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Episode details

Radio 3,02 May 2017,45 mins

Breaking Free - Martin Luther's Revolution

Free Thinking

Available for over a year

Martin Luther - Fundamentalist, Reactionary or Enlightened Creator of the Modern World? Peter Stanford, Ulinka Rublack and Diarmaid MacCulloch join Anne McElvoy to explore the question. The discussion was recorded in front of an audience at the LSE Literary Festival for Radio 3's Breaking Free series of programmes exploring Martin Luther's Revolution. 500 years ago Martin Luther launched the Protestant Reformation when he nailed a sheet of paper to the door of a church in a small university town in Germany. That sheet and the incendiary ideas it contained flared up into religious persecution and war, eventually burning a huge hole through 16th century Christendom. And yet the man who sparked this revolution has somehow been lost in the glare of events. Peter Stanford is the author of a new biography of Luther Ulinka Rublack is the author of Reformation Europe Diarmaid MacCulloch's most recent book is All Things Made New - Writings on the Reformation Producer Zahid Warley.

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