Melvyn Bragg: The book that changed the world

Until next Saturday (19th March) you can catch this fascinating hour long programme on BBC iPlayer. Melvyn Bragg sets out to persuade us that the King James Bible has driven the making of the English speaking world over the last 400 years, often in the most unanticipated ways.

He travels to historic locations in the UK and USA where the King James Bible has had a deep impact, including Gettysburg and the American Civil War and Washington's Lincoln Memorial, site of Martin Luther King's famous speech.

He argues that while many think our modern world is founded on secular ideals, it is the King James Version which had a greater legacy. The King James Bible not only influenced the English language and its literature more than any other book, it was also the seedbed of western democracy, the activator of radical shifts in society such as the abolition of the slave trade, the debating dynamite for brutal civil wars in Britain and America and a critical spark in the genesis of modern science.

If you are studying English, the opening sections are particularly useful in relating some of Shakespeare’s ideas to their scriptural background.

Crossref-it.info will fill in the other gaps!

The world they lived in

Nineteenth century English novels

Are you studying Hard Times, Great Expectations or Tess of the d’Urbervilles this year? It is likely that a lot of current A Level Eng Lit students are examining texts like these, which demonstrate the rapid changes in social organisation that took place during the nineteenth century.

Such novels depict the huge shift of the population from rural to city living. They chart the dislocation experienced when intimate communities and familiar landscapes are left behind for faceless streets. In cities it is easier to sink into oblivion without the watchful care of those who have known someone from birth.

The opportunity to develop

Yet cities also offer the chance for change, for re-definition. There are opportunities for a ‘nobody’ to become a ‘somebody’, to escape the social position of their family. New friendships established in new locations mean that people learn to judge others according to their material markers, rather than who their parents were.

Today’s obsession with ‘location, location, location’ is a direct descendant of the nineteenth century’s urban expansion, with its stress on living in a ‘respectable neighbourhood’. If you are studying the era for History, you will have a good grasp of this process and its impact.

No time?

However, for those who don’t have the time to research it for themselves, there are two new articles from Crossref-it.info. Part of an entire section about the world of the Victorians, these give you a useful overview of the situation in Britain that created the backdrop for your set texts. Go to

• World of Victorian writers > Town and country life
• World of Victorian writers > Urbanisation and the Suburbs

Remember, examiners give you marks when you can demonstrate understanding of the significance and influence of the contexts in which literary texts were written and received (AO4).