Virginia Woolf said Homer's epic poem the Odyssey was 'alive to every tremor and gleam of existence'. Following the magical and strange adventures of warrior king Odysseus, inventor of the idea of the Trojan Horse, the poem can claim to be the greatest story ever told. Now British poet Simon Armitage goes on his own Greek adventure, following in the footsteps of one of his own personal heroes. Yet Simon ponders the question of whether he even likes the guy.
February 5th
Michael Wood: In Search of Beowulf
Historian Michael Wood returns to his first great love, the Anglo-Saxon world, to reveal the origins of our literary heritage. Focusing on Beowulf and drawing on other Anglo-Saxon classics, he traces the birth of English poetry back to the Dark Ages. Travelling across the British Isles from East Anglia to Scotland and with the help of Nobel prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney, actor Julian Glover, local historians and enthusiasts, he brings the story and language of this iconic poem to life.
February 12th
Milton's Heaven and Hell
Milton is often considered too difficult and obscure for today's reader, but to Armando Iannucci Paradise Lost is a thrilling work of creative genius that we ignore at our peril. In this film, Iannucci journeys through Milton's life and his great poem, taking in everything from Satan and the start of spin to farting angels and the questioning of God's existence, offering his own passionate and illuminating response to Paradise Lost. Along the way, he talks to schoolchildren, politicians and former prisoners to build up a picture of what Milton was like, and why his art may have turned out the way it did.
February 19th
The King and the Playwright: A Jacobean History
Incertainties Episode 1 of 3
American scholar James Shapiro presents a three-part series about Shakespeare in the reign of King James, beginning with the anxious mood of 1603 when a new dynasty came to power. Puritans, plague, an extravagant gift to a Spanish diplomatic delegation, and a new British coin called the Unite all feature in Shapiro's rich and fascinating history of a troubled time which saw an extraordinary creative outpouring.
February 26th
Equivocation Episode 2 of 3
It's 1606, and in the aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot the authorities are cracking down on Catholics. Shakespeare's Macbeth captures the anxiety and obsessions of the time, with James continuing to focus on succession and legitimacy, while food riots in the Midlands create the climate for the gripping tragedy of Coriolanus.
March 5th
Legacy Episode 3 of 3
The concluding part of Professor James Shapiro's history of Shakespeare in the reign of King James I. Shakespeare's late plays, such as The Winter's Tale and The Tempest, are often seen as mellow swansongs. Professor Shapiro gives us a different Shakespeare - a playwright still experimenting and alert to the troubled Jacobean world around him. He closes the series by reflecting on the legacies of king and playwright.
March 12th
Frankenstein: Birth of a Monster
The extraordinary story of how the 19-year-old Mary Shelley created Frankenstein, one of the world's most terrifying monsters. Daughter of Mary Woolstencraft, wife of Percy Byshe Shelley and close friend to Lord Byron, Mary Shelley's life was every bit as extraordinary as her most famous work. Dramatising the adventures, love affairs and tragedies of her young life, the film shows how her monstrous creation reflected her own extraordinary experiences.
The Secret Life of Books: Frankenstein
Some 200 years since it was written, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is now shorthand for the horrors of science run amok. But when author and anatomist Professor Alice Roberts returns to the 18-year-old Mary's manuscripts, she finds someone concerned with the very act of creation itself. She also discovers clues of another writer's influence, someone very close to Mary.
Alice's travels take her to the Villa Diodati in Geneva, where Mary and her partner Percy spent time with Lord Byron and she conceived the idea of Victor Frankenstein's creature. By showing the disastrous results of the obsessive Victor's attempts to create life, Mary is seen to be critiquing the Romantic ideal of the solitary, creative genius, a notion associated with poets Percy Shelley and Byron. Surprisingly, when examining Mary's original manuscript at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, Alice also sees written evidence of Percy's collaborative role in the creation of Victor.
In considering the influence of Mary's parents - her father was the radical philosopher William Godwin and her mother Mary was the author of A Vindication of the Rights of Women - Alice further shows that the ideas informing Frankenstein make the novel much more than a simple horror story. Mary's account does deal in death, but ultimately it provokes us to ask questions about how we live.
March 26th
George Bernard Shaw: My Astonishing Self
Award-winning Irish actor Gabriel Byrne explores the life, works and passions of George Bernard Shaw, a giant of world literature, and - like Byrne - an emigrant Irishman with the outsider's ability to observe, needle and puncture.
With Ireland in his heart, he made England his home and London his stage. His insight was ageless - his ideas still resonate almost 70 years after his death. He is one of only two people to have ever been awarded both the Nobel Prize for Literature and an Oscar.
Gabriel Byrne sees Shaw as a revolutionary - a literary anarchist. Sharing Shaw's perspective as an 'artistic exile', Byrne explores Shaw's radical and unapologetic political thinking, and his unwavering ability to charm and satirise the establishment that so adored him. It is the story of the most relevant thinker, artist and literary genius Ireland ever produced.
April 2nd
The Trouble With Tolstoy
At War With Himself
Alan Yentob reveals a difficult and troubled youth, obsessed with sex and gambling, who turned writer while serving as a soldier in Chechnya and the Crimea. Alan's expedition takes him to the Tatar city of Kazan, where Tolstoy was a teenager, as well as the idyllic Tolstoy country estate. Contributors include Tolstoy's great great grandson Vladimir Tolstoy.
April 9th
In Search of Happiness
The success of War and Peace brought Tolstoy fame, wealth and a massive mid-life crisis. Alan follows the writer through the tortured second half of his life as he transformed himself from aristocrat to anarchist and turned his back on his novels, his possessions and finally his wife of 48 years. Contributors include leading Russian commentators, as well as AN Wilson and the author of a new Tolstoy biography, Rosamund Bartlett
April 16th
The Secret World of Lewis Carroll
It's a timeless classic of children's literature and the third most-quoted book in English after the Bible and Shakespeare. But what lies behind the extraordinary appeal of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland to generations of adults and children alike? To mark the 150th anniversary of its publication, this documentary explores the life and imagination of the man who wrote it, the Reverend Charles Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll. Broadcaster and journalist Martha Kearney delves into the biographies of both Carroll himself and of the young girl, Alice Liddell, who inspired his most famous creation. Kearney's lifelong passion for Carroll's work began as a young girl, when she starred as Carroll's heroine Alice in her local village play. She discusses the book with a range of experts, biographers and distinguished cultural figures - from the actor Richard E Grant to children's author Philip Pullman - and explores with them the mystery of how a retiring, buttoned-up and meticulous mathematics don, who spent almost his entire life within the cloistered confines of Christ Church Oxford, was able to capture the world of childhood in such a captivating way.
April 23rd
WB Yeats: A Fanatic Heart
Bob Geldof examines the life and work of one of the 20th century's greatest poets, William Butler Yeats. Geldof argues that as a poet and statesman, at the vanguard of a cultural revolution, Yeats brought about immense change in Ireland's struggle for independence, without firing a bullet. Written by Geldof and Roy Foster, this incisive and moving documentary features readings by Bill Nighy, Van Morrison, Richard E Grant, Colin Farrell, Bono, Edna O'Brien, Ardal O'Hanlon, Noel Gallagher and Liam Neeson.
April 30th
Anjelica Huston on James Joyce: A Shout in the Street
James Joyce led an eventful and turbulent life. From the beginning, he was something of an outsider. His childhood was impoverished and chaotic. Nonetheless, his alcoholic father ensured that he was educated at Ireland's elite schools. From an early age, Joyce revealed an impulse to rebel against social conventions. He not only rejected the Catholic religion, but, in his own words, 'declared open war on the Catholic church by all that I write and say and do.' He was a brilliant student - winning numerous scholarships and awards - and he was also sexually precocious, frequenting Dublin's prostitutes while still very young.
Then, on June 16th, 1904, he became intimate with a young chambermaid from Galway called Nora Barnacle. That date would become the day on which he set all the action of his great novel, Ulysses. Nora became his lifelong partner, and they spent the rest of their lives outside Ireland. For many years, they lived in miserable conditions, but Joyce was ready to sacrifice himself - and others, when necessary - to further his artistic ambitions. Eventually, he won worldwide literary celebrity, but he continued to live in some chaos, and he was still subject to recurrent eye complaints and other serious illnesses.
When the Nazis invaded France, he was concerned for the safety of his grandson Stephen, who was half-Jewish. Eventually, he managed to find sanctuary in Switzerland, but he died just a few weeks after he and his family had arrived there. Since then, his fame has grown, and he is now recognised by a towering figure in world literature, with Ulysses often cited as the most influential work of fiction of the twentieth century.
The story of Joyce's life and work is presented by the celebrated Oscar-winning actress, Anjelica Huston. She grew up in the west of Ireland, and has had a close association with Joyce's work for many years. She delivered an acclaimed stage performance of Molly Bloom's famous soliloquy from Ulysses some years ago, and also played the lead female role in the last movie made by her father, the legendary director, John Huston. This was an adaptation of Joyce's most famous short story, The Dead. This is generally reckoned to be one of the finest short stories ever written in the English language. Anjelica has said that, when she first read The Dead, it 'spoke to her soul', and her performance in her father's film is little short of sublime. The Dead is widely regarded as the most successful - and the most authentic - adaptation of Joyce's work. However, it was filmed on a sound stage in downtown Los Angeles.
May 7th
John Steinbeck: Voice of America
Melvyn Bragg travels from Oklahoma to California to examine the enduring legacy of the Nobel Prize-winning author John Steinbeck.
In novels such as The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men and Cannery Row, Steinbeck gave voice to ordinary people who were battling poverty, drought and homelessness. Travelling the famous Route 66 from the midwest to the Pacific coast, Melvyn assesses how relevant Steinbeck's work is today. He visits the site of the 1930s dust bowl in Oklahoma; the California orchards where bloody political battles were fought between migrant labourers and growers; and the Monterey coastline where Steinbeck developed his ideas on ecology.
Melvyn makes a case for Steinbeck as one of the great voices of American literature.
How Do You Solve a Problem Like Lolita
Documentary following writer and broadcaster Stephen Smith on the trail of Vladimir Nabokov, the man behind the controversial novel, Lolita. The journey takes him from the shores of Lake Geneva to Nabokov's childhood haunts in the Russian countryside near St Petersburg, to the New York streets and a road trip through small-town America. Along the way he meets fellow Nabokov admirer Martin Amis and pays a visit to Playboy's literary editor who is publishing part of Nabokov's last work.
Herge: In the Shadow of Tintin
Hergé dedicated his whole life to Tintin, and it was not always easy. "Tintin is me: my eyes, my lungs, my feelings, my guts!" he explained to justify why he did not want anyone else to continue his star character's adventures after he died.
Georges Remi, otherwise known as Hergé, will always be remembered as the creator of Tintin. It was thanks to this series that he became one of the great authors and artists of the Twentieth Century, who made an impression not only on millions of young readers but also on the contemporary art scene.
But he was a tormented man who was consumed by his work, preoccupied with spirituality and obsessed with achieving perfection - a man much more complex than has been thought for a long time. And, like many great artists, fame did nothing to lessen his burden.
It is the story of Hergé that this documentary follows, making use of exceptional access to the archives of Studios Hergé and Moulinsart.
Narnia's Lost Poet The Secret Lives and Loves of CS Lewis
CS Lewis's biographer AN Wilson goes in search of the man behind Narnia - best-selling children's author and famous Christian writer, but an under-appreciated Oxford academic and an aspiring poet who never achieved the same success in writing verse as he did prose.
Although his public life was spent in the all-male world of Oxford colleges, his private life was marked by secrecy and even his best friend JRR Tolkien didn't know of his marriage to an American divorcee late in life. Lewis died on the same day as the assassination of John F Kennedy and few were at his burial - his alcoholic brother was too drunk to tell people the time of the funeral. Fifty years on, his life as a writer is now being remembered alongside other national literary heroes in Westminster Abbey's Poets' Corner.
In this personal and insightful film, Wilson paints a psychological portrait of a man who experienced fame in the public arena, but whose personal life was marked by the loss of the three women he most loved.
Why does the poet who began as the golden boy of the 1930s and ended up as the craggy-faced laureate-we-never-had have a greater hold on our imaginations than ever before? Thirty-five years after his BBC film The Auden Landscape, director Adam Low returns to the poet and his work. Following Auden's surges of popularity from featuring in Four Weddings and a Funeral to being the poet New Yorkers turned to after 9/11, Low reveals how Auden's poetry helps us to have a better understanding of the 21st century and the tumultuous political climate in which we now live. Writers Alan Bennett, Polly Clark, Alexander McCall Smith and Richard Curtis, and poets James Fenton and Paul Muldoon share their passion for Auden and celebrate the potent impact of his work. Hopscotch Films.
RETURN TO TS Eliotland
AN Wilson explores the life and work of TS Eliot. From the halls of Harvard University to a Somerset village, via a Margate promenade shelter, he follows the spiritual and psychological journey that Eliot took in his most iconic poems. From The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock to The Waste Land and from Ash Wednesday to Four Quartets, Wilson traces Eliot's life story as it informs his greatest works.
Wilson travels to the places that inspired them, visiting Eliot's family's holiday home on the Massachusetts coast, following the poet to Oxford, where he met and married his first wife, Vivien Haigh-Wood, and on to London. He explores how Eliot's realisation that he and Vivien were fundamentally incompatible influenced The Waste Land and examines how Eliot's subsequent conversion to Anglicanism coloured his later works. Wilson concludes his journey by visiting some of the key locations around which the poet structured his final masterpiece, Four Quartets.
Eliot's poetry is widely regarded as complex and difficult; it takes on weighty ideas of time, memory, faith and belief, themes which Wilson argues have as much relevance today as during the poet's lifetime. And whilst hailing his genius, Wilson does not shy away from confronting the discomforting and dark side of his work - the poems now widely regarded as anti-Semitic.
Return To Betjemanland
In 1984, Sir John Betjeman died and was buried at St Enodoc Church, close to the village of Tribetherick in north Cornwall.
Writer, critic and biographer of Betjeman, AN Wilson, visits the real and imagined places that shaped his life to reveal the life and work of the poet and broadcaster.
Wilson explores how Betjeman came to speak to, and for, the nation in a remarkable way. As a poet Betjeman was writing popular verse for the many, not the few. With his brilliant documentaries for television, Betjeman entertained millions with infectious enthusiasm as he explained his many passions and bugbears.
As a campaigner to preserve the national heritage, Betjeman was tireless in his devotion to conservation and preservation, fighting the planners, politicians and developers - railing against their abuse of power and money.
Wilson investigates this by visiting locations in London, Oxford, Cornwall, Somerset and Berkshire. He travels through a landscape of beautiful houses and churches, beaches and seaside piers - a place that Wilson calls Betjemanland.
In doing so he also reveals the complexity and contradictions of Betjeman - how Betjeman, the snob with a love of aristocrats and their country houses, is the same person who is thrilled by the more proletarian pleasures of the Great British seaside; how the poetry of Betjeman shows us that he is haunted by childhood memory, has religious faith but also doubt and is in thrall to love and infatuation; and how the man his friends called Betjeman was full of joie de vivre, but also suffered great melancholy and guilt whilst living an agonised double life.
Sincerely, F. Scott Fitzgerald
Novelist Jay McInerney explores the life and writing of F Scott Fitzgerald, whose masterwork The Great Gatsby has just been filmed for the fifth time. Fitzgerald captured the reckless spirit of New York life in the roaring twenties - the flappers, the parties, the bootleg liquor, the inevitable reckoning, and the hangover to come. In Gatsby, he created a character who reinvented himself for love - just as Fitzgerald would, not once, but twice. Fitzgerald never wrote an autobiography. He left us something better - letters. Romantic, arrogant, humble letters; letters to editors, publishers, lovers, or friends. These letters reveal the inner thoughts of a man whose real life was never far from the fiction he wrote.
The Marvellous World of Roald Dahl
Fighter pilot, inventor, spy - the life of Roald Dahl is often stranger than fiction. From crashing his plane over Africa to hobnobbing in Hollywood, and his remarkable encounters with everyone from Walt Disney to President Roosevelt - this is the story of his greatest adventures, and how his real-life escapades find expression in his most famous books, from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to Matilda.
Through a vast collection of his letters, writings and archive, the story is told largely in his own words, with contributions from his last wife Liccy, daughter Lucy and biographer Donald Sturrock. Long-term collaborator and illustrator Quentin Blake also creates exclusive new drawings for the film which are specially animated to bring Dahl's marvellous world to life.
Dylan Thomas: A Poet's Guide
Famous for his womanising, drinking and tragic death, Dylan Thomas is the rock star of 20th-century poetry. But for Welsh poet Owen Sheers, his tempestuous life often obscures the power of his poetry. Sheers takes us on a journey that reveals Dylan Thomas as a visionary and a craftsman.
George Orwell: A Life in Pictures
Despite passing at only 46, Orwell left an almost imposingly large body of written work. Readers who’ve savored it and want to learn, hear, and see more come up against a certain difficulty: we have a few photographs of Orwell, but as far as sound or film, nothing exists. Yet that didn’t stop BBC Four from putting together George Orwell: A Life in Pictures, casting actor Chris Langham as Orwell, having him speak Orwell’s words, and inserting him, Zelig-like, into historical footage real and reconstructed of Orwell’s places and times. Documentary purists may balk at this, but strong choices make strong films. As a compulsive reader of Orwell myself, I’ll take any chance I can to experience more richly the mind of this child of the “lower upper-middle class” whose fascination with poverty drove him down into it; this socialist who loathed both the trappings and proponents of socialism; this worshiper of hard manual labor who understood more about the impact of words than most of us do today; this famed writer who cloaked his given name of Eric Arthur Blair to better retreat, alone, into his gray, quasi-ascetic English pleasures.
Dangerous Edge: A Life of Graham Greene
The first American-produced documentary about Graham Greene, Dangerous Edge: A Life of Graham Greene, weaves his novels, including "The Quiet American," "Brighton Rock," "The End of the Affair" and "The Third Man," and movies into the story of his life and reveals an extraordinary man who traveled the globe to escape the boredom of ordinary existence.
The Real Doctor Zhivago
Dr Zhivago is one of the best-known love stories of the 20th century, but the setting of the book also made it famous. It is a tale of passion and fear, set against a backdrop of revolution and violence. The film is what most people remember, but the story of the writing of the book has more twists, intrigue and bravery than many a Hollywood blockbuster.
In this documentary, Stephen Smith traces the revolutionary beginnings of this bestseller, to it becoming a pawn of the CIA at the height of the Cold War. The writer of the novel, Boris Pasternak, in the words of his family, willingly committed acts of literary suicide in being true to the Russia he loved, but being honest about the Soviet regime he hated and despised. Under Stalin, writers and artists just disappeared if they didn't support the party line. Many were murdered.
Writing his book for over 20 tumultuous years, Boris Pasternak knew it could result in his death. It did result in his mistress being sent to the Gulag twice, but he had to have his say. This is the story of the writing of perhaps the bravest book ever published. It is the story before the film won Oscars and its author the Nobel Prize, it is the untold story of the real Dr Zhivago - Boris Pasternak.
Sylvia Plath: Inside the Bell Jar
Bringing to life that 'queer sultry summer' of 1953, this is the first film to unravel the story behind Sylvia Plath's seminal novel. The book captures the struggles of an ambitious young woman's attempts to deal with the constraints of 1950's America - the bright lights of New York dim, turn to depression and attempted suicide. The film weaves the autobiographic narrative of the book with the testimony of her friends, and daughter Frieda Hughes - some speaking for the first time.
Doris Lessing - The Reluctant Heroine
Another chance to see a rare film made with writer Doris Lessing, five years before her recent death at the age of 94. Alan Yentob meets this acerbic, forthright yet warm woman, winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize for literature. Brought up in southern Africa, she took London by storm in 1950. She has believed in 'ban the bomb' and telepathy, been a Communist and a 'Free Woman', written realist novels and science fiction. She is perhaps most remembered for her raw and revealing Golden Notebook, which inspired and influenced a generation of women.
The Dreams of William Golding
The Dreams of William Golding reveals the extraordinary life of one of the greatest English writers of the 20th century. With unprecedented access to the unpublished diaries in which Golding recorded his dreams, the film penetrates deep into his private obsessions and insecurities.
His daughter Judy and son David both speak frankly about their father's demons, and the film follows Golding from the impoverished schoolmaster whose first novel, Lord of the Flies, was published when he was forty-three years old, to his winning the Nobel Prize for literature in 1983.
Other contributors include Golding's biographer John Carey, philosopher John Gray, writer Nigel Williams, the dean of Salisbury Cathedral, the Very Revd June Osborne and best-selling author Stephen King. Benedict Cumberbatch, who starred in the 2004 BBC adaptation of Golding's sea trilogy To the Ends of the Earth, reads extracts from his books.
Seamus Heaney: Out of the Marvellous
A portrait of one of the greatest English-language poets of his generation, this joyful and penetrating documentary was made with the late Seamus Heaney's unprecedented collaboration. The film explores the key personal relationship in his life, that with his wife Marie, and follows him to Harvard, New York and London, to readings, signings and public interviews. Offering compelling insights into the working life of a major writer, it digs deep into the rich store of Heaney's poetry to reveal a man who lived his life fully; used his gifts to give expression to the great themes in all our lives of love, loss and longing; and managed, as a man and as a writer, to combine the simplicity of a farmer's son from County Derry with the sophistication of a major artist. Produced in 2009 by Ice Box Films for RTE.
The Dialogues with Solzhenitsyn
In this evocative two-part portrait of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, director Alexander Sokurov interprets the acclaimed writer s life based on two lengthy talks with Solzhenitsyn and his wife. DIALOGUES is not a straightforward biography but instead focuses on Solzhenitsyn s monologues and his discussions with Sokurov about Russian literature, folklore, history, and language. The result is a portrait of a Russian legend through his own words.
Philip Roth Unleashed
After Portnoy's Complaint launched him as a new literary voice, not to mention a scandalous one, Philip Roth went on to be hailed by many as America's greatest living writer. Never afraid to look hard at the extremes of human experience, he has been both consistently controversial and intensely private.
But now, having celebrated his 80th birthday in his home town of Newark, New Jersey, Roth, in conversation with Alan Yentob, is ready to tell the whole story in this special two-part film for imagine... Philip Roth Unleashed.
Wainwright: The Man Who Loved the Lakes
Capturing the beauty of the English Lake District, a documentary which traces the life of writer and artist Alfred Wainwright, the eccentric Lancastrian who created a series of iconic fell-walking books which he hand-wrote, illustrated and published himself in the 1950s. Celebrating the centenary of his birth, the film captures his passionate love affair with the Lakeland landscape and explores how his books have become guide-book classics for millions of fell-walkers.
Hitler, the Tiger and Me
imagine... tells the story of Judith Kerr, creator of some of our best-loved children's books, including Mog and The Tiger Who Came to Tea. Now 90, she still runs up stairs to work all day in her studio. Born in Berlin, she was forced to flee Germany aged nine as her father, a writer, was an outspoken opponent of the Nazis. Her children's novel When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit tells their story and is now a set text in German schools. With Alan Yentob, she revisits Berlin and takes tea in the London kitchen to which that tiger came. With Lauren Child, Michael Morpurgo and Michael Rosen.
My Astonishing Self: Gabriel Byrne on George Bernard Shaw
Award-winning Irish actor Gabriel Byrne explores the life, works and passions of George Bernard Shaw, a giant of world literature, and - like Byrne - an emigrant Irishman with the outsider's ability to observe, needle and puncture.
With Ireland in his heart, he made England his home and London his stage. His insight was ageless - his ideas still resonate almost 70 years after his death. He is one of only two people to have ever been awarded both the Nobel Prize for Literature and an Oscar.
Gabriel Byrne sees Shaw as a revolutionary - a literary anarchist. Sharing Shaw's perspective as an 'artistic exile', Byrne explores Shaw's radical and unapologetic political thinking, and his unwavering ability to charm and satirise the establishment that so adored him. It is the story of the most relevant thinker, artist and literary genius Ireland ever produced.
The Greatest Poem of World War One
In Parenthesis is considered one of the greatest ever literary works about war. TS Eliot called it a work of genius and WH Auden said it did for the British and Germans what Homer did for the Greeks and Trojans. Published in 1937, it is based intimately on the wartime experiences of its author David Jones, a Londoner who volunteered to fight when he was just 19. Unlike many war poets, Jones remained a private throughout the war, and he fought for longer than any other British writer. In this programme, the poet and author Owen Sheers traces the story of In Parenthesis, from an English parade ground to the carnage of the Somme offensive. Through readings of key passages, insights from poets such as Simon Armitage, and interviews with David Jones experts, he pieces together the similarities between the poem and David Jones' own war. He explores how In Parenthesis came to be written, and just what makes it such a supreme work. His journey culminates, like the poem, at Mametz Wood in northern France, where David Jones went into battle and encountered terrifying violence first hand.
Wilfred Owen - A Remembrance Tale
Jeremy Paxman presents a docudrama about tragic First World War poet Wilfred Owen, telling the poignant tale of his life from a childhood in Shropshire and northern England to his travels in pre-war France.
Paxman visits the sites of the battles in which he fought and died, and there are reconstructions from Owen's experience in the trenches and in hospital, when he was writing most intensely.
JRR Tolkien: Designer of Worlds
For many people, the English writer JRR Tolkien (1892-1973) is above all the author of the Lord of the Rings, the film series directed and produced by Peter Jackson from 2001 to 2003. But what most people are unaware of is that this immensely successful novel is only the tip of a monumental corpus, started in the 1910s, and which Tolkien pursued to the day he died in 1973. Even then...
Translated in over sixty languages, Tolkien's books have deeply marked the imagination of millions of readers throughout the world. However, in a period of triumphant Hollywood blockbusters, part of the mystery may be fading away, something that is attached to a unique type of literary creativity.
This documentary goes back to the origins of this tremendous creation and, at the same time, it is an opportunity to rediscover the surprising personality of its author. Who was this quiet and scholarly man who taught languages and old English literature at Oxford? How was this gigantic project born? Going back and forth between ordinary reality and an immaterial and fabulously rich reality, the story offers to reveal the meaning of Tolkien's life as a marvelous adventure of the mind.
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