Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Lewis Carroll's work published in 1865 and inspired by telling stories to Alice Liddell and her sisters on picnics and boating trips in Oxford Show more

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the slaughter and chaos as a hungry army of the Holy Roman Emperor swarmed through Rome, holding the pope hostage and weakening the Papal States. Show more

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Werner Heisenberg's breakthrough, aged 23, that led to Nobel Prize judges celebrating him as the creator of quantum mechanics. Show more

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss when Algerians tried to take advantage of French defeat in Europe in 1871 and drive the colonists out, inspiring the later independence movement. Show more

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how mathematicians in the Islamic world, from C8th-C15th, developed new ideas and synthesised ideas from Greek and Indian maths. Show more

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how the waltz changed the relationship between music, people and the wider culture in Britain from its arrival in the early 19th century onwards. Show more

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Seneca: philosopher, playwright, tutor to Nero, one of the first great writers born in the new Roman empire after the fall of the Republic. Show more

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life of Spartacus, a Roman gladiator who was involved in a series of slave uprisings against the Roman Republic in the 1st century BC. Show more

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Finnish epic poem, compiled by Elias Lönnrot in 1835 from runic songs, which helped the cause of Finland's independence from the Russian Empire. Show more

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosopher-emperor of Rome who sought to undo the empire's ties with Christianity in the 4th century AD and promote paganism Show more

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the content, history and impact of Euclid's Elements, the mathematical text book from the ancient world, originating in Alexandria in about 300BC. Show more

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the paradoxes attributed to Zeno of Elea (c490-430BC) which have stimulated mathematicians and philosophers for millennia. Show more

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Gauss, 'prince of mathematicians', including those on number theory, geometry, probability theory, astronomy and electromagnetism. Show more

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the inventor who helped the advance of electrification in America at the end of the 19th century and cultivated his reputation as a visionary genius Show more

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Napoleon Bonaparte's astonishing return to power in France from exile on Elba in 1815 and how that galvanised the Allies into facing him at Waterloo Show more

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aristophanes' outrageous comedy from 411BC in which the women of Athens and Sparta bring their warring husbands to peace by staging a sex strike. Show more

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how the Queen of England fought to hold on to power for the sake of her son, when her husband's mental illness made him unable to rule. Show more

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the works and ideas of this great German playwright from the Weimar Republic to his exile under the Nazis and return to Berlin after World War Two. Show more

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss early Chinese history and the documents in which it was recorded. Show more

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Catastrophism, the idea that the geological record was shaped by a series of natural disasters early in the Earth's history. Show more