In Our Time

Misha Glenny and guests discuss one of the towering figures of Brazilian and world literature, Machado de Assis (1839 - 1908). He was the descendant of slaves and built his career while slavery was still in place in Brazil (abolished 1888) and many of his characters were from the slave-owning class who were also the readers of his books. At the time, those readers were delighted to see themselves represented and it was only later in the 20th Century that critics realized just how much Machado was satirising them. While he brings 19th Century Brazil vividly to life, Machado's works transcend time and place and, according to Salman Rushdie, they seem to have been written yesterday not 100 years ago.
With
Ana Cláudia Suriani da Silva
Associate Professor in Brazilian Studies at University College London
Claire Williams
Professor of Brazilian Literature and Culture at the Faculty of Modern Languages at the University of Oxford, fellow of St. Peter's College
And
Viviane Carvalho da Annunciação
Affiliated Lecturer at the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics at the University of Cambridge
Producer: Simon Tillotson
Reading list:
Lamonte Aidoo and Daniel F. Silva (eds.), Emerging Dialogues on Machado de Assis (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016)
Helen Caldwell, The Brazilian Othello of Machado de Assis: A Study of Dom Casmurro (University of California Press, 1960)
Viviane Carvalho da Annunciação, The Contradictions of Science in Machado de Assis (Liverpool University Press, 2025)
Machado de Assis (trans. Daniel Hahn), The Looking-Glass: Essential Stories (Pushkin Press, 2022)
Machado de Assis (trans. Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson), 26 Stories (Liveright, 2019)
Machado de Assis (trans. Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson), The Collected Stories of Machado de Assis (Liveright, 2018)

Machado de Assis (trans. Flora Thomson-Deveaux), The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (Penguin, 2020)
Machado de Assis (trans. Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson), The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (Liveright, 2020)
Machado de Assis (trans. Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson), Quincas Borba (WW Norton & Co, 2024)
Machado de Assis (trans. Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson), Dom Casmurro (WW Norton & Co, 2024)
Machado de Assis (trans. Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson), Memorial de Ayres (Liveright, August 2026)
John Gledson, Machado de Assis: Fiction and History (Francis Cairns, 1984)
Richard Graham (ed.), Machado de Assis: Reflections on a Brazilian Master Writer (University of Texas Press, 1999)
James N. Green, Victoria Langland and Lilia Moritz Schwarcz (eds.), The Brazil Reader: History, Culture, Politics (Duke University Press, 2019)
Daniel Hahn and Padma Viswanathan (eds.), The Penguin Book of Brazilian Short Stories (Penguin, January 2027)
Mario Higa (ed.), A History of the Brazilian Novel (Cambridge University Press, August 2026), especially the chapter on Machado de Assis
K. David Jackson, Machado de Assis: A Literary Life (Yale University Press, 2015)
Anthony W. Pereira, Modern Brazil: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2020)
Roberto Schwarz (trans. John Gledson), A Master on the Periphery of Capitalism: Machado de Assis (Duke University Press, 2001)

Lilia M. Schwarcz and Heloisa M. Starling (eds.), Brazil: A Biography (Allen Lane, 2018)
Ana Cláudia Suriani da Silva, Machado De Assis's Philosopher or Dog?: From Serial to Book Form (Routledge, 2010)
Ana Cláudia Suriani da Silva and Sandra Guardini Vasconcelos (eds.), Comparative Perspectives on the Rise of the Brazilian Novel (UCL Press, 2020), especially the chapters “Capitu against the Elegiac Narrator” by Ana Cláudia Suriani da Silva and “Machado de Assis and the Novel” by Sandra Guardini Vasconcelos
Marcus Wood, The Black Butterfly: Brazilian Slavery and the Literary Imagination (West Virginia University Press, 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.

As 4th July approaches, we think you’ll like this episode of The Global Story. All week, The Global Story podcast is exploring the surprising and often hidden ways the US has shaped the modern world.
Roman Mars – the host of 99% Invisible and the new BBC series A History of the United States in 100 Objects – joins as a guest to set out his theory of how the US used design to shape the world in its image.
If you like this episode, find the special collection ‘US and the World at 250’ in The Global Story. If you’re in the UK, listen on BBC Sounds. If you’re outside the UK, listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

Misha Glenny and guests discuss the earliest evidence we have of the existence of trees and how even plants we might have on windowsills or as vegetables in gardens can and do, in the right conditions, evolve into trees. Since their emergence around 400 million years ago after low lying plants started to develop stronger stems and grow taller and more upright, trees have transformed our planet, so creating ecosystems, altering the atmosphere and setting the stage for the world as we know it today.
With
Jenny McElwain
1711 Chair of Botany at Trinity College Dublin and Director of Trinity Botanic Gardens
Christopher Berry
Senior Lecturer in Earth and Environmental Sciences at Cardiff University
And
Bill Baker
Senior Researcher at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Produced by Conor Garrett
Reading list:
David Beerling: The Emerald Planet: How Plants Changed Earth's History (Oxford University Press, 2008)
C.M. Berry, ‘Palaeobotany: The Rise of the Earth’s Early Forests’ (Current Biology 29, 2019)
Christopher M. Berry and John E.A. Marshall, ‘Lycopsid forests in the early Late Devonian paleoequatorial zone of Svalbard’ (Geology 43:12, 2015)
N.S. Davies, W.J. McMahon and C.M. Berry, ‘Earth’s earliest forest: fossilized trees and vegetation-induced sedimentary structures from the Middle Devonian (Eifelian) Hangman Sandstone Formation, Somerset and Devon, SW England’ (J. Geol. Soc. 181, 2024)
P. Geisen and C.M. Berry, ‘Reconstruction and Growth of the Early Tree Calamophyton (Pseudosporochnales, Cladoxylopsida) Based on Exceptionally Complete Specimens from Lindlar, Germany (Mid-Devonian): Organic Connection of Calamophyton Branches and Duisbergia Trunks’ (International Journal of Plant Sciences 174 (4), 2013)
A. Groover and Q. Cronk (eds), Comparative and Evolutionary Genomics of Angiosperm Trees: Plant Genetics and Genomics (Crops and Models, vol 21. Springer, 2017), especially ‘The Evolution of Angiosperm Trees: From Palaeobotany to Genomics’ by Q.C.B. Cronk and F. Forest
Jennifer McElwain, Marlene Hill Donnelly, and Ian Glasspool, Tropical Arctic: Lost Plants, Future Climates, and the Discovery of Ancient Greenland (University of Chicago Press, 2021)
Harriet Rix, The Genius of Trees: How Trees Mastered the Elements and Shaped the World (Vintage, 2026)
W.E. Stein et al., ‘Mid-Devonian Archaeopteris roots signal revolutionary change in earliest fossil forests’ (Current biology, 30:3, 2020) pp.421-431
William E. Stein, Christopher Mark Berry, Linda VanAller Hernick and Frank Mannolini ‘Surprisingly complex community discovered in the mid-Devonian fossil forest at Gilboa’ (Nature 483, 7387, 2012)
Max Telford, The Tree of Life: Solving Science's Greatest Puzzle (John Murray, 2026)
K.J. Willis, J.C. McElwain, The Evolution of Plants (Oxford University Press, 2014)
James Woodford, The Wollemi Pine: The Incredible Discovery of a Living Fossil from the Age of the Dinosaurs (The Text Publishing Company, 2005)
Alexandre R. Zuntini et al, ‘Phylogenomics and the rise of the angiosperms’ (Nature vol. 629, April 2024)
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.

At the Hay Festival, Misha Glenny and guests discuss the impact of the Norman invasion on the people and land of Wales and across the modern border with England in what became known as The Welsh Marches, march being a term for a militarized borderland. Hay was one of the first Marcher lordships. Even before 1066, William the Conqueror knew that he would have to subdue the Welsh if he were to control the English and he allowed more and more Norman warlords to establish virtually their own private kingdoms in these Marches. Later some of the Lords were to use these bases to invade Ireland rather than conquer the rest of Wales. Marcher Lords built numerous castles such as the one at Hay and many new towns would then grow up alongside these where there was one law for the English and another for the Welsh and, though the Acts of Union under the Tudors brought an end to much of the Marcher Lords' powers, the distinct identity of these Welsh Marches continued.
With
Rhun Emlyn
Lecturer in the Department of History and Welsh History at Aberystwyth University
Helen Fulton
Professor of Medieval Literature at the University of Bristol
And
Huw Pryce
Emeritus Professor of Welsh History at Bangor University
Producer: Simon Tillotson
Reading list:
R. R. Davies, The Age of Conquest: Wales 1063-1415 (Oxford University Press, 2001)
R.R. Davies, Lordship and Society in the March of Wales 1282-1400 (Oxford University Press, 1978)
John Fleming, The Welsh Marcher Lordships II: South-West (Logaston Press, 2023)
Ben Giles, The Welsh Marches: 40 Town and Country Walks (Pocket Mountains, 2012)
Philip Hume, The Welsh Marcher Lordships I: Central & North (Logaston Press, 2021)
Max Lieberman, The March of Wales, 1067–1300: A Borderland of Medieval Britain (University of Wales Press, 2018)
Max Lieberman, The Medieval March of Wales: The Creation and Perception of a Frontier, 1066-1283 (Cambridge University Press, 2010)
D. Huw Owen, The Lordship of Denbigh 1282-1543 (University of Wales Press, 2024)
Mike Parker, All the Wide Border: Wales, England and the Places Between (HarperNorth, 2024)
Dewi Roberts, Both Sides of the Border: An Anthology of Writing on the Welsh Border Region (Gwasg Carreg Gwalch/Eagle Rock Press, 1998)
Christopher Somerville, The Welsh Borders (Philips, 1991)
David Stephenson, Patronage and Power in the Medieval Welsh March: One Family's Story (University of Wales Press, 2021)
David Walker, Medieval Wales (Cambridge University Press, 2008)
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 group which came to be known as the Levellers and emerged during what would become arguably one of the bloodiest and most turbulent periods of English history. After the First English Civil War, the Levellers started calling for reforms to achieve legal and social equality. They pushed for a new constitution, extended franchise, popular sovereignty, and religious toleration. To do this, the Levellers pioneered the use of pamphlets and petitions, as well as taking to the streets in their thousands to demonstrate wearing their signature sea-green ribbons and sprigs of rosemary. To some they were radical, and to others not radical enough. Though the Leveller movement itself may have been short-lived, the arguments that they made have both inspired and challenged generations since.
With
Teresa Bejan
Professor of Political Theory and Fellow of Oriel College, University of Oxford
Ted Vallance
Professor of History and Dean of Research and Doctoral Study at the University of Roehampton
And
Clare Jackson
Honorary Professor of Early Modern History and Walter Grant Scott Fellow in History at Trinity Hall, University of Cambridge
Producer: Martha Owen
Reading list:
Teresa M. Bejan, First Among Equals: Visions of Equality before Egalitarianism (Belknap Press, forthcoming in 2026)
Michael Braddick, The Common Freedom of the People: John Lilburne and the English Revolution (Oxford University Press, 2018)
Rachel Foxley, The Levellers; Radical Political Thought in the English Revolution (Manchester University Press, 2013)
Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down (Penguin, 1972)
Ann Hughes, Gender and the English Revolution (Routledge, 2011)
John Rees, The Leveller Revolution: Radical Political Organisation in England, 1640-1650 (Verso Books, 2016)
John Rees (ed.), John Lilburne and the Levellers: Reappraising the Roots of English Radicalism 400 years on (Routledge, 2017), including 'Reborn John: The Eighteenth-Century Afterlife of John Lilburne' by Edward Vallance
Andrew Sharp (ed.), The English Levellers (Cambridge University Press, 1998)
Edward Vallance, A Radical History of Britain: Visionaries, Rebels and Revolutionaries - the men and women who fought for our freedoms (Abacus, 2010)
Blair Worden, Roundhead Reputations: The English Civil Wars and The Passions of Posterity (Penguin, 2002)
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.