Culture Podcast
Popular culture, poetry, music and visual arts and the roles they play in our society.
Episodes to download
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Handel's Messiah
Thu 9 Apr 2026
The origin and development of Handel's great sacred oratorio, premiered in Dublin in 1742.
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Dadaism
Thu 19 Mar 2026
How, in 1916 in Zurich, artists responded to the absurdity of war by creating absurd art.
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John Keats
Thu 19 Feb 2026
How one of the great Romantic poets produced so much in his brilliant but short life.
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Henry IV Part 1
Thu 5 Feb 2026
Shakespeare's powerful exploration of power and succession with Hotspur, Hal and Falstaff.
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On Liberty
Thu 15 Jan 2026
John Stuart Mill's argument for the limits of power that society has over the individual.
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Barbour's 'Brus'
Thu 19 Jun 2025
How the earliest poem in Older Scots framed the legend of Robert the Bruce at Bannockburn.
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Molière
Thu 24 Apr 2025
The great French playwright and comic actor who flourished at the court of Louis XIV.
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Thomas Middleton
Thu 20 Mar 2025
The prolific and versatile Jacobean playwright tasked with 'improving' some of Shakespeare
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Oliver Goldsmith
Thu 20 Feb 2025
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss this influential and prolific 18th-century Irish writer.
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Sir John Soane
Thu 6 Feb 2025
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the influential English architect John Soane.
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Vase-mania
Boxing Day 2024
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the eighteenth century mania for classical vases.
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Plutarch's Parallel Lives
Thu 19 Dec 2024
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the influential Greek biographer and his main work
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Nizami Ganjavi
Thu 5 Dec 2024
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great 12th-century Persian epic romantic poet.
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Italo Calvino
Thu 21 Nov 2024
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the influential 20th-century Italian novelist and essayist
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George Herbert
Thu 7 Nov 2024
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss arguably the greatest devotional poem writer in English.
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Little Women
Thu 24 Oct 2024
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Louisa May Alcott's influential story of the March sisters
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Robert Graves
Thu 10 Oct 2024
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the fine poet of love and war and author of I, Claudius.
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Monet in England
Thu 27 Jun 2024
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Claude Monet's fascination with the foggy Thames.
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Fielding's Tom Jones
Thu 13 Jun 2024
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the great English comic novels.
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Sir Thomas Wyatt
Thu 9 May 2024
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the astonishing poet at the heart of Henry VIII's court
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Bertolt Brecht
Thu 25 Apr 2024
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great 20th-century German playwright.
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Lysistrata
Thu 11 Apr 2024
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aristophanes' comedy in which a sex strike brings peace.
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The Kalevala
Thu 28 Mar 2024
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the epic poem that helped build the Finnish nation.
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The Waltz
Thu 14 Mar 2024
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the impact of the waltz on British society and culture.
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Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Thu 15 Feb 2024
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Lewis Carroll's fantastical tale inspired by Alice Liddell
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Twelfth Night, or What You Will
Thu 28 Dec 2023
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Shakespeare's great comedy of love, desire and marriage.
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Vincent van Gogh
Thu 21 Dec 2023
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great Dutch painter of Sunflowers and Starry Nights.
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Edgar Allan Poe
Thu 30 Nov 2023
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the author of the Fall of the House of Usher.
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Marguerite de Navarre
Thu 23 Nov 2023
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss writer and Renaissance queen Marguerite de Navarre.
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