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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.
With
Paul O’PreyEmeritus Professor of Modern Literature at the University of Roehampton, London
Fran BreartonProfessor of Modern Poetry at Queen’s University, Belfast
And
Bob DavisProfessor of Religious and Cultural Education at the University of Glasgow
Producer: Simon Tillotson
Robert 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
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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 KinnaProfessor of Political Theory at Loughborough University
Christopher PhelpsAssociate Professor of American Studies at the University of Nottingham
And
Gary GerstlePaul Mellon Professor of American History Emeritus at the University of Cambridge
Producer: Simon Tillotson
Reading 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
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Saknas det avsnitt?
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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 WisemanProfessor of Theoretical Physics at Imperial College London
Katy Clough Senior Lecturer in Mathematics at Queen Mary, University of London
And
Andrew Pontzen Professor of Cosmology at Durham University
Producer: Simon Tillotson
Reading 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
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Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the major figures in Victorian British politics. Disraeli (1804 -1881) served both as Prime Minister twice and, for long periods, as leader of the opposition. Born a Jew, he was only permitted to enter Parliament as his father had him baptised into the Church of England when he was twelve. Disraeli was a gifted orator and, outside Parliament, he shared his views widely through several popular novels including Sybil or The Two Nations, which was to inspire the idea of One Nation Conservatism. He became close to Queen Victoria and she mourned his death with a primrose wreath, an event marked for years after by annual processions celebrating his life in politics.
With
Lawrence GoldmanEmeritus Fellow in History at St Peter's College, University of Oxford
Emily JonesLecturer in Modern British History at the University of Manchester
And
Daisy HayProfessor of English Literature and Life Writing at the University of Exeter
Producer: Simon Tillotson
Reading list:
Robert Blake, Disraeli (first published 1966; Faber & Faber, 2010)
M. Dent, ‘Disraeli and the Bible’ (Journal of Victorian Culture 29, 2024)
Benjamin Disraeli (ed. N. Shrimpton), Sybil; or, The Two Nations (Oxford University Press, 2017)
Daisy Hay, Mr and Mrs Disraeli: A Strange Romance (Chatto & Windus, 2015)
Douglas Hurd and Edward Young, Disraeli: or, The Two Lives (W&N, 2014)
Emily Jones, ‘Impressions of Disraeli: Mythmaking and the History of One Nation Conservatism, 1881-1940’ (French Journal of British Studies 28, 2023)
William Kuhn, The Politics of Pleasure: A Portrait of Benjamin Disraeli (Simon & Schuster, 2007)
Robert O'Kell, Disraeli: The Romance of Politics (University of Toronto Press, 2013)
J.P. Parry, ‘Disraeli and England’ (Historical Journal 43, 2000)
J.P. Parry, ‘Disraeli, the East and Religion: Tancred in Context’ (English Historical Review 132, 2017)
Cecil Roth, Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield (New York Philosophical library, 1952)
Paul Smith, Disraelian Conservatism and Social Reform (Routledge & Kegan Paul PLC, 1967)
John Vincent, Disraeli (Oxford University Press, 1990)
P.J. Waller (ed.), Politics and Social Change in Modern Britain (Prentice Hall / Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1987), especially the chapter ‘Style and Substance in Disraelian Social Reform’ by P. Ghosh
In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production
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Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the most abundant lifeform on Earth: the viruses that 'eat' bacteria. Early in the 20th century, scientists noticed that something in their Petri dishes was making bacteria disappear and they called these bacteriophages, things that eat bacteria. From studying these phages, it soon became clear that they offered countless real or potential benefits for understanding our world, from the tracking of diseases to helping unlock the secrets of DNA to treatments for long term bacterial infections. With further research, they could be an answer to the growing problem of antibiotic resistance.
With
Martha ClokieDirector for the Centre for Phage Research and Professor of Microbiology at the University of Leicester
James EbdonProfessor of Environmental Microbiology at the University of Brighton
And
Claas KirchhelleHistorian and Chargé de Recherche at the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research’s CERMES3 Unit in Paris.
Producer: Simon Tillotson
In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production
Reading list:
James Ebdon, ‘Tackling sources of contamination in water: The age of phage’ (Microbiologist, Society for Applied Microbiology, Vol 20.1, 2022)
Thomas Häusler, Viruses vs. Superbugs: A Solution to the Antibiotics Crisis? (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006)
Tom Ireland, The Good Virus: The Untold Story of Phages: The Mysterious Microbes that Rule Our World, Shape Our Health and Can Save Our Future (Hodder Press, 2024)
Claas Kirchhelle and Charlotte Kirchhelle, ‘Northern Normal–Laboratory Networks, Microbial Culture Collections, and Taxonomies of Power (1939-2000)’ (SocArXiv Papers, 2024)
Dmitriy Myelnikov, ‘An alternative cure: the adoption and survival of bacteriophage therapy in the USSR, 1922–1955’ (Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 73, no. 4, 2018)
Forest Rohwer, Merry Youle, Heather Maughan and Nao Hisakawa, Life in our Phage World: A Centennial Field Guide to Earth’s most Diverse Inhabitants (Wholon, 2014)
Steffanie Strathdee and Thomas Patterson (2019) The Perfect Predator: A Scientist’s Race to Save Her Husband from a Deadly Superbug: A Memoir (Hachette Books, 2020)
William C. Summers, Félix d`Herelle and the Origins of Molecular Biology (Yale University Press, 1999)
William C. Summers, The American Phage Group: Founders of Molecular Biology (University Press, 2023)
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Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of the great French Impressionist Claude Monet (1840-1926) in London, initially in 1870 and then from 1899. He spent his first visit in poverty, escaping from war in France, while by the second he had become so commercially successful that he stayed at the Savoy Hotel. There, from his balcony, he began a series of almost a hundred paintings that captured the essence of this dynamic city at that time, with fog and smoke almost obscuring the bridges, boats and Houses of Parliament. The pollution was terrible for health but the diffraction through the sooty droplets offered an ever-changing light that captivated Monet, and he was to paint the Thames more than he did his water lilies or haystacks or Rouen Cathedral. On his return to France, Monet appeared to have a new confidence to explore an art that was more abstract than impressionist.
With
Karen SerresSenior Curator of Paintings at the Courtauld Gallery, LondonCurator of the exhibition 'Monet and London. Views of the Thames'
Frances FowleProfessor of Nineteenth-Century Art at the University of Edinburgh and Senior Curator of French Art at the National Galleries of Scotland
And
Jackie WullschlägerChief Art Critic for the Financial Times and author of ‘Monet, The Restless Vision’
In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production
Producer: Simon TillotsonStudio production: John Goudie
Reading list:
Caroline Corbeau Parsons, Impressionists in London: French Artists in Exile 1870-1904 (Tate Publishing, 2017)
Frances Fowle, Monet and French Landscape: Vétheuil and Normandy (National Galleries of Scotland, 2007), especially the chapter ‘Making Money out of Monet: Marketing Monet in Britain 1870-1905’
Robert Gordon and Andrew Forge, Monet (Harry N. Abrams, 1983)
Paul Hayes Tucker, Monet in the ’90s: The Series Paintings (Yale University Press, 1990)
Paul Hayes Tucker, Monet in the 20th Century (Yale University Press, 1998)
Katharine A. Lochnan, Turner, Whistler, Monet (Tate Publishing, 2005)
Nicholas Reed, Monet and the Thames: Paintings and Modern Views of Monet’s London (Lilburne Press, 1998)
Grace Seiberling, Monet in London (High Museum of Art, 1988)
Karen Serres, Frances Fowle and Jennifer A. Thompson, Monet and London: Views of the Thames (Paul Holberton Publishing, 2024 – catalogue to accompany Courtauld Gallery exhibition)
Charles Stuckey, Monet: A Retrospective (Random House, 1985)
Daniel Wildenstein, Monet: The Triumph of Impressionism (first published 1996; Taschen, 2022)
Jackie Wullschläger, Monet: The Restless Vision (Allen Lane, 2023)
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Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the doctrine of Karma as developed initially among Hindus, Jains and Buddhists in India from the first millennium BCE. Common to each is an idea, broadly, that you reap what you sow: how you act in this world has consequences either for your later life or your future lives, depending on your view of rebirth and transmigration. From this flow different ideas including those about free will, engagement with the world or disengagement, the nature of ethics and whether intention matters, and these ideas continue to develop today.
With
Monima ChadhaProfessor of Indian Philosophy and Tutorial Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford
Jessica FrazierLecturer in the Study of Religion at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies
And
Karen O’Brien-KopLecturer in Asian Religions at Kings College London
Producer: Simon Tillotson
In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production
Reading list:
J. Bronkhorst, Karma (University of Hawaii Press, 2011)
J. H. Davis (ed.), A Mirror is for Reflection: Understanding Buddhist Ethics (Oxford University Press, 2017), especially ‘Buddhism Without Reincarnation? Examining the Prospects of a “Naturalized” Buddhism’ by J. Westerhoff
J. Ganeri (ed.), Ethics and Epics: Philosophy, Culture, and Religion (Oxford University Press, 2002), especially ‘Karma and the Moral Order’ by B. K. Matilal
Y. Krishan, The Doctrine of Karma: Its Origin and Development in Brāhmaṇical, Buddhist and Jaina Traditions (Motilal Banarsidass Publishers Private Limited, 1997)
N.K.G. Mendis (ed.), The Questions of King Milinda: An Abridgement of Milindapañha (Buddhist Publication Society, 1993)
M. Siderits, How Things Are: An Introduction to Buddhist Metaphysics (Oxford University Press, 2022)
M. Vargas and J. Dorris (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Moral Psychology (Oxford Univesrity Press, 2022), especially ‘Karma, Moral Responsibility and Buddhist Ethics’ by B. Finnigan
J. Zu, 'Collective Karma Cluster Concepts in Chinese Canonical Sources: A Note' (Journal of Global Buddhism, Vol.24: 2, 2023)
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Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss "The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling" (1749) by Henry Fielding (1707-1754), one of the most influential of the early English novels and a favourite of Dickens. Coleridge wrote that it had one of the 'three most perfect plots ever planned'. Fielding had made his name in the theatre with satirical plays that were so painful for their targets in government that, from then until the 1960s, plays required approval before being staged; seeking other ways to make a living, Fielding turned to law and to fiction. 'Tom Jones' is one of the great comic novels, with the tightness of a farce and the ambition of a Greek epic as told by the finest raconteur. While other authors might present Tom as a rake and a libertine, Fielding makes him the hero for his fundamental good nature, so offering a caution not to judge anyone too soon, if ever.
With
Judith HawleyProfessor of 18th Century Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London
Henry PowerProfessor of English Literature at the University of Exeter
And
Charlotte RobertsAssociate Professor of English Literature at University College London
Producer: Simon Tillotson
In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production
Reading list:
Martin C. Battestin with Ruthe R. Battestin, Henry Fielding: A Life (Routledge, 1989)
J. M. Beattie, The First English Detectives: The Bow Street Runners and the Policing of London, 1750–1840 (Oxford University Press, 2012) S. Dickie, Cruelty and Laughter: Forgotten Comic Literature and the Unsentimental Eighteenth Century (University of Chicago Press, 2011)
J.A. Downie (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the Eighteenth-Century Novel (Oxford University Press, 2020)
Henry Fielding (ed. John Bender and Simon Stern), The History of Tom Jones (Oxford University Press, 2008)
Henry Fielding (ed. Tom Keymer), The Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon (Penguin Classics, 1996)
Ronald Paulson, The Life of Henry Fielding: A Critical Biography (Wiley Blackwell, 2000)
Henry Power, Epic into Novel: Henry Fielding, Scriblerian Satire, and the Consumption of Classical Literature (Oxford University Press, 2015)
Claude Rawson, Henry Fielding and the Augustan Ideal under Stress (first published 1972; Routledge, 2021)
Claude Rawson (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Henry Fielding (Cambridge University Press, 2007)
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Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Saga of the Earls of Orkney, as told in the 13th Century by an unknown Icelander. This was the story of arguably the most important, strategically, of all the islands in the British Viking world, when the Earls controlled Shetland, Orkney and Caithness from which they could raid the Irish and British coasts, from Dublin round to Lindisfarne. The Saga combines myth with history, bringing to life the places on those islands where Vikings met, drank, made treaties, told stories, became saints, plotted and fought.
With
Judith JeschProfessor of Viking Studies at the University of Nottingham
Jane HarrisonArchaeologist and Research Associate at Oxford and Newcastle Universities
And
Alex WoolfSenior Lecturer in History at the University of St Andrews
Producer: Simon Tillotson
In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production
Reading list:
Theodore M. Andersson, The Growth of Medieval Icelandic Sagas, 1180-1280, (Cornell University Press, 2012)
Margaret Clunies Ross, The Cambridge Introduction to the Old Norse-Icelandic Saga (Cambridge University Press, 2010)
Robert Cook (trans.), Njals Saga (Penguin, 2001)
Barbara E. Crawford, The Northern Earldoms: Orkney and Caithness from AD 870 to 1470 (John Donald Short Run Press, 2013)
Shami Ghosh, Kings’ Sagas and Norwegian History: Problems and Perspectives (Brill, 2011)
J. Graham-Campbell and C. E. Batey, Vikings in Scotland (Edinburgh University Press, 2002)
David Griffiths, J. Harrison and Michael Athanson, Beside the Ocean: Coastal Landscapes at the Bay of Skaill, Marwick, and Birsay Bay, Orkney: Archaeological Research 2003-18 (Oxbow Books, 2019)
Jane Harrison, Building Mounds: Orkney and the Vikings (Routledge, forthcoming)
Ármann Jakobsson and Sverrir Jakobsson (eds.), The Routledge Research Companion to the Medieval Icelandic Sagas (Routledge, 2017)
Judith Jesch, The Viking Diaspora (Routledge, 2015)
Judith Jesch, ‘Earl Rögnvaldr of Orkney, a Poet of the Viking Diaspora’ (Journal of the North Atlantic, Special Volume 4, 2013)
Judith Jesch, The Poetry of Orkneyinga Saga (H.M. Chadwick Memorial Lectures, University of Cambridge, 2020)
Devra Kunin (trans.), A History of Norway and the Passion and Miracles of the Blessed Olafr (Viking Society for Northern Research, 2001)
Rory McTurk (ed.), A Companion to Old Norse-Icelandic Literature and Culture (Wiley-Blackwell, 2004)
Tom Muir, Orkney in the Sagas (Orkney Islands Council, 2005)
Else Mundal (ed.), Dating the Sagas: Reviews and Revisions (Museum Tusculanum Press, 2013)
Heather O’Donoghue, Old Norse-Icelandic Literature: A Short Introduction, (John Wiley & Sons, 2004)Heather O'Donoghue and Eleanor Parker (eds.), The Cambridge History of Old Norse-Icelandic Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2024), especially 'Landscape and Material Culture' by Jane Harrison and ‘Diaspora Sagas’ by Judith Jesch
Richard Oram, Domination and Lordship, Scotland 1070-1230, (Edinburgh University Press, 2011)
Olwyn Owen (ed.), The World of Orkneyinga Saga: The Broad-cloth Viking Trip (Orkney Islands Council, 2006)
Hermann Pálsson and Paul Edwards (trans.), Orkneyinga Saga: The History of the Earls of Orkney (Penguin Classics, 1981)
Snorri Sturluson (trans. tr. Alison Finlay and Anthony Faulkes), Heimskringla, vol. I-III (Viking Society for Northern Research, 2011-2015)
William P. L. Thomson, The New History of Orkney (Birlinn Ltd, 2008)
Alex Woolf, From Pictland to Alba, 789-1070 (Edinburgh University Press, 2007), especially chapter 7
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Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the canonical figures from the history of political thought. Marsilius of Padua (c1275 to c1343) wrote 'Defensor Pacis' (The Defender of the Peace) around 1324 when the Papacy, the Holy Roman Emperor and the French King were fighting over who had supreme power on Earth. In this work Marsilius argued that the people were the source of all power and they alone could elect a leader to act on their behalf; they could remove their leaders when they chose and, afterwards, could hold them to account for their actions. He appeared to favour an elected Holy Roman Emperor and he was clear that there were no grounds for the Papacy to have secular power, let alone gather taxes and wealth, and that clerics should return to the poverty of the Apostles. Protestants naturally found his work attractive in the 16th Century when breaking with Rome. In the 20th Century Marsilius has been seen as an early advocate for popular sovereignty and republican democracy, to the extent possible in his time.
With
Annabel BrettProfessor of Political Thought and History at the University of Cambridge
George GarnettProfessor of Medieval History and Fellow and Tutor at St Hugh’s College, University of Oxford
And
Serena FerenteProfessor of Medieval History at the University of Amsterdam
Producer: Simon TillotsonIn Our Time is a BBC Sounds Audio Production
Reading list:
Richard Bourke and Quentin Skinner (eds), Popular Sovereignty in Historical Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2016), especially 'Popolo and law in Marsilius and the jurists' by Serena Ferente
J. Canning, Ideas of Power in the Late Middle Ages, 1296-1417 (Cambridge University Press, 2011)
H.W.C. Davis (ed.), Essays in Mediaeval History presented to Reginald Lane Poole (Clarendon Press, 1927), especially ‘The authors cited in the Defensor Pacis’ by C.W. Previté-Orton
George Garnett, Marsilius of Padua and ‘The Truth of History’ (Oxford University Press, 2006)
J.R. Hale, J.R.L. Highfield and B. Smalley (eds.), Europe in the Late Middle Ages (Faber and Faber, 1965), especially ‘Marsilius of Padua and political thought of his time’ by N. Rubinstein
Joel Kaye, 'Equalization in the Body and the Body Politic: From Galen to Marsilius of Padua’ (Mélanges de l'Ecole Française de Rome 125, 2013)
Xavier Márquez (ed.), Democratic Moments: Reading Democratic Texts (Bloomsbury, 2018), especially ‘Consent and popular sovereignty in medieval political thought: Marsilius of Padua’s Defensor pacis’ by T. Shogimen
Marsiglio of Padua (trans. Cary J. Nederman), Defensor Minor and De Translatione Imperii (Cambridge University Press, 1993)
Marsilius of Padua (trans. Annabel Brett), The Defender of the Peace (Cambridge University Press, 2005)
Gerson Moreño-Riano (ed.), The World of Marsilius of Padua (Brepols, 2006)
Gerson Moreno-Riano and Cary J. Nederman (eds), A Companion to Marsilius of Padua (Brill, 2012)
A. Mulieri, S. Masolini and J. Pelletier (eds.), Marsilius of Padua: Between history, Politics, and Philosophy (Brepols, 2023)
C. Nederman, Community and Consent: The Secular Political Theory of Marsiglio of Padua’s Defensor Pacis (Rowman and Littlefield, 1995)
Vasileios Syros, Marsilius of Padua at the Intersection of Ancient and Medieval Traditions of Political Thought (University of Toronto Press, 2012)
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Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the woman who, for almost fifty years, was the most powerful figure in the Chinese court. Cixi (1835-1908) started out at court as one of the Emperor's many concubines, yet was the only one who gave him a son to succeed him and who also possessed great political skill and ambition. When their son became emperor he was still a young child and Cixi ruled first through him and then, following his death, through another child emperor. This was a time of rapid change in China, when western powers and Japan humiliated the forces of the Qing empire time after time, and Cixi had the chance to push forward the modernising reforms the country needed to thrive. However, when she found those reforms conflicted with her own interests or those of the Qing dynasty, she was arguably obstructive or too slow to act and she has been personally blamed for some of those many humiliations even when the fault lay elsewhere.
With
Yangwen ZhengProfessor of Chinese History at the University of Manchester
Rana MitterThe S.T. Lee Professor of US-Asia Relations at the Harvard Kennedy School
And
Ronald PoAssociate Professor in the Department of International History at London School of Economics and Visiting Professor at Leiden University
Producer: Simon TillotsonIn Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production
Reading list:
Pearl S. Buck, Imperial Woman: The Story of the Last Empress of China (first published 1956; Open Road Media, 2013)
Katharine A. Carl, With the Empress Dowager (first published 1906; General Books LLC, 2009)
Jung Chang, Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China (Jonathan Cape, 2013)
Princess Der Ling, Old Buddha (first published 1929; Kessinger Publishing, 2007) Joseph W. Esherick, The Origins of the Boxer Uprising (University of California Press, 1987)
John K. Fairbank and Merle Goldman, China: A New History (Harvard University Press, 2006)
Peter Gue Zarrow and Rebecca Karl (eds.), Rethinking the 1898 Reform Period: Political and Cultural Change in Late Qing China (Harvard University Press, 2002)
Grant Hayter-Menzies, Imperial Masquerade: The Legend of Princess Der Ling (Hong Kong University Press, 2008)
Keith Laidler, The Last Empress: The She-Dragon of China (Wiley, 2003)
Keith McMahon, Celestial Women: Imperial Wives and Concubines in China from Song to Qing (Rowman & Littlefield, 2020)
Anchee Min, The Last Empress (Bloomsbury, 2011)
Ying-Chen Peng, Artful Subversion: Empress Dowager Cixi’s Image Making (Yale University Press, 2023).
Sarah Pike Conger, Letters from China: with Particular Reference to the Empress Dowager and the Women of China (first published 1910; Forgotten Books, 2024)
Stephen Platt, Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China's Last Golden Age (Atlantic Books, 2019)
Liang Qichao (trans. Peter Zarrow), Thoughts From the Ice-Drinker's Studio: Essays on China and the World (Penguin Classics, 2023)
Sterling Seagrave, Dragon Lady: The Life and Legend of the Last Empress of China (Vintage, 1993)
Jonathan D. Spence, The Search for Modern China (first published 1991; W. W. Norton & Company, 2001)
X. L. Woo, Empress Dowager Cixi: China's Last Dynasty and the Long Reign of a Formidable Concubine (Algora Publishing, 2003)
Zheng Yangwen, Ten Lessons in Modern Chinese History (Manchester University Press, 2018)
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Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most significant philosophers of the twentieth century, Philippa Foot (1920 - 2010). Her central question was, “Why be moral?” Drawing on Aristotle and Aquinas, Foot spent her life working through her instinct that there was something lacking in the prevailing philosophy of the 1950s and 1960s which held that values could only be subjective. Could there really be no objective response to the horrors of the concentration camps that she had seen on newsreels, no way of saying that such acts were morally wrong? Foot developed an ethics based on virtues, in which humans needed virtues to flourish as surely as plants needed light and water. While working through her ideas she explored applied ethics and the difference between doing something and letting it happen, an idea she illustrated with what became The Trolley Problem.
With
Anil GomesFellow and Tutor in Philosophy at Trinity College, University of Oxford
Sophie Grace ChappellProfessor of Philosophy at the Open University
And
Rachael WisemanReader in Philosophy at the University of Liverpool
Producer: Simon TillotsonIn Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production
Reading list:
Philippa Foot, Virtues and Vices (Oxford University Press, 1978)
Philippa Foot, Moral Dilemmas (Oxford University Press, 2002)
Philippa Foot, Natural Goodness (Oxford University Press, 2001)
John Hacker-Wright, Philippa Foot's Moral Thought (Bloomsbury, 2013)
Benjamin Lipscomb, The Women Are Up To Something (Oxford University Press, 2021)
Clare Mac Cumhaill and Rachael Wiseman, Metaphysical Animals: How Four Women Brought Philosophy Back to Life (Chatto, 2022)
Dan Russell (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Virtue Ethics (Cambridge University Press), especially ‘Virtue Ethics in the Twentieth Century’ by Timothy (now Sophie Grace) Chappell
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Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss 'the greatest poet of his age', Thomas Wyatt (1503 -1542), who brought the poetry of the Italian Renaissance into the English Tudor world, especially the sonnet, so preparing the way for Shakespeare and Donne. As an ambassador to Henry VIII and, allegedly, too close to Anne Boleyn, he experienced great privilege under intense scrutiny. Some of Wyatt's poems, such as They Flee From Me That Sometime Did Me Seek, are astonishingly fresh and conversational and yet he wrote them under the tightest constraints, when a syllable out of place could have condemned him to the Tower.
With
Brian Cummings50th Anniversary Professor of English at the University of York
Susan BrigdenRetired Fellow at Lincoln College, University of Oxford
And
Laura AsheProfessor of English Literature at the University of Oxford
Producer: Simon TillotsonIn Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production
Reading list:
Thomas Betteridge and Suzannah Lipscomb (eds.), Henry VIII and the Court: Art, Politics and Performance (Routledge, 2016)
Susan Brigden, Thomas Wyatt: The Heart’s Forest (Faber, 2012)
Nicola Shulman, Graven with Diamonds: The Many Lives of Thomas Wyatt: Courtier, Poet, Assassin, Spy (Short Books, 2011)
Chris Stamatakis, Sir Thomas Wyatt and the Rhetoric of Rewriting (Oxford University Press, 2012)
Patricia Thomson (ed.), Thomas Wyatt: The Critical Heritage (Routledge, 1995)
Greg Walker, Writing Under Tyranny: English Literature and the Henrician Reformation (Oxford University Press, 2005)
Thomas Wyatt (ed. R. A. Rebholz), The Complete Poems (Penguin, 1978)
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Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the planet which is closest to our Sun. We see it as an evening or a morning star, close to where the Sun has just set or is about to rise, and observations of Mercury helped Copernicus understand that Earth and the other planets orbit the Sun, so displacing Earth from the centre of our system. In the 20th century, further observations of Mercury helped Einstein prove his general theory of relativity. For the last 50 years we have been sending missions there to reveal something of Mercury's secrets and how those relate to the wider universe, and he latest, BepiColombo, is out there in space now.
With
Emma BunceProfessor of Planetary Plasma Physics and Director of the Institute for Space at the University of Leicester
David RotheryProfessor of Planetary Geosciences at the Open University
And
Carolin CrawfordEmeritus Fellow of Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge, and Emeritus Member of the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge
Producer: Simon TillotsonIn Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio production
Reading list:
Emma Bunce, ‘All (X-ray) eyes on Mercury’ (Astronomy & Geophysics, Volume 64, Issue 4, August 2023)
Emma Bunce et al, ‘The BepiColombo Mercury Imaging X-Ray Spectrometer: Science Goals, Instrument Performance and Operations’ (Space Science Reviews: SpringerLink, volume 216, article number 126, Nov 2020)
David A. Rothery, Planet Mercury: From Pale Pink Dot to Dynamic World (Springer, 2014)
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Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the greatest European playwrights of the twentieth century. The aim of Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) was to make the familiar ‘strange’: with plays such as Mother Courage and The Caucasian Chalk Circle he wanted his audience not to sit back but to engage, observe and discover the contradictions in life, and act on what they learnt. He developed this approach in turbulent times, from Weimar Germany to the rise of the Nazis, to exile in Scandinavia and America and then post-war life in East Berlin, and he has since inspired dramatists around the world.
With
Laura BradleyProfessor of German and Theatre at the University of Edinburgh
David BarnettProfessor of Theatre at the University of York
And
Tom KuhnProfessor of Twentieth Century German Literature, Emeritus Fellow of St Hugh's College, University of Oxford
Producer: Simon TillotsonIn Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio production
Reading list:
David Barnett, Brecht in Practice: Theatre, Theory and Performance (Bloomsbury, 2014)
David Barnett, A History of the Berliner Ensemble (Cambridge University Press, 2015)
Laura Bradley and Karen Leeder (eds.), Brecht and the GDR: Politics, Culture, Posterity (Camden House, 2015)
Laura Bradley, ‘Training the Audience: Brecht and the Art of Spectatorship’ (The Modern Language Review, 111, 2016)
Bertolt Brecht (ed. Marc Silberman, Tom Kuhn and Steve Giles), Brecht on Theatre (Bloomsbury, 2014)
Bertolt Brecht (ed. Tom Kuhn, Steve Giles and Marc Silberman), Brecht on Performance (Bloomsbury, 2014)
Bertolt Brecht (trans. Tom Kuhn and David Constantine), The Collected Poems of Bertolt Brecht (Norton Liveright, 2018) which includes the poem ‘Spring 1938’ read by Tom Kuhn in this programme
Stephen Brockmann (ed.), Bertolt Brecht in Context (Cambridge University Press, 2021)
Meg Mumford, Bertolt Brecht (Routledge, 2009)
Stephen Parker, Bertolt Brecht: A Literary Life (Bloomsbury, 2014)
Ronald Speirs, Brecht’s Poetry of Political Exile (Cambridge University Press, 2000)
David Zoob, Brecht: A Practical Handbook (Nick Hern Books, 2018)
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Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Napoleon Bonaparte's temporary return to power in France in 1815, following his escape from exile on Elba . He arrived with fewer than a thousand men, yet three weeks later he had displaced Louis XVIII and taken charge of an army as large as any that the Allied Powers could muster individually. He saw that his best chance was to pick the Allies off one by one, starting with the Prussian and then the British/Allied armies in what is now Belgium. He appeared to be on the point of victory at Waterloo yet somehow it eluded him, and his plans were soon in tatters. His escape to America thwarted, he surrendered on 15th July and was exiled again but this time to Saint Helena. There he wrote his memoirs to help shape his legacy, while back in Europe there were still fears of his return.
With
Michael RoweReader in European History at Kings College London
Katherine AstburyProfessor of French Studies at the University of Warwick
And
Zack WhiteLeverhulme Early Career Research Fellow at the University of Portsmouth
Producer: Simon TillotsonIn Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio production.
Reading list:
Katherine Astbury and Mark Philp (ed.), Napoleon's Hundred Days and the Politics of Legitimacy (Palgrave, 2018)
Jeremy Black, The Battle of Waterloo: A New History (Icon Books, 2010)
Michael Broers, Napoleon: The Decline and Fall of an Empire: 1811-1821 (Pegasus Books, 2022)
Philip Dwyer, Citizen Emperor: Napoleon in power 1799-1815 (Bloomsbury, 2014)
Charles J. Esdaile, Napoleon, France and Waterloo: The Eagle Rejected (Pen & Sword Military, 2016)
Gareth Glover, Waterloo: Myth and Reality (Pen & Sword Military, 2014)
Sudhir Hazareesingh, The Legend of Napoleon (Granta, 2014)
John Hussey, Waterloo: The Campaign of 1815, Volume 1, From Elba to Ligny and Quatre Bras (Greenhill Books, 2017)
Andrew Roberts, Napoleon the Great (Penguin Books, 2015)
Brian Vick, The Congress of Vienna: Power and Politics after Napoleon (Harvard University Press, 2014)
Zack White (ed.), The Sword and the Spirit: Proceedings of the first ‘War & Peace in the Age of Napoleon’ Conference (Helion and Company, 2021)
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Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aristophanes' comedy in which the women of Athens and Sparta, led by Lysistrata, secure peace in the long-running war between them by staging a sex strike. To the men in the audience in 411BC, the idea that peace in the Peloponnesian War could be won so easily was ridiculous and the thought that their wives could have so much power over them was even more so. However Aristophanes' comedy also has the women seizing the treasure in the Acropolis that was meant to fund more fighting in an emergency, a fund the Athenians had recently had to draw on. They were in a perilous position and, much as they might laugh at Aristophanes' jokes, they knew there were real concerns about the actual cost of the war in terms of wealth and manpower.
With
Paul CartledgeAG Leventis Senior Research Fellow of Clare College, University of Cambridge
Sarah MilesAssociate Professor in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at Durham University
And
James RobsonProfessor of Classical Studies at the Open University
Producer: Simon Tillotson
Reading list:
Aristophanes (ed. Jeffrey Henderson), Lysistrata (Oxford University Press, 1987)
Aristophanes (ed. Jeffrey Henderson), Three Plays by Aristophanes: Staging Women (Routledge, 2010)
Aristophanes (ed. Jeffrey Henderson), Birds; Lysistrata; Women at the Thesmophoria (Loeb Classical Library series, Harvard University Press, 2014)
Aristophanes (ed. Alan H. Sommerstein), Lysistrata and Other Plays: The Acharnians; The Clouds; Lysistrata (Penguin, 2002)
Aristophanes (ed. Alan H. Sommerstein), Lysistrata (Aris & Phillips, 1998)
Paul Cartledge, Aristophanes and his Theatre of the Absurd (Bristol Classical Press, 1999)
Kenneth Dover, Aristophanic Comedy (University of California Press, 1972)
Germaine Greer, Lysistrata: The Sex Strike: After Aristophanes (Aurora Metro Press, 2000)
Tony Harrison, The Common Chorus: A Version of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata (Faber & Faber, 1992)
Douglas M. MacDowell, Aristophanes and Athens: An Introduction to the Plays (Oxford University Press, 1995)
S. Douglas Olson (ed.), Ancient Comedy and Reception: Essays in Honor of Jeffrey Henderson (De Gruyter, 2013), especially 'She (Don't) Gotta Have It: African-American reception of Lysistrata' by Kevin Wetmore
James Robson, Aristophanes: Lysistrata, Bloomsbury ancient comedy companions (Bloomsbury, 2023)
James Robson, Aristophanes: An Introduction (Duckworth, 2009)
Ralph M. Rosen and Helene P. Foley (eds.), Aristophanes and Politics. New Studies (Brill, 2020)
Donald Sells, Parody, Politics and the Populace in Greek Old Comedy (Bloomsbury, 2018)
David Stuttard (ed.), Looking at Lysistrata: Eight Essays and a New Version of Aristophanes' Provocative Comedy (Bristol Classical Press, 2010)
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Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Serbian-American inventor Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) and his role in the development of electrical systems towards the end of the nineteenth century. He made his name in New York in the contest over which current should flow into homes and factories in America. Some such as Edison backed direct current or DC while others such as Westinghouse backed alternating current or AC and Nikola Tesla’s invention of a motor that worked on AC swung it for the alternating system that went on to power the modern age. He ensured his reputation and ideas burnt brightly for the next decades, making him synonymous with the lone, genius inventor of the new science fiction.
With
Simon SchafferEmeritus Fellow of Darwin College, University of Cambridge
Jill JonnesHistorian and author of “Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse and the Race to Electrify the World”
And
Iwan MorusProfessor of History at Aberystwyth University
Producer: Simon Tillotson
Reading list:
W. Bernard Carlson, Tesla: Inventor of the Electrical Age (Princeton University Press, 2013)
Margaret Cheney and Robert Uth, Tesla: Master of Lightning (Barnes & Noble Books, 1999)
Thomas P. Hughes, Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society, 1880-1930 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983)
Carolyn Marvin, When Old Technologies Were New (Open University Press, 1988)
Iwan Rhys Morus, Nikola Tesla and the Electrical Future (Icon Books, 2019)
Iwan Rhys Morus, How The Victorians Took Us To The Moon (Icon, 2022)
David E. Nye, Electrifying America: Social Meanings of a New Technology (MIT Press, 1991)
John J. O’Neill, Prodigal Genius: The Life of Nikola Tesla (first published 1944; Cosimo Classics, 2006)
Marc J. Seifer, Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla, Biography of a Genius (first published 1996; Citadel Press, 2016)
Nikola Tesla, My Inventions: The Autobiography of Nikola Tesla (first published 1919; Martino Fine Books, 2011)
Nikola Tesla, My Inventions and other Writings (Penguin, 2012)
In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio production
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Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Finnish epic poem that first appeared in print in 1835 in what was then the Grand Duchy of Finland, part of the Russian Empire and until recently part of Sweden. The compiler of this epic was a doctor, Elias Lönnrot (1802-1884), who had travelled the land to hear traditional poems about mythical heroes being sung in Finnish, the language of the peasantry, and writing them down in his own order to create this landmark work. In creating The Kalevala, Lönnrot helped the Finns realise they were a distinct people apart from Sweden and Russia, who deserved their own nation state and who came to demand independence, which they won in 1917.
With
Riitta ValijärviAssociate Professor in Finnish and Minority Languages at University College London
Thomas DuboisThe Halls-Bascom Professor of Scandinavian Folklore and Literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
And
Daniel AbondoloFormerly Reader in Hungarian at University College London
Producer: Simon Tillotson
Reading list:
Nigel Fabb, What is Poetry? Language and Memory in the Poems of the World (Cambridge University Press, 2015)
Frog, Satu Grünthal, Kati Kallio and Jarkko Niemi (eds), Versification: Metrics in Practice (Finnish Literature Society, 2021)
Riho Grünthal et al., ‘Drastic demographic events triggered the Uralic spread’ (Diachronica, Volume 39, Issue 4, Aug 2022)
Lauri Honko (ed.), The Kalevala and the World's Traditional Epics (Finnish Literature Society, 2002)
The Kalevala Heritage: Archive Recordings of Ancient Finnish Songs. Online Catalogue no. ODE8492.
Mauri Kunnas, The Canine Kalevala (Otava Publishing, 1992)
Kuusi, Matti, et al. (eds.), Finnish Folk Poetry: Epic (Finnish Literature Society, 1977)
Elias Lönnrot (trans. John Martin Crawford), Kalevala: The Epic Poem of Finland (first published 1887; CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2017)
Elias Lönnrot (trans. W. F. Kirby), Kalevala: The Land of the Heroes (first published by J.M. Dent & Sons, 1907, 2 vols.; Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd, 2000)
Elias Lönnrot (trans. Francis Peabody Magoun Jr.), The Kalevala, or Poems of the Kaleva District (Harvard University Press, 1963)
Elias Lönnrot (trans. Eino Friberg), The Kalevala: Epic of the Finnish People (Otava Publishing, 1988)
Elias Lönnrot (trans. Keith Bosley), The Kalevala: An Epic Poem after Oral Tradition (Oxford University Press, 1989)
Kirsti Mäkinen, Pirkko-Liisa Surojegin, Kaarina Brooks, An Illustrated Kalevala: Myths and Legends from Finland (Floris Books, 2020)
Sami Makkonen, Kalevala: The Graphic Novel (Ablaze, 2024)
Juha Y. Pentikäinen (trans. Ritva Poom), Kalevala Mythology, (Indiana University Press, 1999)
Tina K. Ramnarine, Ilmatar’s Inspirations: Nationalism, Globalization and the Changing Soundscapes of Finnish Folk Music (University of Chicago Press, 2003) Jonathan Roper (ed.), Alliteration in Culture (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), especially chapter 12 ‘Alliteration in (Balto-) Finnic Languages’ by Frog and Eila Stepanova
Karl Spracklen, Metal Music and the Re-imagining of Masculinity, Place, Race and Nation (Emerald Publishing, 2020), especially the chapter ‘Finnish Folk Metal: Raising Drinking Horns in Mainstream Metal’
Leea Virtanen and Thomas A. DuBois, Finnish Folklore: Studia Fennica Folkloristica 9 (Finnish Literature Society, 2000)
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Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the last pagan ruler of the Roman Empire. Fifty years after Constantine the Great converted to Christianity and introduced a policy of tolerating the faith across the empire, Julian (c.331 - 363 AD) aimed to promote paganism instead, branding Constantine the worst of all his predecessors. Julian was a philosopher-emperor in the mould of Marcus Aurelius and was noted in his lifetime for his letters and his satires, and it was his surprising success as a general in his youth in Gaul that had propelled him to power barely twenty years after a rival had slaughtered his family. Julian's pagan mission and his life were brought to a sudden end while on campaign against the Sasanian Empire in the east, but he left so much written evidence of his ideas that he remains one of the most intriguing of all the Roman emperors and a hero to the humanists of the Enlightenment.
With
James Corke-Webster Reader in Classics, History and Liberal Arts at King’s College, London
Lea Niccolai Assistant Professor in Classics at the University of Cambridge and Fellow and Director of Studies in Classics, Trinity College
And
Shaun TougherProfessor of Late Roman and Byzantine History at Cardiff University
Producer: Simon Tillotson
Reading list:
Polymnia Athanassiadi, Julian: An Intellectual Biography (first published 1981; Routledge, 2014)
Nicholas Baker-Brian and Shaun Tougher (eds.), Emperor and Author: The Writings of Julian the Apostate (Classical Press of Wales, 2012)
Nicholas Baker-Brian and Shaun Tougher (eds.), The Sons of Constantine, AD 337-361: In the Shadows of Constantine and Julian, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020)
G.W. Bowersock, Julian the Apostate (first published 1978; Harvard University Press, 1997)
Susanna Elm, Sons of Hellenism, Fathers of the Church: Emperor Julian, Gregory of Nazianzus, and the Vision of Rome (University of California Press, 2012)
Ari Finkelstein, The Specter of the Jews: Emperor Julian and the Rhetoric of Ethnicity in Syrian Antioch (University of California Press, 2018)
David Neal Greenwood, Julian and Christianity: Revisiting the Constantinian Revolution (Cornell University Press, 2021)
Lea Niccolai, Christianity, Philosophy, and Roman Power: Constantine, Julian, and the Bishops on Exegesis and Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2023)
Stefan Rebenich and Hans-Ulrich Wiemer (eds), A Companion to Julian the Apostate (Brill, 2020)
Rowland Smith, Julian’s Gods: Religion and Philosophy in the Thought and Action of Julian the Apostate (Routledge, 1995)
H.C. Teitler, The Last Pagan Emperor: Julian the Apostate and the War against Christianity (Oxford University Press, 2017)
Shaun Tougher, Julian the Apostate (Edinburgh University Press, 2007)
W. C. Wright, The Works of Emperor Julian of Rome (Loeb, 1913-23)
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