In Our Time With Melvyn Bragg

At the Hay Festival, Misha Glenny and guests discuss the impact of the Norman invasion on the people and land of Wales and across the modern border with England in what became known as The Welsh Marches, march being a term for a militarized borderland. Hay was one of the first Marcher lordships. Even before 1066, William the Conqueror knew that he would have to subdue the Welsh if he were to control the English and he allowed more and more Norman warlords to establish virtually their own private kingdoms in these Marches. Later some of the Lords were to use these bases to invade Ireland rather than conquer the rest of Wales. Marcher Lords built numerous castles such as the one at Hay and many new towns would then grow up alongside these where there was one law for the English and another for the Welsh and, though the Acts of Union under the Tudors brought an end to much of the Marcher Lords' powers, the distinct identity of these Welsh Marches continued. With Rhun Emlyn Lecturer in the Department of History and Welsh History at Aberystwyth University Helen Fulton Professor of Medieval Literature at the University of Bristol And Huw Pryce Emeritus Professor of Welsh History at Bangor University Producer: Simon Tillotson Reading list: R. R. Davies, The Age of Conquest: Wales 1063-1415 (Oxford University Press, 2001) R.R. Davies, Lordship and Society in the March of Wales 1282-1400 (Oxford University Press, 1978) John Fleming, The Welsh Marcher Lordships II: South-West (Logaston Press, 2023) Ben Giles, The Welsh Marches: 40 Town and Country Walks (Pocket Mountains, 2012) Philip Hume, The Welsh Marcher Lordships I: Central & North (Logaston Press, 2021) Max Lieberman, The March of Wales, 1067–1300: A Borderland of Medieval Britain (University of Wales Press, 2018) Max Lieberman, The Medieval March of Wales: The Creation and Perception of a Frontier, 1066-1283 (Cambridge University Press, 2010) D. Huw Owen, The Lordship of Denbigh 1282-1543 (University of Wales Press, 2024) Mike Parker, All the Wide Border: Wales, England and the Places Between (HarperNorth, 2024) Dewi Roberts, Both Sides of the Border: An Anthology of Writing on the Welsh Border Region (Gwasg Carreg Gwalch/Eagle Rock Press, 1998) Christopher Somerville, The Welsh Borders (Philips, 1991) David Stephenson, Patronage and Power in the Medieval Welsh March: One Family's Story (University of Wales Press, 2021) David Walker, Medieval Wales (Cambridge University Press, 2008) In Our Time is a BBC Studios Production Spanning 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 an ancient civilisation who lived over 2000 years ago in the southwest of modern-day Libya. During prehistoric times, the Sahara Desert was greener and even had large lakes, but for the last 5000 years it has been a hyperarid environment. Extreme swings of temperature and limited surface water might make the Sahara seem like an inhospitable place to live, but an ancient people in North Africa known to us as the Garamantes thrived there. Following descriptions of the Garamantes in Roman and Greek texts, the Garamantes have often been seen as pastoral nomads, or as tribal barbarians on the periphery of the Mediterranean world. But the work of archaeologists in recent decades has revealed something different. Evidence suggests a society with flourishing towns and cities, complex underground irrigation systems, a key role in trade routes across the Sahara – and may give us a broader view of ancient history. With David Mattingly Emeritus Professor of Roman Archaeology at the University of Leicester Farès Moussa Visiting Fellow at the University of Southampton and Cultural Heritage Consultant And Josephine Quinn Professor of Ancient History and Fellow of St John’s College, University of Cambridge Producer: Martha Owen Reading list: C.M. Daniels, The Garamantes of Southern Libya (Oleander Press, 1970) C. Duckworth, A. Cuénod and D.J. Mattingly (eds), Mobile Technologies in the Ancient Sahara and Beyond (Trans-Saharan Archaeology Volume 4, Cambridge University Press, 2020) M.C. Gatto, D.J. Mattingly, N. Ray and M. Sterry (eds), Burials, Migration and Identity in the Ancient Sahara and Beyond (Trans-Saharan Archaeology Volume 2, Cambridge University Press, 2019) R.B. Hitchner (ed.), A Companion to North Africa in Antiquity (Wiley-Blackwell, 2020), especially ‘Beyond barbarians: the Garamantes of the Libyan Sahara’ by D.J. Mattingly D.J. Mattingly, Between Sahara and Sea: Africa in the Roman Empire (Michigan University Press, 2023) D.J. Mattingly (ed.), The Archaeology of Fazzan, Volume 1, Synthesis (Society for Libyan Studies, 2003) D.J. Mattingly (ed.), The Archaeology of Fazzan, Volume 2, Site Gazetteer, Pottery and other Survey Finds (Society for Libyan Studies, 2007) D.J. Mattingly (ed.), The Archaeology of Fazzan, Volume 3, Excavations Carried out by C.M. Daniels (Society for Libyan Studies, 2010) D.J. Mattingly (ed.), The Archaeology of Fazzan, Volume 4, Survey and Excavations at Old Jarma (Ancient Garama) Carried out by C. M. Daniels (1962–69) and the Fazzan Project (1997–2001) (Society for Libyan Studies, 2013) D.J. Mattingly, V. Leitch, C.N. Duckworth, A. Cuénod, M. Sterry and F. Cole (eds), Trade in the Ancient Sahara and Beyond (Trans-Saharan Archaeology Volume 1, Cambridge University Press, 2017) D. Mattingly, S. McLaren, E. Savage, Y. Fasatwi and K. Gadgood (eds), The Libyan Desert: Natural Resources and Cultural Heritage (Society for Libyan Studies, 2006), especially ‘The Garamantes: The First Libyan state’ by D. Mattingly P. Mitchell and P. Lane (eds), The Oxford Handbook of African Archaeology (Oxford University Press, 2013), especially ‘Roman Africa and the Sahara’ by A. Leone and F. Moussa M. Sterry and D.J. Mattingly (eds), State Formation and Urbanisation in the Ancient Sahara and Beyond (Cambridge University Press, 2020) Some of these books are available for free from Open Access Books: British Institute for Libyan & Northern African Studies In Our Time is a BBC Studios production Spanning 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 introduces himself to you ahead of his first episode on 15th January, answering some questions from producer Simon Tillotson and sharing what's coming up in the first few weeks. In Our Time is a BBC Studios production

Before Misha Glenny's first edition on 15th January, BBC Radio 4's flagship news programme Today has brought Melvyn Bragg and Misha Glenny together so they can share their ideas about In Our Time's success and discuss what, if anything, will change with Misha. While Justin Webb chaired this discussion, here you will hear Melvyn introduce it and at the end he has a message for Misha and for listeners around the world. This is a longer version of the discussion broadcast on Today on Radio 4 on Christmas Eve 2025 which was produced by Jade Bogart-Preleur, when Melvyn Bragg was the guest editor. In Our Time is a BBC Studios Production.

To celebrate Melvyn Bragg’s 27 years presenting In Our Time, five well-known fans of the programme have chosen their favourite episodes. Comedian Frank Skinner has picked the episode on the life and work of the poet Emily Dickinson and recorded an introduction to it. (This introduction will be available on BBC Sounds and the In Our Time webpage shortly after the broadcast and will be longer than the version broadcast on Radio 4). Emily Dickinson was arguably the most startling and original poet in America in the C19th. According to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, her correspondent and mentor, writing 15 years after her death, "Few events in American literary history have been more curious than the sudden rise of Emily Dickinson into a posthumous fame only more accentuated by the utterly recluse character of her life and by her aversion to even a literary publicity." That was in 1891 and, as more of Dickinson's poems were published, and more of her remaining letters, the more the interest in her and appreciation of her grew. With her distinctive voice, her abundance, and her exploration of her private world, she is now seen by many as one of the great lyric poets. With Fiona Green Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Jesus College Linda Freedman Lecturer in English and American Literature at University College London and Paraic Finnerty Reader in English and American Literature at the University of Portsmouth Producer: Simon Tillotson. Reading list: Christopher Benfey, A Summer of Hummingbirds: Love, Art and Scandal in the Intersecting Worlds of Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Martin Johnson Heade (Penguin Books, 2009) Jed Deppman, Marianne Noble and Gary Lee Stonum (eds.), Emily Dickinson and Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 2013) Judith Farr, The Gardens of Emily Dickinson (Harvard University Press, 2005) Judith Farr, The Passion of Emily Dickinson (Harvard University Press, 1992) Paraic Finnerty, Emily Dickinson’s Shakespeare (University of Massachusetts Press, 2006) Ralph William Franklin (ed.), The Master Letters of Emily Dickinson (University Massachusetts Press, 1998) Ralph William Franklin (ed.), The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Variorum Edition (Harvard University Press, 1998) Linda Freedman, Emily Dickinson and the Religious Imagination (Cambridge University Press, 2011) Gudrun Grabher, Roland Hagenbüchle and Cristanne Miller (eds.), The Emily Dickinson Handbook (University of Massachusetts Press, 1998) Alfred Habegger, My Wars are Laid Away in Books: The Early Life of Emily Dickinson (Random House, 2001) Ellen Louise Hart and Martha Nell Smith (eds.), Open Me Carefully: Emily Dickinson’s Intimate Letters to Susan Huntington Dickinson (Paris Press, 1998) Virginia Jackson, Dickinson’s Misery: A Theory of Lyric Reading (Princeton University Press, 2013) Thomas H. Johnson (ed.), Emily Dickinson: Selected Letters (first published 1958; Harvard University Press, 1986) Thomas H. Johnson (ed.), Poems of Emily Dickinson (first published 1951; Faber & Faber, 1976) Thomas Herbert Johnson and Theodora Ward (eds.), The Letters of Emily Dickinson (Belknap Press, 1958) Benjamin Lease, Emily Dickinson’s Readings of Men and Books (Palgrave Macmillan, 1990) Mary Loeffelholz, The Value of Emily Dickinson (Cambridge University Press, 2016) James McIntosh, Nimble Believing: Dickinson and the Unknown (University of Michigan Press, 2000) Marietta Messmer, A Vice for Voices: Reading Emily Dickinson’s Correspondence (University of Massachusetts Press, 2001) Cristanne Miller (ed.), Emily Dickinson's Poems: As She Preserved (Harvard University Press, 2016) Cristanne Miller, Reading in Time: Emily Dickinson in the Nineteenth Century (University of Massachusetts Press, 2012) Elizabeth Phillips, Emily Dickinson: Personae and Performance (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1988) Eliza Richards (ed.), Emily Dickinson in Context (Cambridge University Press, 2013) Richard B. Sewall, The Life of Emily Dickinson (first published 1974; Harvard University Press, 1998) Marta L. Werner, Emily Dickinson’s Open Folios: Scenes of Reading, Surfaces of Writing (University of Michigan Press, 1996) Brenda Wineapple, White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson (Anchor Books, 2009) Shira Wolosky, Emily Dickinson: A Voice of War (Yale University Press, 1984) This episode was first broadcast in May 2017. Spanning history, religion, culture, science and philosophy, In Our Time from BBC Radio 4 is essential listening for the intellectually curious. In each episode, host Melvyn Bragg and expert guests explore the people, ideas, events and discoveries that have shaped our world In Our Time is a BBC Studios production