The Woman Who Made van Gogh

The bubonic plague was blamed on witches, Jews, God’s wrath, and, on 20th March 1345, in a new theory propagated by the King of France, the rare planetary alignment between Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars in Aquarius. Of course, the real cause of the Black Death lay in the microscopic ...  Show more

Blaise Pascal created the first organised public transport system: the carrosses à cinq sols (“five-sou carriages”), which had its first full day of service in Paris on 19th March, 1662. Like a modern bus, the horse-drawn carriages followed fixed routes and scheduled departures, ...  Show more

Vincent van Gogh saw little commercial success during his lifetime, but he loved art and he worked to forge relationships with other artists he could learn from. The Starry Night came about late in his short career after Vincent van Gogh was hospitalized. He painted the view from ...  Show more

Vincent Van Gogh's suicide is a huge part of the mythology surrounding him: as much as the famous tale of the cut-off ear is. This so-called "tortured genius," it is said, was so broken down by life and failure that he had no choice but to end his life. Right? But in 2011, two Pu ...  Show more

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Dutch artist famous for starry nights and sunflowers, self portraits and simple chairs. These are images known the world over, and Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) painted them and around 900 others in the last decade of his short, brilliant life a ...  Show more

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Dutch artist famous for starry nights and sunflowers, self portraits and simple chairs. These are images known the world over, and Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) painted them and around 900 others in the last decade of his short, brilliant life a ...  Show more