“Try stepping into these boots. This is going to be really difficult,” the historian and writer Misha Glenny told the Today programme recently as he reflected on the prospect of replacing Melvyn Bragg on Radio 4’s In Our Time. He’s not wrong. The serious and erudite Bragg – a working-class boy who rose to become a peer of the realm – has helmed the show for an astonishing 27 years, shaping its content and turning it into a BBC institution.
The series, which reportedly attracts two million listeners a week, is famed for its scholarly discussions on often comically niche topics such as echolocation, 18th-century vases, slime mould, the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Wilfully ignoring audio’s current obsession with celebrity, it makes a point of engaging with experts as it invites a trio of academics each week to talk about their field of study. No one is there to plug their latest book, film or TV show; as Bragg recently noted: “They are plugging knowledge.”
Melvyn Bragg, former presenter of BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time, has helmed the show for an 27 years (Photo: BBC Media Centre)All of which means In Our Time bucks nearly every audio trend out there. Yet over the last decade it has stayed in the upper reaches of the podcast charts, having improbably found favour with a young demographic.
At a time when the older generation can often be heard lamenting short attention spans and the dumbing down of culture, here is a show driven by a nerdish delight in esoterica that is one of the most listened-to BBC audio series by the under-35s. My teenage daughter is an avid fan who reports not only finding it illuminating but immensely comforting, like an intellectually stimulating form of ASMR.
Little wonder, then, that the new presenter has opted not to mess with the winning format that is serious people talking seriously on serious matters. Opening each episode, Bragg was known for his crisp “hello”, after which he would go straight into the week’s heavy-duty theme. In his first episode, Glenny – a former World Service journalist and specialist in central Europe – follows the same script as he launches without small-talk into a discussion about “On Liberty”, the 1859 essay by the philosopher John Stuart Mill.
It is, Glenny notes, “one of the most important works in the history of liberalism”, that was in fact co-authored by Mill and his wife Harriet Taylor Mill; the latter never got a credit and died just before it was published. The couple felt passionately that personal liberty was at risk from stifling public opinion and the consensus on how people should behave, think and live. In assessing the essay’s merits and legacy, Glenny and his guests’ conversation takes in Engles, the individual as the engine of social progress, free speech, utilitarianism and “the tyranny of opinion”.
As ever, the series maintains a genteel civility: there is no “for” and “against” and no argy-bargy, even though contributors have been known to disagree. It also doesn’t talk down to the listener in whom it assumes a level of intellectual curiosity. Rare is the episode where I haven’t had to press pause to look something up, which in this case is a mark in its favour.
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Beyond ensuring the sound levels are correct, you imagine the show’s producers sitting back and put their feet up, safe in the knowledge that the adults are in charge.
Bragg once said that In Our Time was “never knowingly relevant”, which does the show a disservice but also means it can never be irrelevant. The early signs are that, under Glenny’s stewardship, it remains in safe hands. Long may it continue.
In Our Time is on Radio 4 on Thursdays at 9.45am and on BBC Sounds
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