Bragg’s thousand: 25 years of ‘In Our Time’
Tomorrow marks the 1000th episode of In Our Time, one of the best programmes on Radio 4. Superbly presented by Melvyn Bragg and produced by Simon Tillotson, the programme has been running for almost 25 years, since 1998.
In many ways, In Our Time follows Bragg’s time at Start the Week (1988-98), which towards the end was listened to by more than one a half million listeners and had a reputation for serious-minded discussions with guests that included philosophers, scientists, writers and historians, such as Bernard Williams, Adam Phillips, Robert Darnton and Harold Pinter.
The biggest difference between Start the Week under Melvyn Bragg and In Our Time, is that Start the Week consisted of discussions with a wide range of guests discussing a wide range of subjects. By contrast, In Our Time usually features three academics discussing a single subject over forty-five minutes, from Einstein and Jupiter to Oedipus Rex, Louis XIV and Walt Whitman. The 1000th episode will focus on Ingmar Bergman’s most famous film, The Seventh Seal. Many guests have appeared several times, including the Dickens specialist John Bowen from York, the 19th century historian Lawrence Goldman, the Astronomer Royal, Martin Rees, and the Cambridge classicist, Professor Paul Cartledge.
What is so special about Bragg as a presenter is that he has no time for middlebrow chat. He takes each subject seriously, is superbly briefed by his production team, and seems extraordinarily at home in a remarkable range of subjects, from 19th century slave uprisings such as the Morant Bay Rebellion to the films of Fritz Lang, or from ancient historians to John Donne and Rawls’s theory of justice. Lord Rees paid tribute to Bragg’s passion for science on Monday’s Today programme. It is hard to think of any other arts broadcaster with such a range of interests.
Bragg made his name working on such famous arts programmes as Monitor, Read All About It and, of course, The South Bank Show. But from the late 1980s he broadened out, first on Start the Week, then on In Our Time, to include discussions on history, science, religion and philosophy as well as literature and the arts.
One of the other attractions of In Our Time is not just the range of subjects, but how many are not that well-known. Recent programmes have taken on “The Great Stink”, which refers to the stench of sewage that pervaded London in the hot summer of 1858; the 16th century Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, who paved the way for Galileo and Kepler; Tang Era poetry; and Demosthenes’ Philippics.
Similarly, some guests are well known outside their fields, others less so. The contributors discussing the Bauhaus were Michael White at the University of York, Robin Schuldenfrei at the Courtauld Institute of Art and Alan Powers at the London School of Architecture. The specialists who spoke about Plato’s Atlantis, the fictional island mentioned in his dialogues Timaeus and Critias, were Angie Hobbs at the University of Sheffield, Edith Hall from Durham University and Christopher Gill from the University of Exeter. On another occasion, Kate Cooper at Royal Holloway, Candida Moss at Birmingham University and James Corke-Webster spoke about different aspects of Early Christian Martyrdom. There is no bias towards Oxbridge or American and British academic superstars such as Mary Beard, Robert Macfarlane or Simon Schama. Bragg and his team simply try to find the leading authorities on the subject.
The rise of In Our Time is part of the transformation of the 9 am slot on Radio 4 with programmes like The Life Scientific with the physicist, Professor Jim Al-Khalili, and More or Less with the journalist and author, Tim Harford. On the other hand, Desert Island Discs and Start the Week have both sadly gone into decline and the ratings for the Today programme have fallen.
When Bragg moved from Start the Week to In Our Time in 1998, he told The Guardian, “I gave it about six months,” he recalled. “We were asking top-class academics to talk at the top of their form about a single subject – no book plugs allowed.” In the 25 years since it started, Bragg has established the programme as perhaps the best thing on Radio 4, or indeed on any British radio station. Just as important, he has confirmed his own reputation as one of the greatest broadcasters in history. He and his team deserve all the accolades they will receive this week. Few in our time have done as much to educate the nation.
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