BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time

Journey to the West

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great novel from the Ming Era, with its heroic Monkey.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the idea of longitude and the race to calculate it at sea.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simon de Montfort's fatal struggle with Henry III's forces

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most influential poets of Rome's Augustan Age.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the French fight against Britain in America and its impact

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss an orthodox form of Christianity that became a heresy.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great French mathematician behind metrication.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 1904-5 clash of Japanese and Russian empires.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Ricardo's argument on free trade after the Napoleonic wars

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the revenge of Dionysus on Thebes in Euripides' tragedy.