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...

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.

"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...

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.

Melvyn travels west in search of the increasingly elusive Cornish dialect. Cornwall is an evocative place. A Celtic land with a rich mythology, a land of caves and coves, of cream teas and country lanes. At least that's the image that has long attracted travellers and settlers. Yet it's also a land that has, over the last century, faced dramatic so...

Melvyn visits Brixton to discover the most imitated, influential form of spoken English today. It's a dialect determined not by geography or profession, but by age, fashion and aspiration. Pulsing through music culture, spread by television and radio, it can be found throughout the UK. Sometimes subversive, often secretive, it is arguably the most...

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...

We explore the rise of powerful non-English linguistic forces in the United States. Starting at Plymouth Rock where the Pilgrim Fathers landed in 1620, Melvyn Bragg follows the development of English in the American colony-from the War of Independence and the founding of the first capital, Philadelphia, right through to the controversial contempora...

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...

Here we take up the story of Caribbean English where the Brixton Routes left off. For the poet Edward Kamau Braithwaite the legacy of the English language is something from which he, in his tropical landscape, must break free because, as he wrote, "the hurricane does not roar in pentameters". Melvyn Bragg heads off to the Caribbean where he meets a...

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...

Northern Ireland was a very dark place in the 1980s. A hunger strike was looming, street violence and tit for tat murders were an everyday occurrence, but in a small corner of West Belfast something extraordinary was happening. In a factory in Dunmurry a unique new sports car was being built, a DMC 12, a style icon for the late 20th century. For 2...

Angela Carter's relationship with radio began with an accidental sound effect. She went on to write two docu-dramas, Come Unto These Yellow Sands (about the Victorian painter Richard Dadd) and A Self-Made Man (about Edwardian novelist Ronald Firbank) and re-worked two of her short stories into radio plays. Carter loved radio's technical possibiliti...

An affectionate profile of Dick Barton - Special Agent, presented by John Hosken, including interviews with Noel Johnson, star of the Dick Barton radio series. Dick Barton is the radio character who refuses to lie down. Although it is over fifty years since the daily serial was dropped to make way for The Archers, fans still talk about their hero's...

Dolly Parton grew up in poverty in rural East Tennessee, where children only attended school if there was no work to be done on the farm. She came to regard literacy skills as a passport to a better life and in 1995 she launched the 'Imagination Library'. All local children were sent a book a month, from birth to age 5. In 2007, she brought the pro...

In July 1957, the press descended in droves on Eastbourne. An inquest had just been opened into the suspicious circumstances surrounding the death of Mrs Bobbie Hullett. She died after months of apparent barbiturate abuse - drugs prescribed by Dr John Bodkin Adams. The inquest brought to the surface years of whispered suspicion that had swept throu...

Alan is an award winning actor, author, screenwriter and playwright. His play The History Boys has been adapted into a popular film as well as receiving 6 Tony Awards for its Broadway run in 2006. The title is available to download from the Listening Books library, number 01451. Photograph c Antony Crolla

Cressida is the author of the fantastic children's series How to Train Your Dragon. In this interview Cressida reveals some interesting facts about how she chose her dragons' characteristics. You can borrow the book on MP3 CD, number 00164CD. Image c Sam Jones

Eoin is an Irish children's author, most well known for the Artemis Fowl series, a set of 8 science fantasy novels . The first book is available to download or on MP3 CD, number 08747CD. Image c Michael Paynter

Bestselling author of The Pillars of the Earth trilogy, Ken Follett's novels are frequently featured on the New York Times Bestsellers lists. c Quintas-Fundacion Catedral Santa Maria

Creator of the Didius Falco character, a Roman detective, her books have been adapted into highly successful audio dramas for the BBC. Her titles include Scandal Takes a Holiday, number 00689CD and Alexandria, number 02294CD. Image c Mark Harrison/Hodder & Stoughton Publishers