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In Our Time

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas, people and events that have shaped our world.

In Our Time: The Spanish Civil War

03/04/2003

The Spanish Civil War

BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, The Spanish Civil War

Melvyn Bragg examines the causes, events and repercussions of the Spanish Civil War.

Melvyn Bragg discusses the causes, events and repercussions of the Spanish Civil War, which became an international battleground for the forces of Fascism and Communism as Europe geared up for war.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Spanish Civil War which was a defining war of the twentieth century. It was a brutal conflict that polarised Spain, pitting the Left against the Right, the anti-clericals against the Church, the unions against the landed classes and the Republicans against the Monarchists. It was a bloody war which saw, in the space of just three years, the murder and execution of 350,000 people. It was also a conflict which soon became internationalised, becoming a battleground for the forces of Fascism and Communism as Europe itself geared up for war.But what were the roots of the Spanish Civil War? To what extent did Franco prosecute the war as a religious crusade? How did Franco institutionalise his victory after the war? And has Spain fully come to terms with its past?With Paul Preston, Principe de Asturias Professor of Contemporary Spanish History at the London School of Economics; Helen Graham, Professor of Spanish History at Royal Holloway, University of London; Dr Mary Vincent, Senior Lecturer in the Department of History at Sheffield University.

BBC Radio 4

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

Discovery of England

Jonathan Bate explores how Elizabethan culture has shaped our image of England.

Jonathan Bate explores how the flowering of culture that took place under Elizabeth I has shaped our image of England.

Discovery of England: The Discovery of the English Land

The Discovery of the English Land

BBC Radio 4 - Discovery of England, The Discovery of the English LandSearch BBC

Jonathan Bate maps the influence of 16th-century cartography on the English countryside.

Elizabethan and Renaissance expert Jonathan Bate finds out how 16th-century cartographers, poets, gardeners and local historians put the English countryside on the map.

Elizabethan and Renaissance expert Jonathan Bate presents a three part series examining the flowering of culture that took place under Elizabeth I and shaped our image of England forever. Famed for exploring the new world and laying the foundations of the British Empire, the Elizabethans also focused on domestic and inward discovery.

The Elizabethans invented a dream-like pastoral England that has been an English ideal ever since. The counties of England stretch back to the Anglo-Saxons. But it was the Elizabethans who made them matter, and raised their individuality to legendary status. 

Jonathan Bate starts in Kent where William Lambard wrote his Perambulation of Kent in 1576: the first ever country history of its kind and one that soon became fashionable. It launched a host of literary imitators. Shakespeare was known as a "Warwickshire man", Raleigh proud of being from the West Country. 

Jonathan traces the little known story of the vast and detailed mapping of England that was completed under Elizabeth for the first time in history. England now existed as a documented territorial whole - a project dreamed of by Henry VIII but only delivered by his daughter. 

Behind these fascinating cultural development lay politics. The court and its advisers needed devolved power to exercise local justice. But this county power had to be based on distinct cultural identity, not real military force. Could it be that English county identity was, in essence, an artificial creation dreamed up by London? Contributors to the programme debate this question. 

Producer: Matthew Dodd

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