Ranked #1
Auden
Auden
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and poetry of WH Auden (1907-1973) up to his departure from Europe for the USA ... Read more
19 Dec 2019
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53mins
Ranked #2
Macbeth
Macbeth
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies. When three witches prophesy that Macbeth will b... Read more
1 Oct 2020
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51mins
Ranked #3
Moses Mendelssohn
Moses Mendelssohn
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work and influence of the eighteenth-century philosopher Moses Mendelssohn. A pr... Read more
22 Mar 2012
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42mins
Ranked #4
Christine de Pizan
Christine de Pizan
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and works of Christine de Pizan, who wrote at the French Court in the late Midd... Read more
8 Jun 2017
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50mins
Ranked #5
Horace
Horace
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Horace (65-8BC), who flourished under the Emperor Augustus. He was one of the greatest p... Read more
15 Nov 2018
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48mins
Ranked #6
A Midsummer Night's Dream
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of Shakespeare's most popular works, written c1595 in the last years of Elizabeth I.... Read more
18 Apr 2019
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54mins
Ranked #7
Moby Dick
Moby Dick
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Herman Melville's (1819-1891) epic novel, published in London in 1851, the story of Capt... Read more
7 Dec 2017
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51mins
Ranked #8
Lorca
Lorca
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Spanish poet and playwright Federico Garcia Lorca (1898-1936), author of Blood Weddi... Read more
4 Jul 2019
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53mins
Ranked #9
Proust
Proust
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work Marcel Proust whose novel À La Recherche du Temps Perdu, or In Search... Read more
10 Apr 2003
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41mins
Ranked #10
Rudyard Kipling
Rudyard Kipling
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Rudyard Kipling. Born in Bombay in 1865, Kipling has been descr... Read more
16 Oct 2014
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45mins
Ranked #11
Middlemarch
Middlemarch
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss what Virginia Woolf called 'one of the few English novels written for grown-up people'. ... Read more
19 Apr 2018
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51mins
Ranked #12
Aesop
Aesop
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aesop. According to some accounts, Aesop was a strikingly ugly slave who was dumb until ... Read more
20 Nov 2014
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45mins
Ranked #13
The Odyssey
The Odyssey
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss The Odyssey by Homer, often claimed as the great founding work of Western Literature. It... Read more
9 Sep 2004
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28mins
Ranked #14
Shakespeare and Literary Criticism
Shakespeare and Literary Criticism
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the enduring popular and academic appeal of Shakespeare. Did he invent the human persona... Read more
4 Mar 1999
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27mins
Ranked #15
Tolstoy
Tolstoy
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the 19th century Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy.The Russian novel has... Read more
25 Apr 2002
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28mins
Ranked #16
Don Quixote
Don Quixote
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Miguel de Cervantes’ 17th century novel, Don Quixote. Published four hundred years ago i... Read more
16 Mar 2006
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42mins
Ranked #17
Aldous Huxley's Brave New World
Aldous Huxley's Brave New World
Melvyn Bragg and guests David Bradshaw, Daniel Pick and Michele Barrett discuss Aldous Huxley's dystopian 1932 novel, Br... Read more
9 Apr 2009
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42mins
Ranked #18
In Our Time - Animal Farm
In Our Time - Animal Farm
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Animal Farm, which Eric Blair published under his pen name George Orwell in 1945. A biti... Read more
29 Sep 2016
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51mins
Ranked #19
Language and the Mind
Language and the Mind
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of our ideas about the formation of language. The psychologist George Miller... Read more
11 Feb 1999
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27mins
Ranked #20
Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Luis Borges
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Argentinian master of the short story, Jorge Luis Borges. Borge... Read more
4 Jan 2007
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42mins