Picasso's Guernica
In Our Time: History
11/02/17
•54m
About
Comments
Featured In
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the context and impact of Pablo Picasso's iconic work, created soon after the bombing on 26th April 1937 that obliterated much of the Basque town of Guernica, and its people. The attack was carried out by warplanes of the German Condor Legion, joined by the Italian air force, on behalf of Franco's Nationalists. At first the Nationalists denied responsibility, blaming their opponents for creating the destruction themselves for propaganda purposes, but the accounts of journalists such as George Steer, and the prominence of Picasso's work, kept the events of that day under close scrutiny. Picasso's painting has gone on to become a symbol warning against the devastation of war.
With
Mary Vincent
Professor of Modern European History at the University of Sheffield
Gijs van Hensbergen
Historian of Spanish Art and Fellow of the LSE Cañada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies
and
Dacia Viejo Rose
Lecturer in Heritage in the Department of Archaeology at the University of Cambridge
Fellow of Selwyn College
Producer: Simon Tillotson.
Previous Episode
The Congress of Vienna
October 19, 2017
•48m
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the conference convened by the victorious powers of the Napoleonic Wars and the earlier French Revolutionary Wars, which had devastated so much of Europe over the last 25 years. The powers aimed to create a long lasting peace, partly by redrawing the map to restore old boundaries and partly by balancing the powers so that none would risk war again. It has since been seen as a very conservative outcome, reasserting the old monarchical and imperial orders over the growth of liberalism and national independence movements, and yet also largely successful in its goal of preventing war in Europe on such a scale for another 100 years. Delegates to Vienna were entertained at night with lavish balls, and the image above is from a French cartoon showing Russia, Prussia, and Austria dancing to the bidding of Castlereagh, the British delegate.
With
Kathleen Burk
Professor Emerita of Modern and Contemporary History at University College London
Tim Blanning
Emeritus Professor of Modern European History at the University of Cambridge
and
John Bew
Professor in History and Foreign Policy at the War Studies Department at King's College London
Producer: Simon Tillotson.
Next Episode
The Picts
November 9, 2017
•56m
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss The Picts and, to mark our twentieth season, that discussion takes place in front of a student audience at the University of Glasgow, many of them studying this topic. According to Bede writing c731AD, the Picts, with the English, Britons, Scots and Latins, formed one of the five nations of Britain, 'an island in the ocean formerly called Albion'. The Picts is now a label given to the people who lived in Scotland north of the Forth-Clyde line from about 300 AD to 900 AD, from the time of the Romans to the time of the Vikings. They left intricately carved stones, such as the one above with a bull motif, from Burghead, Moray, Scotland, but there are relatively few other traces. Who were they, and what happened to them? And what has been learned in the last twenty years, through archaeology?
With
Katherine Forsyth
Reader in the Department of Celtic and Gaelic at the University of Glasgow
Alex Woolf
Senior Lecturer in Dark Age Studies at the University of St Andrews
and
Gordon Noble
Reader in Archaeology at the University of Aberdeen
Producer: Simon Tillotson.
If you like this episode you’ll love
Promoted