Narrative Poems: ‘Tam o’ Shanter’ by Robert B...

In ‘Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth’ (1979), James Lovelock proposed that the Earth is something like a single living organism, capable of manipulating its circumstances and the environment to suit its needs. While many scientists reject the fullest formulation of this idea, it ...  Show more

In the late 1870s, shortly after the publication of Anna Karenina, Tolstoy experienced what might be described today as a midlife crisis. In his short autobiographical book A Confession, finished in 1880, he questioned what meaning there is in life that is not annihilated by the ...  Show more

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss James Joyce's novel Ulysses. First published ninety years ago in Paris, Joyce's masterpiece is a sprawling and startlingly original work charting a single day in the life of the Dubliner Leopold Bloom. Some early readers were outraged by its se ...  Show more

Peter Capaldi talks about his latest album – Sweet Illusions – a nod to the thriving 80s music scene in Glasgow where Peter made his musical debut fronting The Dreamboys. Through the Shortbread Tin is a new National Theatre of Scotland production about the supposed third century ...  Show more

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Laurence Sterne's novel Tristram Shandy. Sterne's comic masterpiece is an extravagantly inventive work which was hugely popular when first published in 1759. Its often bawdy humour, and numerous digressions, are combined with bold literary expe ...  Show more

It is a truth universally acknowledged that tragedy is one of the world's highest art forms, and that Shakespeare was one of the form's greatest practitioners. But how did he do it? What models did he have to draw upon, and where did he innovate? In this episode, Jacke talks to S ...  Show more