In Our Time Folgen

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the author of 'I, Claudius' who was also one of the finest poets of the twentieth century. Robert Graves (1895 -1985) placed his poetry far above his prose. He once declared that from the age of 15 poetry had been his ruling passion and that he lived his life according to poetic principles, writing in prose only to pay the bills and that he bred the pedigree dogs of his prose to feed the cats of his poetry. Yet it’s for his prose that he’s most famous today, including 'I Claudius', his brilliant account of the debauchery of Imperial Rome, and 'Goodbye to All That', the unforgettable memoir of his early life including the time during the First World War when he was so badly wounded at the Somme that The Times listed him as dead. WithPaul O’Prey Emeritus Professor of Modern Literature at the University of Roehampton, LondonFran Brearton Professor of Modern Poetry at Queen’s University, BelfastAndBob Davis Professor of Religious and Cultural Education at the University of GlasgowProducer: Simon TillotsonRobert Graves (ed. Paul O'Prey), In Broken Images: Selected Letters of Robert Graves 1914-1946 (Hutchinson, 1982)Robert Graves (ed. Paul O'Prey), Between Moon and Moon: Selected letters of Robert Graves 1946-1972 (Hutchinson, 1984)Robert Graves (ed. Beryl Graves and Dunstan Ward), The Complete Poems (Penguin Modern Classics, 2003)Robert Graves, I, Claudius (republished by Penguin, 2006)Robert Graves, King Jesus (republished by Penguin, 2011)Robert Graves, The White Goddess (republished by Faber, 1999)Robert Graves, The Greek Myths (republished by Penguin, 2017)Robert Graves (ed. Michael Longley), Selected Poems (Faber, 2013)Robert Graves (ed. Fran Brearton, intro. Andrew Motion), Goodbye to All That: An Autobiography: The Original Edition (first published 1929; Penguin Classics, 2014)William Graves, Wild Olives: Life in Majorca with Robert Graves (Pimlico, 2001)Richard Perceval Graves, Robert Graves: The Assault Heroic, 1895-1926 (Macmillan, 1986, vol. 1 of the biography)Richard Perceval Graves, Robert Graves: The Years with Laura, 1926-1940 (Viking, 1990, vol. 2 of the biography)Richard Perceval Graves, Robert Graves and the White Goddess, 1940-1985 (Orion, 1995, vol. 3 of the biography)Miranda Seymour: Robert Graves: Life on the Edge (Henry Holt & Co, 1995)In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

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 tantalising idea that there are shortcuts between distant galaxies, somewhere out there in the universe. The idea emerged in the context of Einstein's theories and the challenge has been not so much to prove their unlikely existence as to show why they ought to be impossible. The universe would have to folded back on itself in places, and there would have to be something to make the wormholes and then to keep them open. But is there anywhere in the vast universe like that? Could there be holes that we or more advanced civilisations might travel through, from one galaxy to another and, if not, why not? With Toby Wiseman Professor of Theoretical Physics at Imperial College LondonKaty Clough Senior Lecturer in Mathematics at Queen Mary, University of LondonAnd Andrew Pontzen Professor of Cosmology at Durham UniversityProducer: Simon TillotsonReading list:Jim Al-Khalili, Black Holes, Wormholes and Time Machines (Taylor & Francis, 1999)Andrew Pontzen, The Universe in a Box: Simulations and the Quest to Code the Cosmos (Riverhead Books, 2023)Claudia de Rham, The Beauty of Falling: A Life in Pursuit of Gravity (Princeton University Press, 2024)Carl Sagan, Contact (Simon and Schuster, 1985)Kip Thorne, Black Holes & Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy (W. W. Norton & Company, 1994)Kip Thorne, Science of Interstellar (W. W. Norton & Company, 2014)Matt Visser, Lorentzian Wormholes: From Einstein to Hawking (American Institute of Physics Melville, NY, 1996) In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production