The traditional concept of the Renaissance, as it was worked out by Burckhardt and others, has been unfashionable for some time. Instead of the sudden, inexplicable explosion de chaleur, recent historians have tended to see continuity, the unbroken continuity of the classical tradition.
In this programme a group of historians now working on a study of the Italian Renaissance try to decide how far, and in what senses, the traditional concept is still valid.
Chairman: E. F. Jacob, Chichele Professor of Modern History, Oxford.
Speakers: Denys Hay, Professor of Medieval History, Edinburgh; Nicolai Rubinstein, Lecturer in History, Westfield College, London; Charles Mitchell, Warburg Institute; John Hale, Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford
(BBC recording)

Matthew Hodgart introduces some of the Dublin street ballads that James Joyce knew and shows how Joyce used them symbolically in Finnegans Wake.
(Tuesday's recorded broadcast)

Alan Richardson (piano)
Aeolian String Quartet: Sydney Humphreys (violin), Trevor Williams (violin), Watson Forbes (viola), Derek Simpson (cello)
The second of four programmes of chamber music by Martinu.
Next programme: September 19

A dramatic poem by Elisabeth Ayrton.
The walled city of Numancia in northern Spain was razed to the ground by Scipio the Younger in 133 B.C. because it had so long resisted siege. A young man, son of the Professor of European Languages at Madrid University, has come alone to the site of the dead city, which he knew in childhood.

(The recorded broadcast of June 13)

Janine Micheau (soprano), Jacqueline Bonneau (piano)
Pantomime
Clair de lune
Ariettes Oubliees:
C'est l'extase; II pleure dans mon coeur; L'omhre des arbres; Green; Spleen
L'echelonnement des haies
(The recorded broadcast of Nov. 9)