Dickens (Archive Episode)

In Our Time

BBC

History

4.6 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 15 January 2026

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

To celebrate Melvyn Bragg’s 27 years presenting In Our Time, five well-known fans of the programme have chosen their favourite episodes. The singer Joan Armatrading has selected the episode about Charles Dickens and recorded an introduction to it (this introduction will be available on BBC Sounds and the In Our Time webpage shortly after the broadcast and will be longer than the version broadcast on Radio 4). Dickens is best known for the strength of his plots and the richness of his characters, but he can also be regarded as a political writer. Some have seen him as a social reformer of great persuasiveness, as a man who sought through satire to expose the powerful and privileged, and whose scenes moved decision-makers to make better decisions. George Bernard Shaw said of Dickens’s novel Little Dorrit that it was 'more seditious than Das Kapital'. Others argue that, although Dickens was a great caricaturist, he was really a conservative at heart. With Rosemary Ashton Professor of English at University College London Michael Slater Professor of Victorian Literature at Birkbeck College, University of London and editor of The Dent Uniform Edition of Dickens’ Journalism And John Bowen Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Keele Producers: Jonathan Levi and Charlie Taylor This programme was first broadcast in July 2001. 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 Melvyn Bragg and expert guests explore the people, ideas, events and discoveries that have shaped our world. In Our Time is a BBC Studios production.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, radio, podcasts.
0:05.6	Hi, I'm Misha Gleney, the brand new host of In Our Time.
0:10.2	New episodes of the programme are available now, a month earlier than anywhere else, first on BBC Sounds.
0:18.0	To celebrate Melvin Bragg's 27 years presenting In Our Time, some well-known fans of the programme have chosen their favourite episodes.
0:25.6	Here's the singer Joan Armour Trading.
0:28.4	First of all, I'd just like to pay tribute to Melvin Bragg.
0:32.2	Like John Nettles, he has that voice that really draws you in.
0:37.4	I love how he has lots of knowledge and gives you lots of information, but you never feel as if you're being lectured at.
0:46.1	And I always feel that when I listen to him, whatever program he's doing, I always feel as if I'm getting like a proper education.
0:53.9	I've followed in our time for quite a number
0:56.4	of years. I can't tell you all the different episodes that I've listened to. But I always feel as if I've
1:01.0	had an education when I listen to them. So he's going to be somebody who's going to be very, very missed.
1:08.0	I love Charles Dickens. When I was younger, I read a lot of Charles Dickens novels,
1:13.0	and my favourite of those is hard times. I love hard times. One of the reasons I love hard times
1:18.7	is because of Mr. Gradgrim, who didn't want the pupils to look out of the window and dream.
1:25.4	Little did he know that practically everything that we have in the
1:29.3	world that we use came out of a dream. That's from people looking out of the window and thinking,
1:35.3	oh, I wonder if I could fly or thinking, I wonder what it would be like to build a car,
1:39.3	or what would it be like if I made electric light, whatever it is, that's come out of a dream.
1:45.5	So I always look at Mr. Gradgrine and think, yeah, you didn't really know what you were talking
1:49.9	about, although he was converted in the end, but I always think of Mr. Gradgrind in hard times.
1:54.7	So that's one of my favorites.
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 26 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.