Joseph Roth

Joseph Roth

Author: BBC Radio 4 June 4, 2026 Duration: 55:06

Misha Glenny and guests discuss one of the great writers on Central Europe after the first world war and on the dying of the old orders with the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian empire. As a German speaking Jew from Brody in the north-eastern edge of that Empire, which was then in Galicia, next in Poland and is now in Ukraine, Roth (1894 - 1939) was to spend his short life moving first to Lviv then to Vienna and finally to Paris via Berlin without ever finding a settled home. Roth explored the loss of homeland and anticipated the dangers of the new nationalism through his journalism and in his novels including Radetzky March, Job, Rebellion and Flight Without End, and his books were among the first the Nazis burned.

With

Helen Chambers Emeritus Professor of German at the University of St Andrews

Deborah Holmes Associate Professor of Modern German Literature at the University of Salzburg

And

Jon Hughes Reader in German and Cultural Studies at Royal Holloway, University of London

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Reading list:

Jon Hughes, Facing Modernity: Fragmentation, Culture and Identity in Joseph Roth's Writing in the 1920s (MHRA, 2006)

Heinz Lunzer and Victoria Lunzer-Talos, Joseph Roth: Leben und Werk in Bildern (Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1994)

Keiron Pim, Endless Flight: The Life of Joseph Roth (Granta, 2022)

Joseph Roth (trans. Deborah Holmes, ed. Helen Constantine), Vienna Tales (Oxford University Press, 2014)

Joseph Roth (trans. and ed. Michael Hofmann), A Life in Letters (Granta, 2012)

Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann), Collected Shorter Fiction (Granta, 2001)

Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann), Rebellion (Granta, 2000)

Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann), The Radetzky March (Granta, 2022)

Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann), The Legend of the Holy Drinker (Granta, 2022)

Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann), The Wandering Jews (Granta, 2001)

Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann), What I Saw: Reports from Berlin 1920-1933 (Granta, 2022)

Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann), The Hotel Years: Wanderings in Europe Between the Wars (Granta, 2015)

Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann), Reports from a Parisian Paradise: Essays from France 1925-1939 (Granta, 2004)

Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann), The Emperor’s Tomb (Granta, 2013)

Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann), The String of Pearls (Granta, 1999)

Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann), The White Cities: Reports From France 1925-1939 (Granta, 2013)

Joseph Roth (trans. David Le Vay), Weights and Measures (Pushkin Press, 2024)

Joseph Roth (trans. Daved Le Vay and Beatrice Musgrave), Flight Without End (Pushkin Press, 2024)

Joseph Roth (trans. Ruth Martin), The Coral Merchant: Essential Stories (Pushkin Press, 2020)

Joseph Roth (trans Will Stone), On the End of the World (Pushkin Press, 2019)

Joseph Roth (trans. Dorothy Thompson), Job: The Story of a Simple Man (Granta, 2022)

Wilhelm Von Sternburg, Joseph Roth: Eine Biographie (Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2009)

In Our Time is a BBC Studios Production

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 Misha Glenny and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.


For anyone with a restless mind, the weekly In Our Time podcast from BBC Radio 4 offers a deep and engaging conversation across the vast terrain of human thought and experience. Host Misha Glenny guides a panel of distinguished academics, not in lecture format, but through a lively, accessible discussion where ideas genuinely collide and unfold. You might find yourself immersed in the complex legacy of a figure like Napoleon one week, and the next be untangling the scientific principles of photosynthesis or the philosophical arguments of the Enlightenment. The scope is deliberately broad, covering history, religion, culture, science, and philosophy, because understanding one often requires context from another. What you hear is the genuine process of exploration-the questions, the debates, and the connections made in real time by leading experts. It’s the kind of podcast that doesn’t just recount the Sack of Rome or the intricacies of Russian court politics, but examines why these moments mattered and how their echoes are still felt. The result is a consistently stimulating hour that treats listeners as curious equals, offering the intellectual satisfaction of following a great conversation to its illuminating conclusion.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 100

In Our Time
Podcast Episodes
Hormones [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 50:13
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss some of the chemical signals coursing through our bodies throughout our lives, produced in separate areas and spreading via the bloodstream. We call these 'hormones' and we produce more th…
The Hanseatic League [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 49:01
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Hanseatic League or Hansa which dominated North European trade in the medieval period. With a trading network that stretched from Iceland to Novgorod via London and Bruges, these Germa…
Panpsychism [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 53:59
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the idea that some kind of consciousness is present not just in our human brains but throughout the universe, right down to cells or even electrons. This is panpsychism and its proponents…
Nefertiti [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 49:50
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the woman who inspired one of the best known artefacts from ancient Egypt. The Bust of Nefertiti is multicoloured and symmetrical, about 49cm/18" high and, despite the missing left eye, st…
Condorcet [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 50:31
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nicolas de Condorcet (1743-94), known as the Last of the Philosophes, the intellectuals in the French Enlightenment who sought to apply their learning to solving the problems of their worl…
Twelfth Night, or What You Will [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 53:53
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of Shakespeare’s great comedies, which plays in the space between marriage, love and desire. By convention a wedding means a happy ending and here there are three, but neither Orsino n…
Vincent van Gogh [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 56:02
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Dutch artist famous for starry nights and sunflowers, self portraits and simple chairs. These are images known the world over, and Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) painted them and around…
Tiberius [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 53:10
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Roman emperor Tiberius. When he was born in 42BC, there was little prospect of him ever becoming Emperor of Rome. Firstly, Rome was still a Republic and there had not yet been any Empe…
Karl Barth [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 55:22
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most influential theologians of the twentieth century. Karl Barth (1886 - 1968) rejected the liberal theology of his time which, he argued, used the Bible and religion to help h…
Edgar Allan Poe [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 58:44
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Poe (1809-1849), the American author who is famous for his Gothic tales of horror, madness and the dark interiors of the mind, such as The Fall of the House of Usher and The Tell-Tale Hear…