In Our Time

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the idea that Civility, in one of its meanings, is among the most valuable social virtues: the skill to discuss topics that really matter to you, with someone who disagrees and yet somehow still get along. In another of its meanings, when Civility describes the limits of behaviour that is acceptable, the idea can reflect society at its worst: when only those deemed 'civil enough' are allowed their rights, their equality and even their humanity. Between these extremes, Civility is a slippery idea that has fascinated philosophers especially since the Reformation, when competing ideas on how to gain salvation seemed to make it impossible to disagree and remain civil. With Teresa Bejan Professor of Political Theory at Oriel College, University of Oxford Phil Withington Professor of History at the University of Sheffield And John Gallagher Associate Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Leeds Producer: Simon Tillotson Reading list: Teresa M. Bejan, Mere Civility: Disagreement and the Limits of Toleration (Harvard University Press, 2017) Anna Bryson, From Courtesy to Civility: Changing Codes of Conduct in Early Modern England (Oxford University Press, 1998) Peter Burke, The Fortunes of the Courtier: The European Reception of Castiglione’s Cortegiano (Polity Press, 1995) Peter Burke, Brian Harrison and Paul Slack (eds.), Civil Histories: Essays Presented to Sir Keith Thomas (Oxford University Press, 2000) Keith J. Bybee, How Civility Works (Stanford University Press, 2016) Nandini Das, João Vicente Melo, Haig Z. Smith and Lauren Working, Keywords of Identity, Race, and Human Mobility in Early Modern England (Amsterdam University Press, 2021) Jurgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (Polity, 1992) Jennifer Richards, Rhetoric and Courtliness in Early Modern Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2003) Austin Sarat (ed.), Civility, Legality, and Justice in America (Cambridge University Press, 2014) Keith Thomas, In Pursuit of Civility: Manners and Civilization in Early Modern England (Yale University Press, 2018) Phil Withington, Society in Early Modern England: The Vernacular Origins of Some Powerful Ideas (Polity, 2010) Lauren Working, The Making of an Imperial Polity: Civility and America in the Jacobean Metropolis (Cambridge University Press, 2020) 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.

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 Edinburgh Daniel Ogden, Professor of Ancient History at the University of Exeter And Juliette Wood, Associate Lecturer in the School of Welsh at the University of Wales. Producer: Eliane Glaser Reading 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 Acker Scott 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.

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. With Rhiannon Purdie Professor of English and Older Scots at the University of St Andrews Steve Boardman Professor of Medieval Scottish History at the University of Edinburgh And Michael Brown Professor of Scottish History at the University of St Andrews Producer: Simon Tillotson Reading 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 Purdie Colm 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 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.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the evolution of lungs and of the first breaths, which can be traced back 400 million years to when animal life spread from rock pools and swamps onto land, as some fish found an evolutionary advantage in getting their oxygen from air rather than water. Breathing with lungs may have started with fish filling their mouths with air and forcing it down into sacs in their chests, like the buccal pumping that frogs do now, and slowly their swimming muscles adapted to work their lungs like bellows. While lungs developed in different ways, there are astonishing continuities: for example, the distinct breathing system that helps tiny birds fly thousands of miles now is also the one that once allowed some dinosaurs to become huge; our hiccups are vestiges of the flight reaction in fish needing more oxygen; and we still breathe through our skins, just not enough to meet our needs. With: Steve Brusatte Professor of Palaeontology and Evolution at the University of Edinburgh Emily Rayfield Professor of Palaeobiology at the University of Bristol And Jonathan Codd Professor of Integrative Zoology at the University of Manchester Producer: Simon Tillotson Reading list: Roger B. J. Benson, Richard J. Butler, Matthew T. Carrano and Patrick M. O'Connor, ‘Air-filled postcranial bones in theropod dinosaurs: physiological implications and the ‘reptile’–bird transition’ (Biological Reviews: Cambridge Philosophical Society, July 2011) Steve Brusatte, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World (Mariner Books, 2018) Jennifer A. Clack, Gaining Ground: The Origin and Evolution of Tetrapods (2nd edition, Indiana University Press, 2012) Camila Cupello et al, ‘Lung Evolution in vertebrates and the water-to-land transition’ (eLife, July 2022) Andrew Davies and Carl Moore, The Respiratory System (Elsevier, 2010) Kenneth Kardong, Vertebrates: Comparative Anatomy, Function, Evolution (8th edition, McGraw-Hill Education, 2018) Ye Li et al, ‘Origin and stepwise evolution of vertebrate lungs’ (Nature Ecology & Evolution, Feb 2025) P. Martin Sander and Marcus Clauss, ‘Sauropod Gigantism’ (Science, Oct 2008) Goran Nilsson, Respiratory Physiology of Vertebrates: Life With and Without Oxygen (Cambridge University Press, 2010) Steven F. Perry et al, ‘What came first, the lung or the breath?’ (Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology, Part A: Molecular & Integrative Biology, May 2001) Michael J. Stephen, Breath Taking: The Power, Fragility, and Future of Our Extraordinary Lungs (Grove/Atlantic, 2022) Mathew J. Wedel, ‘The evolution of vertebral pneumaticity in sauropod dinosaurs’ (Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, Aug 2010) 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.

In 1897, Gustav Klimt led a group of radical artists to break free from the cultural establishment of Vienna and found a movement that became known as the Vienna Secession. In the vibrant atmosphere of coffee houses, Freudian psychoanalysis and the music of Wagner and Mahler, the Secession sought to bring together fine art and music with applied arts such as architecture and design. The movement was characterized by Klimt’s stylised paintings, richly decorated with gold leaf, and the art nouveau buildings that began to appear in the city, most notably the Secession Building, which housed influential exhibitions of avant-garde art and was a prototype of the modern art gallery. The Secessionists themselves were pioneers in their philosophy and way of life, aiming to immerse audiences in unified artistic experiences that brought together visual arts, design, and architecture.  With: Mark Berry, Professor of Music and Intellectual History at Royal Holloway, University of London Leslie Topp, Professor Emerita in History of Architecture at Birkbeck, University of London And Diane Silverthorne, art historian and 'Vienna 1900' scholar Producer: Eliane Glaser Reading list: Mark Berry, Arnold Schoenberg: Critical Lives (Reaktion Books, 2018) Gemma Blackshaw, Facing the Modern: The Portrait in Vienna 1900 (National Gallery Company, 2013) Elizabeth Clegg, Art, Design and Architecture in Central Europe, 1890-1920 (Yale University Press, 2006) Richard Cockett, Vienna: How the City of Ideas Created the Modern World (Yale University Press, 2023) Stephen Downes, Gustav Mahler (Reaktion Books, 2025) Peter Gay, Freud, Jews, and Other Germans: Masters and Victims in Modernist Culture (Oxford University Press, 1979) Tag Gronberg, Vienna: City of Modernity, 1890-1914 (Peter Lang, 2007) Allan S. Janik and Hans Veigl, Wittgenstein in Vienna: A Biographical Excursion Through the City and its History (Springer/Wien, 1998) Jill Lloyd and Christian Witt-Dörring (eds.), Vienna 1900: Style and Identity (Hirmer Verlag, 2011) William J. McGrath, Dionysian Art and Populist Politics in Austria (Yale University Press, 1974) Tobias Natter and Christoph Grunenberg (eds.), Gustav Klimt: Painting, Design and Modern Life (Tate, 2008) Carl E. Schorske, Fin-de-siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture (Vintage, 1979) Elana Shapira, Style and Seduction: Jewish Patrons, Architecture and Design in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna (Brandeis University Press, 2016) Diane V Silverthorne, Dan Reynolds and Megan Brandow-Faller, Die Fläche: Design and Lettering of the Vienna Secession, 1902-1911 (Letterform Archive, 2023) Edward Timms, Karl Kraus: Apocalyptic Satirist: Culture & Catastrophe in Habsburg Vienna (Yale University Press, 1989) Leslie Topp, Architecture and Truth in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna (Cambridge University Press, 2004) Peter Vergo, Art in Vienna, 1898-1918: Klimt, Kokoschka, Schiele and Their Contemporaries (4th ed., Phaidon, 2015) Hans-Peter Wipplinger (ed.), Vienna 1900: Birth of Modernism (Walther & Franz König, 2019) Hans-Peter Wipplinger (ed.), Masterpieces from the Leopold Museum (Walther & Franz König) Stefan Zweig, The World of Yesterday: An Autobiography (University of Nebraska Press, 1964) 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.