BBC Proms - 2008 - Proms Literary Festival - Proms Literary Festival: English Romantic Poetry

A discussion recorded in front of a Proms audience at the Royal College of Music in which critic and biographer Professor Hermione Lee discusses English Romantic poetry, from Wordsworth to Thomas Hardy. With contributions from Romantic literature expert Professor Duncan Wu as well as Kate Kennedy and poet Paul Farley. The programme draws on excerpts of music and poetry to illustrate the influence of William Wordsworth and other Romantic poets on their Victorian and Edwardian successors such as Thomas Hardy. It includes reflections on how Hardy's poems in particular pays homage to Wordsworth and on some of the musical settings of their poems by English composers such as Finzi.