The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

Misha Glenny and guests discuss one of the great writers on Central Europe after the first world war and on the dying of the old orders with the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian empire. As a German speaking Jew from Brody in the north-eastern edge of that Empire, which was then i ...  Show more

Misha Glenny and guests discuss the work of Maurits Cornelis Escher (1898-1972), the graphic artist and printmaker best known for his impossible buildings, paradoxical perspectives, and repeating geometric patterns. Born in Leeuwarden and trained as a printmaker, Escher visited t ...  Show more

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. In 1859 the poet Edward FitzGerald published a long poem based on the verses of the 11th-century Persian scholar Omar Khayyam. Not a single copy was sold in the first few months after the work's publication, but af ...  Show more

Let's immerse ourselves in the beauty of Persian poetry with The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, rendered into English verse by Edward Fitzgerald. It's all about living in the moment. And wine. So much wine. The poetry bit starts at 27:49, if you'd like to skip Fitzgerald's very 19th c ...  Show more

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poetry of Rumi, the Persian scholar and Sufi mystic of the 13th Century. His great poetic works are the Masnavi or "spiritual couplets" and the Divan, a collection of thousands of lyric poems. He is closely connected with four modern countries: ...  Show more

From East to West, Rumi is one of the most universally respected poets of all time. A 13th Century Islamic scholar, his encounter with a wandering dervish transformed him into a globally celebrated mystic and poet of love who has crossed borders of time, faith, language and geogr ...  Show more