AuthorMelvyn Bragg
NarratorMelvyn Bragg
SeriesRoutes to English Series 2, Book 4
Duration27m
CategoriesAdult Non-Fiction, History, General Non Fiction
PublisherAudio Go Ltd
VersionUnabridged
Bad language is not new. We've been swearing for centuries, and those in power have been trying to censor us for just as long. Nowadays, many people are quite relaxed about swearing and will be careful about the context-although we still try to avoid bad language in front of the children, or in polite society.
Routes of English, Series 4, Programme 6
Author: Melvyn Bragg
Author Melvyn Bragg
Narrator Melvyn Bragg
SeriesRoutes of English Series 4, Book 6
Duration 27m
With English now hailed on all sides as the world's first "global" language and the preferred medium of expression from United Biscuits to the United Nations, Melvyn Bragg meets people-like former Dome supremo P.Y. Gerbeau-for whom talking English is the most natural way to speak, yet who didn't absorb it with their mother's milk. Also taking part...
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Routes of English, Series 4, Programme 5
Author: Melvyn Bragg
Author Melvyn Bragg
Narrator Melvyn Bragg
SeriesRoutes of English Series 4, Book 5
Duration 27m
English becomes the language of liberation as Afrikaans takes on the label of oppression. In 1994 the first free democratic elections in South Africa were held, bringing Nelson Mandela to power as the country's first black president. One of the other consequences was the elevation of nine African languages to equal status with English and Afrikaans...
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Routes of English,series 2, Programme 3
Author: Melvyn Bragg
Author Melvyn Bragg
Narrator Melvyn Bragg
SeriesRoutes to English Series 2, Book 3
Duration 27m
"By your vowels, your station shall be known." How accents and social class are entwined. For at least 400 years, the way we speak has been one of the fundamental measures by which we've judged our fellow men on the scale of social acceptability. To so many, "talking proper" matters, and "rough talk is not quality talk." But such attitudes are begi...
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Routes of English, Series 3, Programme 5
Author: Melvyn Bragg
Author Melvyn Bragg
Narrator Melvyn Bragg
SeriesRoutes of English Series 3, Book 5
Duration 27m
Here, Melvyn visits Oswestry. Just five miles from the Welsh border, this is a frontier town whose name means "boundary". It's where Offa's Dyke and countless crumbling castles bear witness to centuries of shifting political allegiances. Language too, has been a battleground. Welsh and English have waxed and waned, woven and unravelled. Visit the t...
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Routes of English, Series 3, Programme 6
Author: Melvyn Bragg
Author Melvyn Bragg
Narrator Melvyn Bragg
SeriesRoutes of English Series 3, Book 6
Duration 27m
The final programme in the series considers the future of English dialects. In the last programme in the series Melvyn looks at Standard English. He is joined by Lynda Mugglestone, Fellow of English Language at Pembroke College, Oxford and John Wells, Professor of Phonetics at the University of London. Together they attempt to answer some of the qu...
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Routes of English, Series 2,programme 2
Author: Melvyn Bragg
Author Melvyn Bragg
Narrator Melvyn Bragg
SeriesRoutes to English Series 2, Book 2
Duration 27m
Melvyn has fun and games with puns, wordplay and tongue twisters. Twisting, manipulation and stretching of the English language is an integral part of everyday communication. This language play exists in many forms, as puns, double entendres, word games and verse exercises, and we have been playing with English for centuries.
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Routes of English,series 2, Programme 1
Author: Melvyn Bragg
Author Melvyn Bragg
Narrator Melvyn Bragg
SeriesRoutes to English Series 2, Book 1
Duration 27m
When a new concept or product comes along, how does it get its name? Making up new words for new things or ideas isn't new. New words-linguists call them "coinages"-are as old as the English language itself. Melvyn Bragg explores the history of linguistic innovation from the Middle Ages, through the inventiveness of the Industrial Revolution, to th...
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Routes of English, Series 4, Programme 2
Author: Melvyn Bragg
Author Melvyn Bragg
Narrator Melvyn Bragg
SeriesRoutes of English Series 4, Book 2
Duration 27m
The English language in India. Despite being the imposed language of the imperial power, English also had the power to unite the nation. The story of the English language in India is also the story of the British merchants, adventurers and colonial administrators for whom the country was the Empire's jewel in the crown. Calcutta, the great Victoria...
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Routes of English, Series 1, Programme 4
Author: Melvyn Bragg
Author Melvyn Bragg
Narrator Melvyn Bragg
SeriesRoutes of English Series 1, Book 4
Duration 27m
The language of sex and death, as Chaucer and others capture English speech of the time. Melvyn Bragg travels to the great mediaeval cathedral of Canterbury, with its shrine to the martyr, St. Thomas … Becket. It inspired the pilgrims described by Geoffrey Chaucer in 1395 in The Canterbury Tales, as they set out from the Tabard Inn in Southw...
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Author: Melvyn Bragg
Author Melvyn Bragg
Narrator Melvyn Bragg
Duration 6h 20m
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...
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