennart Berggren, Geminos's Introduction to the Phenomena: A Translation and Study of a Hellenistic Survey of Astronomy (Princeton University Press, 2006)T. Freeth et al., ‘Calendars with Olympiad display and eclipse prediction on the Antikythera mechanism’ (Nature 454, 2008)Alexander Jones, A Portable Cosmos: Revealing the Antikythera Mechanism, Scientific Wonder of the Ancient World (Oxford University Press, 2017)Jo Marchant, Decoding the Heavens: Solving the Mystery of the World’s First Computer (Windmill Books, 2009)J.H. Seiradakis and M.G. Edmunds, ‘Our current knowledge of the Antikythera Mechanism’ (Nature Astronomy 2, 2018)Liba Taub, Ancient Greek and Roman Science: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2022)

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the notorious attack of 4th of May 1886 at a workers rally in Chicago when somebody threw a bomb that killed a policeman, Mathias J. Degan. The chaotic shooting that followed left more people dead and sent shockwaves across America and Europe. This was in Haymarket Square at a protest for an eight hour working day following a call for a general strike and the police killing of striking workers the day before, at a time when labour relations in America were marked by violent conflict. The bomber was never identified but two of the speakers at the rally, both of then anarchists and six of their supporters were accused of inciting murder. Four of them, George Engel, Adolph Fischer, Albert Parsons, and August Spies were hanged on 11th November 1887 only to be pardoned in the following years while a fifth, Louis Ling, had killed himself after he was convicted. The May International Workers Day was created in their memory.With Ruth Kinna Professor of Political Theory at Loughborough UniversityChristopher Phelps Associate Professor of American Studies at the University of NottinghamAnd Gary Gerstle Paul Mellon Professor of American History Emeritus at the University of CambridgeProducer: Simon TillotsonReading list:Paul Avrich, The Haymarket Tragedy (Princeton University Press, 1984)Henry David, The History of the Haymarket Affair (Collier Books, 1963)James Green, Death in the Haymarket: A Story of Chicago, the First Labor Movement and the Bombing that Divided Gilded Age America (Pantheon, 2006)Carl Levy and Matthew S. Adams (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Anarchism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), especially 'Haymarket and the Rise of Syndicalism' by Kenyon Zimmer Franklin Rosemont and David Roediger, Haymarket Scrapbook: 125th Anniversary Edition (AK Press, 2012)In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Saga of the Earls of Orkney, as told in the 13th Century by an unknown Icelander. This was the story of arguably the most important, strategically, of all the islands in the British Viking world, when the Earls controlled Shetland, Orkney and Caithness from which they could raid the Irish and British coasts, from Dublin round to Lindisfarne. The Saga combines myth with history, bringing to life the places on those islands where Vikings met, drank, made treaties, told stories, became saints, plotted and fought.With Judith Jesch Professor of Viking Studies at the University of NottinghamJane Harrison Archaeologist and Research Associate at Oxford and Newcastle UniversitiesAnd Alex Woolf Senior Lecturer in History at the University of St AndrewsProducer: Simon TillotsonIn Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio ProductionReading list:Theodore M. Andersson, The Growth of Medieval Icelandic Sagas, 1180-1280, (Cornell University Press, 2012)Margaret Clunies Ross, The Cambridge Introduction to the Old Norse-Icelandic Saga (Cambridge University Press, 2010)Robert Cook (trans.), Njals Saga (Penguin, 2001)Barbara E. Crawford, The Northern Earldoms: Orkney and Caithness from AD 870 to 1470 (John Donald Short Run Press, 2013)Shami Ghosh, Kings’ Sagas and Norwegian History: Problems and Perspectives (Brill, 2011)J. Graham-Campbell and C. E. Batey, Vikings in Scotland (Edinburgh University Press, 2002)David Griffiths, J. Harrison and Michael Athanson, Beside the Ocean: Coastal Landscapes at the Bay of Skaill, Marwick, and Birsay Bay, Orkney: Archaeological Research 2003-18 (Oxbow Books, 2019)Jane Harrison, Building Mounds: Orkney and the Vikings (Routledge, forthcoming)Ármann Jakobsson and Sverrir Jakobsson (eds.), The Routledge Research Companion to the Medieval Icelandic Sagas (Routledge, 2017)Judith Jesch, The Viking Diaspora (Routledge, 2015)Judith Jesch, ‘Earl Rögnvaldr of Orkney, a Poet of the Viking Diaspora’ (Journal of the North Atlantic, Special Volume 4, 2013)Judith Jesch, The Poetry of Orkneyinga Saga (H.M. Chadwick Memorial Lectures, University of Cambridge, 2020)Devra Kunin (trans.), A History of Norway and the Passion and Miracles of the Blessed Olafr (Viking Society for Northern Research, 2001)Rory McTurk (ed.), A Companion to Old Norse-Icelandic Literature and Culture (Wiley-Blackwell, 2004)Tom Muir, Orkney in the Sagas (Orkney Islands Council, 2005)Else Mundal (ed.), Dating the Sagas: Reviews and Revisions (Museum Tusculanum Press, 2013)Heather O’Donoghue, Old Norse-Icelandic Literature: A Short Introduction, (John Wiley & Sons, 2004) Heather O'Donoghue and Eleanor Parker (eds.), The Cambridge History of Old Norse-Icelandic Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2024), especially 'Landscape and Material Culture' by Jane Harrison and ‘Diaspora Sagas’ by Judith JeschRichard Oram, Domination and Lordship, Scotland 1070-1230, (Edinburgh University Press, 2011)Olwyn Owen (ed.), The World of Orkneyinga Saga: The Broad-cloth Viking Trip (Orkney Islands Council, 2006)Hermann Pálsson and Paul Edwards (trans.), Orkneyinga Saga: The History of the Earls of Orkney (Penguin Classics, 1981)Snorri Sturluson (trans. tr. Alison Finlay and Anthony Faulkes), Heimskringla, vol. I-III (Viking Society for Northern Research, 2011-2015)William P. L. Thomson, The New History of Orkney (Birlinn Ltd, 2008)Alex Woolf, From Pictland to Alba, 789-1070 (Edinburgh University Press, 2007), especially chapter 7

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the woman who, for almost fifty years, was the most powerful figure in the Chinese court. Cixi (1835-1908) started out at court as one of the Emperor's many concubines, yet was the only one who gave him a son to succeed him and who also possessed great political skill and ambition. When their son became emperor he was still a young child and Cixi ruled first through him and then, following his death, through another child emperor. This was a time of rapid change in China, when western powers and Japan humiliated the forces of the Qing empire time after time, and Cixi had the chance to push forward the modernising reforms the country needed to thrive. However, when she found those reforms conflicted with her own interests or those of the Qing dynasty, she was arguably obstructive or too slow to act and she has been personally blamed for some of those many humiliations even when the fault lay elsewhere. With Yangwen Zheng Professor of Chinese History at the University of ManchesterRana Mitter The S.T. Lee Professor of US-Asia Relations at the Harvard Kennedy SchoolAndRonald Po Associate Professor in the Department of International History at London School of Economics and Visiting Professor at Leiden UniversityProducer: Simon Tillotson In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio ProductionReading list: Pearl S. Buck, Imperial Woman: The Story of the Last Empress of China (first published 1956; Open Road Media, 2013) Katharine A. Carl, With the Empress Dowager (first published 1906; General Books LLC, 2009)Jung Chang, Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China (Jonathan Cape, 2013)Princess Der Ling, Old Buddha (first published 1929; Kessinger Publishing, 2007) Joseph W. Esherick, The Origins of the Boxer Uprising (University of California Press, 1987)John K. Fairbank and Merle Goldman, China: A New History (Harvard University Press, 2006)Peter Gue Zarrow and Rebecca Karl (eds.), Rethinking the 1898 Reform Period: Political and Cultural Change in Late Qing China (Harvard University Press, 2002)Grant Hayter-Menzies, Imperial Masquerade: The Legend of Princess Der Ling (Hong Kong University Press, 2008)Keith Laidler, The Last Empress: The She-Dragon of China (Wiley, 2003)Keith McMahon, Celestial Women: Imperial Wives and Concubines in China from Song to Qing (Rowman & Littlefield, 2020)Anchee Min, The Last Empress (Bloomsbury, 2011)Ying-Chen Peng, Artful Subversion: Empress Dowager Cixi’s Image Making (Yale University Press, 2023).Sarah Pike Conger, Letters from China: with Particular Reference to the Empress Dowager and the Women of China (first published 1910; Forgotten Books, 2024)Stephen Platt, Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China's Last Golden Age (Atlantic Books, 2019)Liang Qichao (trans. Peter Zarrow), Thoughts From the Ice-Drinker's Studio: Essays on China and the World (Penguin Classics, 2023)Sterling Seagrave, Dragon Lady: The Life and Legend of the Last Empress of China (Vintage, 1993)Jonathan D. Spence, The Search for Modern China (first published 1991; W. W. Norton & Company, 2001)X. L. Woo, Empress Dowager Cixi: China's Last Dynasty and the Long Reign of a Formidable Concubine (Algora Publishing, 2003)Zheng Yangwen, Ten Lessons in Modern Chinese History (Manchester University Press, 2018)