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’ 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 and we share it now in memory of Michael Slater (1936-2025)
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
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| 0:00.0 | Thanks for downloading the in-artime podcast. For more details about in-artime and for our terms of use |
| 0:05.4 | Please go to bbc.co.uk forward slash radio for I hope you enjoy the program |
| 0:11.5 | Hello George Bernard Shaw said of little Dorit that it was quote more seditious than Das Kapital |
| 0:17.2 | Unquote we all have images of Dickens the smog of course the dark Thames Christmas gayity Cobb Webden corrupt bureaucracies and |
| 0:24.9 | Inumerable characters from Pickwick to Wackford Squares from Fagan to Smike to Mr. McCorber to Mr. Bumble and the literary one with the wooden leg |
| 0:32.7 | But were these figures fictional agents for radical change? |
| 0:35.9 | Were they the fiction age of a radical change that Bernard Shaw suggests always Dickens are great caricaturist |
| 0:41.0 | But really a conservative at heart what kind of person was the man Charles Dickens and what is his social and political and |
| 0:47.7 | Literary legacy to our age with me to discuss Dickens and his place in history are three preeminent literary scholars |
| 0:54.6 | Rosemary Ashton is professor of English at University College London |
| 0:58.1 | Michael Slater is professor of Victorian literature and Birkbeck College |
| 1:02.0 | University of London and editor of the Dent uniform edition of Dickens journalism and John Boen senior lecturer in English at the University of Kiel and |
| 1:09.2 | Author of other Dickens pickwick to chuzzle with |
| 1:12.2 | Rosemary Ashton can you just briefly give us a flavor of the Times when Dickens started dry? What was London like? |
| 1:19.8 | Well London was a phenomenon. It was a spectacle |
| 1:22.6 | It was the largest capital in terms of population in the world |
| 1:26.7 | It was the capital of the greatest country in the world the most advanced politically industrially and economically and we might take perhaps the |
| 1:33.9 | The great exhibition of 1851 as the kind of face of this self-confident |
| 1:39.8 | progressive |
| 1:41.0 | London that where we had the exhibition of the wealth and industry of all nations |
| 1:45.6 | Everyone turning up and thinking how wonderful all this was a great wealth on the other hand |
| 1:50.9 | There's an undersight it was another side to the core and which is the |
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