In Our Time: Culture

Misha Glenny introduces the brand new series of In Our Time, which begins with a discussion on Thomas More’s 16th-century ‘bestseller’ Utopia, his vision of a perfect republic. This follows his latest archive selection, from 2012, that explores timekeeping in the ancient world up to the modern digital clock.
This podcast collection is now unavailable. To continue listening, search for and follow the main In Our Time podcast on BBC Sounds or wherever you find your BBC podcasts. New episodes arrive weekly.

This podcast collection is now unavailable. To continue listening, search for and follow the main In Our Time podcast on BBC Sounds or wherever you find your podcasts. New episodes arrive weekly.

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.