In Our Time: Culture

Misha Glenny and guests discuss the French portrait painter Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun (1755 - 1842). From her teens she delighted her high society subjects in and around Paris, notably Marie Antoinette who she painted around 30 times, and she invariably found ways to show her sitters at their best. Some critics were affronted that she, a young woman, dared paint at all and, when they saw how good her portraits were, some spread a rumour that surely this could not really be her work and she must have had a secret male lover finishing her portraits in a studio. The French Revolution forced Vigée Le Brun out of France and so she set off from one European court to another to find more success from Naples to Vienna to St Petersburg and to London, eventually settling back in France. Today her works are on show in major galleries around the world.
With
Rosalind Polly Blakesley
Master of Pembroke College and Professor of Russian and European Art at the University of Cambridge
Robert Wenley
Deputy Director of Collections and Research at the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham
And
Francesca Whitlum-Cooper
Curator of Later Italian, Spanish and French Paintings at The National Gallery, London.
Producer: Simon Tillotson
Reading list:
Joseph Baillio, Katharine Baetjer and Paul Lang (eds), Vigée Le Brun (exhibition catalogue in English, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2016)
Joseph Baillio et al., Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun: 1755-1842 (exhibition catalogue in French, Grand Palais, Paris, 2015/16)
Rosalind P. Blakesley, Women Artists in the Reign of Catherine the Great (Lund Humphries Publishers Ltd, 2023), especially chapter 8 ‘The Triumphant Refugee’
Lucy Davies, Vigée Le Brun: Self Portrait in a Straw Hat (National Gallery Global, 2025)
Angelica Goodden, The Sweetness of Life: A Biography of Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun (Andre Deutsch Ltd, 1997)
Franny Moyle, Mrs Kauffman and Madame Le Brun: The Entwined Lives of Two Great Eighteenth-Century Women Artists (Apollo, 2025)
Jordana Pomeroy, Daring: The Life and Art of Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun (Getty Publications, 2025)
Mary D. Sheriff, The Exceptional Woman: Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun and the Cultural Politics of Art (University of Chicago Press, 1997)
Paris Spies-Gans, A Revolution on Canvas: The Rise of Women Artists in Britain and France, 1760-1830 (Paul Mellon Centre, Yale University Press London, 2022)
Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun (trans. Sian Evans), The Memoirs of Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun (Camden Press, 1989)
Louise-Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, Souvenirs de Madame Louise-Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun (first published 1869; Tredition Classics, 2012)
In Our Time is a BBC Studios production
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 Misha Glenny and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.

Misha Glenny and guests discuss one of the great writers on Central Europe after the first world war and on the dying of the old orders with the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian empire. As a German speaking Jew from Brody in the north-eastern edge of that Empire, which was then in Galicia, next in Poland and is now in Ukraine, Roth (1894 - 1939) was to spend his short life moving first to Lviv then to Vienna and finally to Paris via Berlin without ever finding a settled home. Roth explored the loss of homeland and anticipated the dangers of the new nationalism through his journalism and in his novels including Radetzky March, Job, Rebellion and Flight Without End, and his books were among the first the Nazis burned.
With
Helen Chambers
Emeritus Professor of German at the University of St Andrews
Deborah Holmes
Associate Professor of Modern German Literature at the University of Salzburg
And
Jon Hughes
Reader in German and Cultural Studies at Royal Holloway, University of London
Producer: Simon Tillotson
Reading list:
Jon Hughes, Facing Modernity: Fragmentation, Culture and Identity in Joseph Roth's Writing in the 1920s (MHRA, 2006)
Heinz Lunzer and Victoria Lunzer-Talos, Joseph Roth: Leben und Werk in Bildern (Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1994)
Keiron Pim, Endless Flight: The Life of Joseph Roth (Granta, 2022)
Joseph Roth (trans. Deborah Holmes, ed. Helen Constantine), Vienna Tales (Oxford University Press, 2014)
Joseph Roth (trans. and ed. Michael Hofmann), A Life in Letters (Granta, 2012)
Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann), Collected Shorter Fiction (Granta, 2001)
Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann), Rebellion (Granta, 2000)
Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann), The Radetzky March (Granta, 2022)
Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann), The Legend of the Holy Drinker (Granta, 2022)
Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann), The Wandering Jews (Granta, 2001)
Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann), What I Saw: Reports from Berlin 1920-1933 (Granta, 2022)
Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann), The Hotel Years: Wanderings in Europe Between the Wars (Granta, 2015)
Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann), Reports from a Parisian Paradise: Essays from France 1925-1939 (Granta, 2004)
Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann), The Emperor’s Tomb (Granta, 2013)
Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann), The String of Pearls (Granta, 1999)
Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann), The White Cities: Reports From France 1925-1939 (Granta, 2013)
Joseph Roth (trans. David Le Vay), Weights and Measures (Pushkin Press, 2024)
Joseph Roth (trans. Daved Le Vay and Beatrice Musgrave), Flight Without End (Pushkin Press, 2024)
Joseph Roth (trans. Ruth Martin), The Coral Merchant: Essential Stories (Pushkin Press, 2020)
Joseph Roth (trans Will Stone), On the End of the World (Pushkin Press, 2019)
Joseph Roth (trans. Dorothy Thompson), Job: The Story of a Simple Man (Granta, 2022)
Wilhelm Von Sternburg, Joseph Roth: Eine Biographie (Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2009)
In Our Time is a BBC Studios Production
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 Misha Glenny and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.

Misha Glenny and guests discuss the work of Maurits Cornelis Escher (1898-1972), the graphic artist and printmaker best known for his impossible buildings, paradoxical perspectives, and repeating geometric patterns. Born in Leeuwarden and trained as a printmaker, Escher visited the Alhambra in Granada and found inspiration in the tessellating shapes of Islamic art. Through his career he went on to create some of the most famous images of the twentieth century and has been called a one-man art movement. After his work was exhibited in a 1954 conference, Escher’s work also caught the eye of mathematicians who appreciated his intuitive geometric precision. Escher was influenced by their work, and they were influenced by his – despite Escher never thinking he was actually very good at maths himself.
 
With
Marcus du Sautoy
Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science, Professor of Mathematics and Fellow of New College, University of Oxford
 
Sarah Hart
Professor Emerita of Mathematics and Fellow of Birkbeck, University of London, and Fellow of Gresham College
 
And
 
Judith Kadee
Exhibitions project manager and public programme curator at Hague Historical Museum
 
Producer: Martha Owen
Reading list:
Marcus du Sautoy, Blueprints: How Mathematics Shapes Creativity (Fourth Estate, 2025)
Marcus du Sautoy, Finding Moonshine: A Mathematician’s Journey Into Symmetry (Harper Perennial, 2009)
Bruno Ernst, The Magic Mirror of M.C. Escher (Taschen, 2007)
M.C. Escher, M.C. Escher: The Graphic Work (Taschen America Llc, 1992)
Miranda Fellows, The Life and Works of Escher (Siena,1996)
Frederico Giudiceandrea, Escher op reis or Escher’s Journey (Publisher Wbooks, 2018, in Dutch)
Sarah Hart, Once Upon a Prime: The Wondrous Connections Between Mathematics and Literature (Flatiron Books, 2023)
Douglas Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (first published 1979; Basic Books, 1999)
Siobhan Roberts, King of Infinite Space: Donald Coxeter, The Man Who Saved Geometry (Profile Books, 2007)
Claudio Salsi, Paolo Branca and Claudio Bartocci (eds.), M.C. Escher. Tra arte e scienza. Catalogo della mostra (24 Ore Cultura, 2025, in Italian)
Doris Schattschneider, “The Mathematical Side of M.C. Escher” (Notices of the American Mathematical Society, Vol. 57, 6, 2010)
Doris Schattschneider, M.C. Escher: Visions of Symmetry (Thames and Hudson Ltd, 2004)
Wouter van Reek, Nadir & Zenith in the World of Escher (Leopold, 2019)
In Our Time is a BBC Studios production
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 Misha Glenny and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.

Misha Glenny and his guests discuss the most famous oratorio of George Frideric Handel (1685-1759) and his librettist Charles Jennens (1700-1773). For his libretto, Jennens drew from Old and New Testament texts: prophecies about the coming of Jesus, the Messiah, the nativity, the suffering of Christ and his death and the Day of Judgement and redemption for all. Handel's Messiah had its premiere in 1742 in a secular Dublin music hall to great acclaim with a packed audience and Handel continued to adapt his Messiah for later performances, often shaping the work to the choirs or individual singers available. Messiah proved to be one of his most popular works, becoming a favourite of massed choirs around the world far beyond the scale of Handel’s original.
With
Donald Burrows
Emeritus Professor of Music at the Open University
Ruth Smith
Trustee and Council Member of the Handel Institute
And
Larry Zazzo
Countertenor, and Senior Lecturer in Music at Newcastle University
Producer: Simon Tillotson
Reading list:
Donald Burrows, Messiah (full score, 2 vols, Hallische Händel Ausgabe, forthcoming)
Donald Burrows, Messiah (Edition Peters, 1987)
Donald Burrows, Messiah, Cambridge Music Handbooks (Cambridge University Press, 1991)
Donald Burrows, Handel: Master Musicians series, 2nd edition (Oxford University Press, 2012)
George Frideric Handel (ed. Donald Burrows et al.), Collected Documents vol. 3 (1734-42), vol 4 (1742-50), (Cambridge University Press, 2019, 2020)
G.F. Handel, facsimile ‘Messiah’: the composer’s autograph manuscript (British Library, 2009)
G.F. Handel, facsimile the composer’s Conducting Score of Messiah (Scolar Press, 1974)
Arthur Holroyd, Reassuring 18th-Century Protestants: The Librettist’s Intended Message for Handel’s ‘Messiah’ (Quacks Books, 2018)
Charles King, Every Valley: The Story of Handel’s Messiah (Doubleday/Bodley Head, 2024)
Jens Peter Larsen, Handel’s Messiah: Origins, Composition, Sources (Adam and Charles Black, 1957)
Richard Luckett, Handel’s Messiah: A Celebration (Victor Gollancz, 1992)
Watkins Shaw, A Textual and Historical Companion to Handel’s ‘Messiah’ (Novello and Co, 1965)
Ruth Smith, ‘The Achievements of Charles Jennens (1700–1773)’ (Music & Letters, 70, 1989)
Ruth Smith, Charles Jennens: The Man behind Handel’s ‘Messiah’ (Handel House Trust/The Gerald Coke Handel Foundation, 2012)
Ruth Smith, Handel’s Oratorios and Eighteenth-Century Thought (Cambridge University Press, 1995)
Calvin R. Stapert, Handel’s Messiah: Comfort for God’s People (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2010)
Judy Tarling, Handel’s Messiah: A Rhetorical Guide (first published 2014; Punnett Press, 2025)
In Our Time is a BBC Studios production
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 Misha Glenny and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.

Misha Glenny and guests discuss the provocative artistic phenomenon that first startled audiences in 1916 in Zurich. There, at the Cabaret Voltaire at the Holländische Meierei on the Spiegelgasse, Emmy Hennings and Hugo Ball and others gathered on a small stage, sometimes dressed in cardboard, often performing nonsense poems. This was the start of Dada, a spirit more than a movement which spread to other cities in Europe during the war. In part the Dadas (as they called themselves) were protesting against the inevitability of constant wars on the continent and in part this was an artistic experiment around the absurd; they were creating poems, songs, costumes and art that made no obvious sense, just as the war around them made no sense to the artists, designers and poets at the Cabaret Voltaire.
With
Dawn Ades
Emeritus Professor of Art History and Theory at the University of Essex
Ruth Hemus
Professor of French and Visual Culture at Royal Holloway, University of London
And
Stephen Forcer
Professor of French at the University of Glasgow
Produced by Martha Owen
Reading list:
Dawn Ades (ed.), The Dada Reader: A Critical Anthology (Tate Publishing, 2006)
Hugo Ball (trans. Ann Raimes and ed. John Elderfield), Flight out of Time: A Dada Diary (first published 1927; University of California Press, 1996)
Stephen Forcer, Dada as Text, Thought and Theory (Legenda, 2015)
Ruth Hemus, Dada's Women (Yale University Press, 2009)
David Hopkins, Dada and Surrealism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2004)
Jed Rasula, Destruction was my Beatrice: Dada and the Unmaking of the Twentieth Century (Basic Books, 2015)
In Our Time is a BBC Studios Production
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 Misha Glenny and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.