In Our Time

• Dragons

  Melvyn Bragg and guests explore dragons, literally and symbolically potent creatures that have appeared in many different guises in countries and cultures around the world. Sometimes compared to snakes, alligators, lions and even dinosaurs, dragons have appeared on clay tablets in ancient Mesopotamia, in the Chinese zodiac, in the guise of the devil in Christian religious texts and in the national symbolism of the countries of England and Wales. They are often portrayed as terrifying but sometimes appear as sacred and even benign creatures, and they continue to populate our cultural fantasies through blockbuster films, TV series and children’s books. With:Kelsey Granger, Post Doctoral Researcher in Chinese History at the University of EdinburghDaniel Ogden, Professor of Ancient History at the University of ExeterAnd Juliette Wood, Associate Lecturer in the School of Welsh at the University of Wales. Producer: Eliane GlaserReading list:Paul Acker and Carolyne Larrington (eds.), Revisiting the Poetic Edda: Essays on Old Norse Heroic Legend (Routledge, 2013), especially ‘Dragons in the Eddas and in Early Nordic Art’ by Paul AckerScott G. Bruce (ed.), The Penguin Book of Dragons (Penguin, 2022)James H. Charlesworth, The Good and Evil Serpent: How a Universal Symbol became Christianized (Yale University Press, 2009)Juliana Dresvina, A Maid with a Dragon: The Cult of St Margaret of Antioch in Medieval England (Oxford University Press, 2016)Joyce Tally Lionarons, The Medieval Dragon: The Nature of the Beast in Germanic Literature (Hisarlik Press, 1998)Daniel Ogden, Dragons, Serpents, and Slayers in the Classical and Early Christian Worlds: A Sourcebook (Oxford University Press, 2013)Daniel Ogden, The Dragon in the West (Oxford University Press, 2021)Christine Rauer, Beowulf and the Dragon (D.S. Brewer, 2000)Phil Senter et al., ‘Snake to Monster: Conrad Gessner’s Schlangenbuch and the Evolution of the Dragon in the Literature of Natural History’ (Journal of Folklore Research, vol. 53, no. 1, 2016)Jacqueline Simpson, British Dragons: Myth, Legend and Folklore (first published 1980; Wordsworth Editions, 2001) Jeffrey Snyder-Reinke, Dry Spells: State Rainmaking and Local Governance in Late Imperial China (Harvard University Press, 2009)Roel Sterckx, The Animal and the Daemon in Early China (State University of New York Press, 2002)Roel Sterckx, Chinese Thought: From Confucius to Cook Ding (Pelican Books, 2019)J. R. R. Tolkien, The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays (first published 1983; HarperCollins, 2007)Christopher Walter, The Warrior Saints in Byzantine Art and Tradition (Routledge, 2003)Juliette Wood, Fantastic Creatures in Mythology and Folklore: From Medieval Times to the Present Day (Bloomsbury Academic, 2018) Yang Xin, Li Yihua, and Xu Naixiang, Art of the Dragon (Shambhala, 1988)In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio 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 Melvyn Bragg and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.

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• Barbour's 'Brus'

  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss John Barbour's epic poem The Brus, or Bruce, which he wrote c1375. The Brus is the earliest surviving poem in Older Scots and the only source of many of the stories of King Robert I of Scotland (1274-1329), popularly known as Robert the Bruce, and his victory over the English at Bannockburn in 1314. In almost 14,000 lines of rhyming couplets, Barbour distilled the aspects of the Bruce’s history most relevant for his own time under Robert II (1316-1390), the Bruce's grandson and the first of the Stewart kings, when the mood was for a new war against England after decades of military disasters. Barbour’s battle scenes are meant to stir in the name of freedom, and the effect of the whole is to assert Scotland as the rightful equal of any power in Europe.WithRhiannon Purdie Professor of English and Older Scots at the University of St AndrewsSteve Boardman Professor of Medieval Scottish History at the University of EdinburghAndMichael Brown Professor of Scottish History at the University of St AndrewsProducer: Simon TillotsonReading list:John Barbour (ed. A.A.M. Duncan), The Bruce (Canongate Classics, 2007)G.W.S. Barrow, Robert Bruce and the Community of the Realm of Scotland (Edinburgh University Press, 1988)Stephen Boardman, The Early Stewart Kings: Robert II and Robert III (Tuckwell Press, 1996)Steve Boardman and Susan Foran (eds.), Barbour's Bruce and its Cultural Contexts: Politics, Chivalry and Literature in Late Medieval Scotland (D.S. Brewer, 2015)Michael Brown, Disunited Kingdoms: Peoples and Politics in the British Isles, 1280-1460 (Routledge, 2013)Michael Brown, The Wars of Scotland, 1214-1371 (Edinburgh University Press, 2004)Thomas Owen Clancy and Murray Pittock, Ian Brown and Susan Manning (eds.), The Edinburgh History of Scottish Literature, Vol. 1: From Columba to the Union (until 1707), (Edinburgh University Press 2006)Robert Crawford, Scotland's Books: A History of Scottish Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009)Robert DeMaria Jr., Heesok Chang and Samantha Zacher (eds.), A Companion to British Literature: Vol 1, Medieval Literature, 700-1450 (John Wiley & Sons, 2014), especially 'Before the Makars: Older Scots literature under the early Stewart Kings' by Rhiannon PurdieColm McNamee, The Wars of the Bruces: Scotland, England and Ireland 1306-1328 (Tuckwell Press, 2001)Michael Penman, Robert the Bruce, King of the Scots (Yale University Press, 2014)In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio 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 Melvyn Bragg and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.

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• Hypnosis

  Ever since Franz Anton Mesmer induced trance-like states in his Parisian subjects in the late eighteenth century, dressed in long purple robes, hypnosis has been associated with performance, power and the occult.  It has exerted a powerful hold over the cultural imagination, featuring in novels and films including Bram Stoker’s Dracula and George du Maurier’s Trilby - and it was even practiced by Charles Dickens himself.But despite some debate within the medical establishment about the scientific validity of hypnosis, it continues to be used today as a successful treatment for physical and psychological conditions. Scientists are also using hypnosis to learn more about the power of suggestion and belief. With: Catherine Wynne, Reader in Victorian and Early Twentieth-Century Literature and Visual Cultures at the University of HullDevin Terhune, Reader in Experimental Psychology at King’s College LondonAndQuinton Deeley, Consultant Neuropsychiatrist at the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, and Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s College London, where he leads the Cultural and Social Neuroscience Research Group.Producer: Eliane GlaserReading list:Henri F. Ellenberger, The Discovery of the Unconscious: The History and Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry (Vol. 1, Basic Books, 1970)William Hughes, That Devil’s Trick: Hypnotism and the Victorian Popular Imagination (Manchester University Press, 2015)Asti Hustvedt, Medical Muses: Hysteria in Nineteenth-Century Paris (Bloomsbury, 2011)Fred Kaplan, Dickens and Mesmerism: The Hidden Springs of Fiction (first published 1975; Princeton University Press, 2017)Wendy Moore, The Mesmerist: The Society Doctor Who Held Victorian London Spellbound (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2017)Michael R. Nash and Amanda J. Barnier (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Hypnosis Theory, Research, and Practice (Oxford University Press, 2012)Judith Pintar and Steven Jay Lynn, Hypnosis: A Brief History (John Wiley & Sons, 2008)Amir Raz, The Suggestible Brain: The Science and Magic of How We Make Up Our Minds (Balance, 2024)Robin Waterfield, Hidden Depths: The Story of Hypnosis (Pan, 2004) Alison Winter, Mesmerized: Powers of Mind in Victorian Britain (Chicago University Press, 1998) Fiction: Thomas Mann, Mario and the Magician: & other stories (first published 1930; Vintage Classics, 1996)George du Maurier, Trilby (first published 1894; Penguin Classics, 1994)Bram Stoker, Dracula (first published 1897; Penguin Classics, 2003)In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio production

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• Copyright

  In 1710, the British Parliament passed a piece of legislation entitled An Act for the Encouragement of Learning. It became known as the Statute of Anne, and it was the world’s first copyright law. Copyright protects and regulates a piece of work - whether that's a book, a painting, a piece of music or a software programme. It emerged as a way of balancing the interests of authors, artists, publishers, and the public in the context of evolving technologies and the rise of mechanical reproduction. Writers and artists such as Alexander Pope, William Hogarth and Charles Dickens became involved in heated debates about ownership and originality that continue to this day - especially with the emergence of artificial intelligence. With:Lionel Bently, Herchel Smith Professor of Intellectual Property Law at the University of CambridgeWill Slauter, Professor of History at Sorbonne University, ParisKatie McGettigan, Senior Lecturer in American Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London. Producer: Eliane GlaserReading list:Isabella Alexander, Copyright Law and the Public Interest in the Nineteenth Century (Hart Publishing, 2010)Isabella Alexander and H. Tomás Gómez-Arostegui (eds), Research Handbook on the History of Copyright Law (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2016)David Bellos and Alexandre Montagu, Who Owns this Sentence? A History of Copyrights and Wrongs (Mountain Leopard Press, 2024)Oren Bracha, Owning Ideas: The Intellectual Origins of American Intellectual Property, 1790-1909 (Cambridge University Press, 2016)Elena Cooper, Art and Modern Copyright: The Contested Image (Cambridge University Press, 2018)Ronan Deazley, On the Origin of the Right to Copy: Charting the Movement of Copyright Law in Eighteenth Century Britain, 1695–1775 (Hart Publishing, 2004)Ronan Deazley, Rethinking Copyright: History, Theory, Language (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2006)Ronan Deazley, Martin Kretschmer and Lionel Bently (eds.), Privilege and Property: Essays on the History of Copyright (Open Book Publishers, 2010)Marie-Stéphanie Delamaire and Will Slauter (eds.), Circulation and Control: Artistic Culture and Intellectual Property in the Nineteenth Century (Open Book Publishers, 2021) Melissa Homestead, American Women Authors and Literary Property, 1822-1869 (Cambridge University Press, 2005)Adrian Johns, Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates (University of Chicago Press, 2009)Meredith L. McGill, American Literature and the Culture of Reprinting, 1834-1853 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002)Mark Rose, Authors and Owners: The Invention of Copyright (Harvard University Press, 1993)Mark Rose, Authors in Court: Scenes from the Theater of Copyright (Harvard University Press, 2018)Catherine Seville, Internationalisation of Copyright: Books, Buccaneers and the Black Flag in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge University Press, 2006)Brad Sherman and Lionel Bently, The Making of Modern Intellectual Property Law (Cambridge University Press, 1999)Will Slauter, Who Owns the News? A History of Copyright (Stanford University Press, 2019)Robert Spoo, Without Copyrights: Piracy, Publishing and the Public Domain (Oxford University Press, 2013)In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio production

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• Lise Meitner

  Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the decisive role of one of the great 20th Century physicists in solving the question of nuclear fission. It is said that Meitner (1878-1968) made this breakthrough over Christmas 1938 while she was sitting on a log in Sweden during a snowy walk with her nephew Otto Frisch (1904-79). Both were Jewish-Austrian refugees who had only recently escaped from Nazi Germany. Others had already broken uranium into the smaller atom barium, but could not explain what they found; was the larger atom bursting, or the smaller atom being chipped off or was something else happening? They turned to Meitner. She, with Frisch, deduced the nucleus really was splitting like a drop of water into a dumbbell shape, with the electrical charges at each end forcing the divide, something previously thought impossible, and they named this ‘fission’. This was a crucial breakthrough for which Meitner was eventually widely recognised if not at first.WithJess Wade A Royal Society University Research Fellow and Lecturer in Functional Materials at Imperial College, LondonFrank Close Professor Emeritus of Theoretical Physics and Fellow Emeritus at Exeter College, University of OxfordAnd Steven Bramwell Director of the London Centre for Nanotechnology and Professor of Physics at University College LondonProducer: Simon TillotsonReading list:Frank Close, Destroyer of Worlds: The Deep History of the Nuclear Age, 1895-1965 (Allen Lane, 2025)Ruth Lewin Sime, Lise Meitner: A Life in Physics (University of California Press, 1996)Marissa Moss, The Woman Who Split the Atom: The Life of Lise Meitner (Abrams Books, 2022)Patricia Rife, Lise Meitner and the Dawn of the Nuclear Age (Birkhauser Verlag, 1999) In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

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