Rosemary Ashton
Emeritus Quain Professor of English Language and Literature at University College London
10 episodes
Appears in multiple episodes with: 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: Sir 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
Faust
Melvyn Bragg discusses the myth of Faustus and the dangers of liaising with the forces of evil in pursuit of power, youth and supreme knowledge.
23 December 2004
Also featuring: Juliette Wood, Osman Durrani
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
CultureWriters about activism and social changeEnglish male poetsCritics of the Catholic ChurchEnglish male non-fiction writersBurials at Westminster AbbeyEnglish AnglicansBritish male essayists19th-century English poetsEnglish male novelistsVictorian novelistsLiteracy and society theoristsEnglish male dramatists and playwrights19th-century English novelists19th-century pseudonymous writersEnglish male short story writersEnglish travel writersWriters of Gothic fictionEnglish satirists19th-century English non-fiction writersBritish critics of religionsTrope theorists19th-century British short story writers19th-century British philanthropistsEnglish philanthropistsAnglican writers19th-century English dramatists and playwrightsWriters from the London Borough of CamdenBritish social reformersLecturers19th-century English essayists19th-century travel writersEnglish reformersEnglish prisoners and detaineesPeople from Somers Town, London19th-century British journalistsEnglish historical novelists, 19th-century English historiansThe 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