In Our Time: History Folgen

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss The Bronze Age Collapse, the name given by many historians to what appears to have been a sudden, uncontrolled destruction of dominant civilizations around 1200 BC in the Aegean, Eastern Mediterranean and Anatolia. Among other areas, there were great changes in Minoan Crete, Egypt, the Hittite Empire, Mycenaean Greece and Syria. The reasons for the changes, and the extent of those changes, are open to debate and include droughts, rebellions, the breakdown of trade as copper became less desirable, earthquakes, invasions, volcanoes and the mysterious Sea Peoples. With John Bennet Director of the British School at Athens and Professor of Aegean Archaeology at the University of SheffieldLinda Hulin Fellow of Harris Manchester College and Research Officer at the Oxford Centre for Maritime Archaeology at the University of OxfordAndSimon Stoddart Fellow of Magdalene College and Reader in Prehistory at the University of Cambridge Producer: Simon Tillotson.

To celebrate Melvyn Bragg’s 27 years presenting In Our Time, five well-known fans of the programme have chosen their favourite episodes. Author and columnist Caitlin Moran has picked the episode on the English medieval mystic Margery Kempe and recorded an introduction to it. Margery Kempe (1373-1438) produced an account of her extraordinary life in a book she dictated, "The Book of Margery Kempe." She went on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, to Rome and Santiago de Compostela, purchasing indulgences on her way, met with the anchoress Julian of Norwich and is honoured by the Church of England each 9th November. She sometimes doubted the authenticity of her mystical conversations with God, as did the authorities who saw her devotional sobbing, wailing and convulsions as a sign of insanity and dissoluteness. Her Book was lost for centuries, before emerging in a private library in 1934.This In Our Time episode was first broadcast in June 2016. The image (above), of an unknown woman, comes from a pew at Margery Kempe's parish church, St Margaret’s, Kings Lynn and dates from c1375. With Miri Rubin Professor of Medieval and Early Modern History at Queen Mary, University of LondonKatherine Lewis Senior Lecturer in History at the University of HuddersfieldAndAnthony Bale Professor of Medieval Studies at Birkbeck University of LondonProducer: Simon Tillotson Reading list:John H. Arnold and Katherine J. Lewis (eds.), A Companion to the Book of Margery Kempe, (D. S. Brewer, 2010)Anthony Bale (trans.), The Book of Margery Kempe (Oxford University Press, 2015)Santha Bhattacharji, God is an Earthquake: The Spirituality of Margery Kempe (Darton, Longman and Todd, 1997)Anthony Goodman, Margery Kempe and her World (Longman, 2002)Karma Lochrie, Margery Kempe and the Translations of the Flesh (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991)Gail McMurray Gibson, The Theater of Devotion: East Anglian Drama and Society in the Late Middle Ages (University of Chicago Press, 1989)Lynn Staley, Margery Kempe’s Dissenting Fictions (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994)Jonathan Sumption, Pilgrimage: An Image of Mediaeval Religion (Faber & Faber, 2002)Brett Whalen, Pilgrimage in the Middle Ages: A Reader (University of Toronto Press, 2011)Barry Windeatt (ed.), The Book of Margery Kempe: Annotated Edition (D. S. Brewer, 2006)Barry Windeatt (ed.), The Book of Margery Kempe (Penguin Classics, 2000)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 worldIn Our Time is a BBC Studios production

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, ten sentences long, delivered at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery at Gettysburg after the Union forces had won an important battle with the Confederates. Opening with " Four score and seven years ago," it became one of the most influential statements of national purpose, asserting that America was "conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal" and "that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom-and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." Among those inspired were Martin Luther King Jr whose "I have a dream" speech, delivered at the Lincoln Memorial 100 years later, echoed Lincoln's opening words.With Catherine Clinton Denman Chair of American History at the University of Texas and International Professor at Queen's University, BelfastSusan-Mary Grant Professor of American History at Newcastle UniversityAndTim Lockley Professor of American History at the University of WarwickProducer: Simon Tillotson.