Robert Graves

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the fine poet of love and war and author of I, Claudius.

• 54 mins

Hayek's The Road to Serfdom

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hayek's ideas on a state-planned economy's link to tyranny

• 50 mins

Little Women

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Louisa May Alcott's influential story of the March sisters

• 48 mins

The Venetian Empire

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rise and eventual decline of the Venetian Empire.

• 51 mins

George Herbert

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss arguably the greatest devotional poem writer in English.

• 52 mins

The Antikythera Mechanism

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the mysterious ancient Greek astronomical computer.

• 50 mins

Italo Calvino

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the influential 20th-century Italian novelist and essayist

• 48 mins

The Hanoverian Succession

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the politics that led to the coronation of George I.

• 50 mins

Nizami Ganjavi

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great 12th-century Persian epic romantic poet.

• 52 mins

The Habitability of Planets

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss ideas about where life may begin in the universe and how.

• 52 mins

Plutarch's Parallel Lives

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the influential Greek biographer and his main work

• 56 mins

Vase-mania

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the eighteenth century mania for classical vases.

• 56 mins

Slime Moulds

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the remarkable world of slime mould.

• 51 mins

The Battle of Valmy

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the day in 1792 when the French Revolution risked defeat.

• 47 mins

Socrates in Prison

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the inspiring last days of the great Athenian philosopher.

• 50 mins

Pope Joan

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the legend of Pope Joan.

• 46 mins

Sir John Soane

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the influential English architect John Soane.

• 53 mins

Catherine of Aragon

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the woman so important that two Tudor royals married her.

• 52 mins

Oliver Goldsmith

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss this influential and prolific 18th-century Irish writer.

• 54 mins

Kali

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss this Hindu goddess in her many remarkable forms

• 57 mins

Pollination

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the interplay between plants and pollinators.

• 50 mins

Cyrus the Great

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Persian ruler Cyrus the Great.

• 50 mins

Thomas Middleton

The prolific and versatile Jacobean playwright tasked with 'improving' some of Shakespeare

• 56 mins

Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Insights into the relationship between the body and the mind, habits, language and thought

• 59 mins

The Gracchi

Why two brothers became linked to the fall of the Roman Republic and rise of the emperors.

• 49 mins

The Battle of Clontarf

Brian Boru's celebrated defeat of Hiberno-Norse forces and allies outside Dublin in 1014.

• 51 mins

Typology

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss biblical typology.

• 50 mins

Molière

The great French playwright and comic actor who flourished at the court of Louis XIV.

• 51 mins

The Korean Empire

How Korea embraced modernisation at the end of the 19th Century in a bid for independence.

• 47 mins