Melvyn Bragg has narrated 4 audiobooks on Listento.it by 1 author. The most-rated is Voices of the Powerless: The Complete Series.
Routes of English: Complete Series 1: Evolving English
Summary
Melvyn Bragg looks at how English has evolved over 1,000 years, looking at the disappearance of old dialects like that of Cumbria, and how it has been enriched by foreign languages, from Latin, Old French, and then dozens more as conquest, trade and immigration played their part in recent centuries.
©2000 Melvyn Bragg (P)2014 Audible, Inc.
The Adventure of English
Summary
English is the collective work of millions of people throughout the ages. It is democratic, ever-changing, and ingenious in its assimilation of other cultures. English runs through the heart of world finance, medicine, and the Internet, and it is understood by around 2.2 billion people across the world. Yet it was very nearly wiped out in its early years. In this audiobook, Melvyn Bragg shows us the remarkable story of the English language, from its beginnings as a minor guttural Germanic dialect to its position today as a truly established global language. Embracing elements of Latin, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Arabic, Hindi, and Gullah, this 1,500-year story covers a huge range of countries and peoples. The Adventure of English is not only an enthralling story of power, religion, and trade, but also the story of people and how their day-to-day lives shaped and continue to change the extraordinary language that is English.
©2003 Melvyn Bragg (P)2003 Hodder and Stoughton Audiobooks
In Our Time: The Written World
Summary
Broadcaster and arts presenter Melvyn Bragg fronts The Written World, a five-part BBC Radio 4 series following the origins of writing from its first appearance 6,000 years ago and exploring how it has shaped the world's intellectual history. In the first programme, he looks at the technology of writing, and how making signs on clay, wood, or parchment enabled the development of human culture.
The second programme sees Bragg considering the impact of the invention of the book and examining one of the earliest surviving examples. The third programme examines the role of writing in the spread of religions, and the fourth programme looks at how the invention of writing made it possible to record history and how oral poetry traditions were transformed into the new medium of literature.
Bragg concludes his survey of the written word by considering how the invention of writing made the scientific revolution of the Englightenment possible.
©2012 Melvyn Bragg (P)2012 AudioGO Ltd
Voices of the Powerless: The Complete Series
Summary
Melvyn Bragg follows his long historical exploration of the Routes of English with ‘Voices of the Powerless’, the BBC Radio 4 series in which he explores the lives of the ordinary working men and women of Britain at critical moments across the last 1,000 years. The Norman Conquest is his starting point, a time when William the Conqueror’s ‘harrying of the North’ affected the poor apprentice, the lowly ploughman and the humble shepherd. He goes on to look at the Peasants’ Revolt in 1381 (inspired by a hated Poll Tax) and the religious changes brought about by Henry VIII’s Reformation. The so-called ‘Plantation’ of Ulster, the Siege of Chester, and the plague which ravaged Salisbury in 1627 are later stopping-off points in Bragg’s journey, which also finds him traversing the country and speaking to historians and experts about the life of the ordinary citizen in each period. First broadcast in 2002, this Complete First Series contains all six episodes of Series One: ‘Castles and Cruelty’, ‘The Peasants' Revolt’, ‘The Reformation’, ‘The Plantation of Ireland in the Counties of Armagh and Tyrone’, ‘The English Civil War and the Siege of Chester’ and ‘Boils and Buboes’. Guidance: due to the archive nature of the recording the sound quality may vary.
©2003 AudioGO Ltd (P)2011 AudioGo Ltd