Doggerland
In Our Time: History
06/27/19
•54m
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Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the people, plants and animals once living on land now under the North Sea, now called Doggerland after Dogger Bank, inhabited up to c7000BC or roughly 3000 years before the beginnings of Stonehenge. There are traces of this landscape at low tide, such as the tree stumps at Redcar (above); yet more is being learned from diving and seismic surveys which are building a picture of an ideal environment for humans to hunt and gather, with rivers and wooded hills. Rising seas submerged this land as glaciers melted, and the people and animals who lived there moved to higher ground, with the coasts of modern-day Britain on one side and Denmark, Germany, The Netherlands, Belgium and France on the other.
With
Vince Gaffney
Anniversary Professor of Landscape Archaeology at the University of Bradford
Carol Cotterill
Marine Geoscientist at the British Geological Survey
And
Rachel Bynoe
Lecturer in Archaeology at the University of Southampton
Producer: Simon Tillotson
Previous Episode
The Mytilenaean Debate
June 20, 2019
•54m
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss why Athenians decided to send a fast ship to Lesbos in 427BC, rowing through the night to catch one they sent the day before. That earlier ship had instructions to kill all adult men in Mytilene, after their unsuccessul revolt against Athens, as a warning to others. The later ship had orders to save them, as news of their killing would make others fight to the death rather than surrender. Thucydides retells this in his History of the Peloponnesian War as an example of Athenian democracy in action, emphasising the right of Athenians to change their minds in their own interests, even when a demagogue argued they were bound by their first decision.
With
Angela Hobbs
Professor of the Public Understanding of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield
Lisa Irene Hau
Senior Lecturer in Classics at the University of Glasgow
And
Paul Cartledge
Emeritus AG Leventis Professor of Greek Culture, University of Cambridge and Senior Research Fellow of Clare College
Producer: Simon Tillotson
Next Episode
Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow
September 19, 2019
•54m
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how, in September 1812, Napoleon captured Moscow and waited a month for the Russians to meet him, to surrender and why, to his dismay, no-one came. Soon his triumph was revealed as a great defeat; winter was coming, supplies were low; he ordered his Grande Armée of six hundred thousand to retreat and, by the time he crossed back over the border, desertion, disease, capture, Cossacks and cold had reduced that to twenty thousand. Napoleon had shown his weakness; his Prussian allies changed sides and, within eighteen months they, the Russians and Austrians had captured Paris and the Emperor was exiled to Elba.
With
Janet Hartley
Professor Emeritus of International History, LSE
Michael Rowe
Reader in European History, King’s College London
And
Michael Rapport
Reader in Modern European History, University of Glasgow
Producer: Simon Tillotson
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