Rosemary Ashton
Emeritus Quain Professor of English Language and Literature at University College London
10 episodes
Appears in multiple episodes with: Jonathan Bate, John Bowen
Covers topics in categories such as:
The Great Stink
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the impact of the terrible stench of sewage in the Thames in central London in the hot summer of 1858 and the work of Joseph Bazalgette to fix it.
29 December 2022
Also featuring: Stephen Halliday, Paul Dobraszczyk
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Coleridge's poem of a grim voyage in which a sailor shoots an albatross and is forced to tell the story of his crime forever.
4 March 2021
Also featuring: Jonathan Bate, Tom Mole
Middlemarch
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss George Eliot's Study of Provincial Life, set before the Reform Act 1832 in a small, fictional town in the Midlands surrounded by farmland.
18 April 2018
Also featuring: Kathryn Hughes, John Bowen
Silas Marner
Melvyn Bragg and guests Rosemary Ashton, Dinah Birch and Valentine Cunningham discuss George Eliot's 1861 novel Silas Marner.
28 January 2010
Also featuring: Dinah Birch, Valentine Cunningham
The Riddle of the Sands
Melvyn Bragg discusses the prescient thriller ‘The Riddle of the Sands’ and the decline Anglo-German relations before the First World War.
12 June 2008
Also featuring: Richard J. Evans, T. C. W. Blanning
The Prelude
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss William Wordsworth’s, The Predule, one of the greatest poems in the English language.
22 November 2007
Also featuring: Stephen Gill, Emma Mason
Victorian Pessimism
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Victorian Pessimism, from Matthew Arnold’s poem Dover Beach to the malign universe of Thomas Hardy’s novels.
10 May 2007
Also featuring: Dinah Birch, Peter Mandler
Dickens
Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?
12 July 2001
Also featuring: Michael Slater, John Bowen
English travel writersEnglish prisoners and detaineesEnglish male dramatists and playwrightsEnglish AnglicansLiteracy and society theoristsAnglican writersEnglish male short story writersWriters of Gothic fictionEnglish philanthropistsEnglish historical novelistsTrope theoristsBurials at Westminster AbbeyVictorian novelists19th-century English novelists19th-century travel writers19th-century English non-fiction writers19th-century British journalists19th-century English historians19th-century British philanthropistsEnglish male novelistsBritish critics of religionsCritics of the Catholic ChurchPeople from Somers Town, LondonEnglish male poets19th-century pseudonymous writersLecturersEnglish reformers19th-century English dramatists and playwrights19th-century English poets19th-century British short story writersEnglish satiristsWriters about activism and social changeEnglish male non-fiction writersWriters from the London Borough of Camden19th-century English essayistsBritish social reformersBritish male essayistsThe Romantics
Melvyn Bragg discusses the ideals and legacy of Romanticism, a literary and artistic movement at the turn of the 19th century which gave rise to the great poetry of Wordsworth, Shelley and Keats.
12 October 2000
Also featuring: Jonathan Bate, Nicholas Roe