The Bronze Age Collapse
In Our Time: History
06/16/16
•47m
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Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss The Bronze Age Collapse, the name given by many historians to what appears to have been a sudden, uncontrolled destruction of dominant civilizations around 1200 BC in the Aegean, Eastern Mediterranean and Anatolia. Among other areas, there were great changes in Minoan Crete, Egypt, the Hittite Empire, Mycenaean Greece and Syria. The reasons for the changes, and the extent of those changes, are open to debate and include droughts, rebellions, the breakdown of trade as copper became less desirable, earthquakes, invasions, volcanoes and the mysterious Sea Peoples.
With
John Bennet Director of the British School at Athens and Professor of Aegean Archaeology at the University of Sheffield
Linda Hulin Fellow of Harris Manchester College and Research Officer at the Oxford Centre for Maritime Archaeology at the University of Oxford
And
Simon Stoddart Fellow of Magdalene College and Reader in Prehistory at the University of Cambridge
Producer: Simon Tillotson.
Previous Episode
Margery Kempe and English Mysticism
June 2, 2016
•44m
To celebrate Melvyn Bragg’s 27 years presenting In Our Time, five well-known fans of the programme have chosen their favourite episodes. Author and columnist Caitlin Moran has picked the episode on the English medieval mystic Margery Kempe and recorded an introduction to it. Margery Kempe (1373-1438) produced an account of her extraordinary life in a book she dictated, "The Book of Margery Kempe." She went on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, to Rome and Santiago de Compostela, purchasing indulgences on her way, met with the anchoress Julian of Norwich and is honoured by the Church of England each 9th November. She sometimes doubted the authenticity of her mystical conversations with God, as did the authorities who saw her devotional sobbing, wailing and convulsions as a sign of insanity and dissoluteness. Her Book was lost for centuries, before emerging in a private library in 1934.
This In Our Time episode was first broadcast in June 2016. The image (above), of an unknown woman, comes from a pew at Margery Kempe's parish church, St Margaret’s, Kings Lynn and dates from c1375.
With
Miri Rubin Professor of Medieval and Early Modern History at Queen Mary, University of London
Katherine Lewis Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Huddersfield
And
Anthony Bale Professor of Medieval Studies at Birkbeck University of London
Producer: Simon Tillotson
Reading list:
John H. Arnold and Katherine J. Lewis (eds.), A Companion to the Book of Margery Kempe, (D. S. Brewer, 2010)
Anthony Bale (trans.), The Book of Margery Kempe (Oxford University Press, 2015)
Santha Bhattacharji, God is an Earthquake: The Spirituality of Margery Kempe (Darton, Longman and Todd, 1997)
Anthony Goodman, Margery Kempe and her World (Longman, 2002)
Karma Lochrie, Margery Kempe and the Translations of the Flesh (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991)
Gail McMurray Gibson, The Theater of Devotion: East Anglian Drama and Society in the Late Middle Ages (University of Chicago Press, 1989)
Lynn Staley, Margery Kempe’s Dissenting Fictions (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994)
Jonathan Sumption, Pilgrimage: An Image of Mediaeval Religion (Faber & Faber, 2002)
Brett Whalen, Pilgrimage in the Middle Ages: A Reader (University of Toronto Press, 2011)
Barry Windeatt (ed.), The Book of Margery Kempe: Annotated Edition (D. S. Brewer, 2006)
Barry Windeatt (ed.), The Book of Margery Kempe (Penguin Classics, 2000)
Spanning history, religion, culture, science and philosophy, In Our Time from BBC Radio 4 is essential listening for the intellectually curious. In each episode, host Melvyn Bragg and expert guests explore the people, ideas, events and discoveries that have shaped our world
In Our Time is a BBC Studios production
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The 12th Century Renaissance
October 20, 2016
•49m
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