Wilfred Owen

Misha Glenny and guests discuss the laws that Hammurabi (c1810 - c1750 BC), King of Babylon, had carved into a black basalt pillar in present day Iraq and which, since its rediscovery in 1901 in present day Iran, has affirmed Hammurabi's reputation as one of the first great lawma ...  Show more

Misha Glenny and guests discuss one of the most successful of Shakespeare's plays in his own time. Written with no Part 2 in mind as 'Henry the Fourth', the play explores ideas about who can be a legitimate ruler and why, and how anyone can rightly succeed to the throne. This was ...  Show more

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the celebrated British poet of World War One. Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) had published only a handful of poems when he was killed a week before the end of the war, but in later decades he became seen as the essential British war poet. His works such ...  Show more

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the celebrated Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas (1914 - 1953). He wrote some of his best poems before he was twenty in the first half of his short, remarkable life, and was prolific in the second half too with poems such as those set in London under the Bl ...  Show more

Wilfred Owen wrote that he was a 'poets' poet'. He also wrote, in the preface to 'War Poems', 'Above all I am not concerned with Poetry. My subject is War, and the pity of War'. Owen is, then, a soldiers' poet, and the people who figure in his poems are all soldiers. In this Betw ...  Show more

After 27 years, Melvyn Bragg has decided to step down from the In Our Time presenter’s chair. With over a thousand episodes to choose from, he has selected just six that capture the huge range and depth of the subjects he and his experts have tackled. In this second of his cho ...