This resource is in support of the Third Edition of Writing for Broadcast Journalists by Tim Crook and Rick Thompson published in 2025 by Routledge.
See: Routledge Media Skills books
The archive of the ‘Routes of English’ BBC radio programmes programmes is no longer available online and the books with CDs no longer in print, though second hand copies can be obtained at modest cost.
The original BBC Radio 4 series is, however, available commercially from Audible.
Links to the original series have been archived.
Do you know what you are saying
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The Adventure of English is a British television series from 2003 (London Weekend Television for ITV) on the history of the English language presented by Melvyn Bragg as well as a companion book, also written by Bragg.
It is available currently on YouTube. I would argue for the need of a new series since so much has changed in the last 21 years, though the trends and dynamics of the social, political, and cultural development of English as a communicated language remain similar and powerful.
The series and the book are cast as an adventure story, or the biography of English as if it were a living being, covering the history of the language from its modest beginnings around 500 AD as a minor Germanic dialect to its rise as a truly established global language.
In the television series, Bragg explains the origins and spelling of many words based on the times in which they were introduced into the growing language that would eventually become modern English.
Episode One. Birth of a Language. https://youtu.be/K1XQx9pGGd0?si=rZPgpKZJxpWD3zks
The modern Frisian language is the closest sounding language to the English used approximately 2000 years ago, when the people from what is now the north of the Netherlands travelled to what would be the United Kingdom and pushed the Celts to the western side of the island. Words like “blue” can be recognized in the Frisian language.
Episode Two. English Goes Underground. https://youtu.be/DG7REAOG1kc?si=BUexbvGE0u-Ia8Aw
Bragg discusses how class also affected the use of English, especially in the time of William the Conquerer and for approximately 300 years after his reign; during this period, only the French language and Latin were used in state affairs and by the aristocracy, while English remained in use with the lower peasant classes.
Episode Three. The Battle for the Language of the Bible. https://youtu.be/3cZR1EXGapc?si=SeWTAA8guOmfF0wQ
In the early to mid 1300s, English fought to be the language of the Christian Bible through the efforts of theologian John Wycliffe, who opposed the church’s use of a Latin scripture because it prevented most of the population from reading the bible for themselves.
Episode Four. This Earth, This Realm, This England. https://youtu.be/1Kg63k5JDH8?si=4VBnCktxb9uHvLc0
In Queen Elizabeth I’s time, English began to expand to even greater depths. Overseas trade brought new words from France, as well as the now popular swearwords “fokkinge,” (f–king) “krappe,” (crap) and “bugger” from Dutch, in the 16th century.
Episode Five. English in America. https://youtu.be/oBqlVl0K9tw?si=ykvhqEP8VEQWx59R
Upon landing in North America, settlers encountered Squanto, a native man who had been captured and brought to England to learn English and become a guide. After escaping, Squanto returned to his tribe, which happened to live near the place that the English settlers had created their small village.
Episode Six. Speaking Proper. https://youtu.be/BVH6LdoEDNs?si=R_nP5X7YplcLu9FW
The Age of Reason began, and English scholars of mathematics and science like Isaac Newton started publishing their books in English instead of Latin. Jonathan Swift would attempt to save the English language from perpetual change, followed by Samuel Johnson who would write the A Dictionary of the English Language, made up of 43000 words and definitions, written in seven years and published in 1755.
Episode Seven. The Language of Empire. https://youtu.be/SygpJAwypeo?si=m-ACwrNf-Wmd2Taf
British trade and colonization spread the English language. In India, scholar William Jones finds some English words already present in Sanskrit. Convicts land in Australia, blending London criminal slang and Aboriginal words into a new dialect. Jamaicans reclaim patois.
Episode Eight. Many Tongues Called English, One World Language. https://youtu.be/8xJVLnoY-cM?si=ofGmaa8LAPNj9RNb
The globalisation of the English language in the 20th century owes most to the United States. Here we look at the predominance of American Black street talk, how the Second World War and American movies threatened to “infect” the mother tongue in Britain and how some nations are attempting to stamp in the invasion of English out – for example franglais in France and Singlish in Singapore.
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A more recent documentary on how spoken English has evolved historically from the mixing and interaction of migrating cultures with the travelling coming to England as much as England travelling abroad is:
‘Scuffles, Swagger and Shakespeare: The Hidden Story of English’ first broadcast on BBC4 in 2019;
This recording is available on licence via Learning on Screen (Box of Broadcasts) from transmission on Sunday, 25 Apr 2021, 23:40 30 mins
BBC4 Synopsis
The English language is spoken by 450 million people around the globe, with a further one billion using it as a second language.
It is arguably Britain’s most famous export. The man often given credit for the global triumph of English, and the invention of many of our modern words, is William Shakespeare. Shakespeare’s plays first hit the stage four centuries ago, as the explorers of Elizabethan England were laying the foundations for the British empire.
It was this empire that would carry English around the world. Language historian and BBC New Generation Thinker Dr John Gallagher asks whether the real story of how English became a global linguistic superpower is more complex.
John begins by revealing that if you had stopped an Elizabethan on the streets and told them their language was going to become the most powerful one in the world, they would have laughed in your face. When Shakespeare began writing, the English language was obscure and England an isolated country.
John’s quest to find out how English became a global language sees him investigate everything from what it was like to be an immigrant in Elizabethan Britain to how new technology is transforming our understanding of Shakespeare.
BBC online webpage for the programme at https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000b8ny
Citation: Scuffles, Swagger and Shakespeare: The Hidden Story of English, 23:40 25/04/2021, BBC4, 30 mins. https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ondemand/index.php/prog/14CF9DB9?bcast=134339206 (Accessed 22 Sep 2024)
Available on YouTube at: https://youtu.be/r8uUCIa6bDc?si=dm7y3Jp0DmMZrnrR
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The King James Bible: The Book That Changed the World Saturday, 12 Mar 2011, 20:00 60 mins BBC2 England. Director Gillian Bancroft. Presenter Melvyn Bragg.
Synopsis:
Documentary presented by Melvyn Bragg to mark the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible. Melvyn Bragg sets out to persuade us that the King James Version 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.
Citation for Learning on Screen subscription: The King James Bible: The Book That Changed the World, 20:00 12/03/2011, BBC2 England, 60 mins. https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ondemand/index.php/prog/01AF8E23?bcast=61395981 (Accessed 22 Sep 2024)
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Samuel Johnson: The Dictionary Man. Saturday, 19 Sep 2009, 23:10 60 mins BBC4. Director
Richard Alwyn
Synopsis:
Drama documentary telling the story of Samuel Johnson’s creation of the first English dictionary, in an attic room just off Fleet Street in Georgian London. The depressive writer-for-hire with Tourette’s syndrome did for the English language what Newton had done for the stars, classifying words, fixing their meaning and bringing order to the chaos of language. It took him nine years, but in the process an anonymous writer became a literary superstar.
Samuel Johnson: The Dictionary Man, 23:10 19/09/2009, BBC4, 60 mins. https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ondemand/index.php/prog/005A425C?bcast=33730319 (Accessed 22 Sep 2024)
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The Most Dangerous Man in Tudor England (2013) Monday, 22 Apr 2019, 60 mins BBC4. Director Anna Cox.
Synopsis:
On 6 October 1536, an Englishman charged with heresy was strangled and burned at the stake near a castle outside Antwerp. One of the most influential forces of the English Reformation, William Tyndale’s life’s work had been to produce a carefully translated Bible that could be read in the language of the ordinary people of England. A man with an authentic Christian mission, whose life and legacy have been largely hidden from history, Tyndale’s story marks a turning point in Christianity in England and the development of the English language.
Citation for Learning on Screen subscription:
The Most Dangerous Man in Tudor England, 00:00 22/04/2019, BBC4, 60 mins. https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ondemand/index.php/prog/04AB5175?bcast=128954084 (Accessed 22 Sep 2024)
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Featured image: States where English is the national language or the native language of the majority.
CC BY-SA 4.0 File: Anglospeak (subnational version).svg Created: 19 April 2019. Uploaded: 20 August 2023