Beowulf: Poem, Poet and Hero
Heather O’Donoghue (Bloomsbury, £20)
A SEARCH of every bookshelf in the house has produced a dozen Beowulf-related books, including Rosemary Sutcliff’s Beowulf: Dragonslayer (eighth-birthday present), three other versions for children, Bea Wolf (a graphic novel), translations by J. R. R. Tolkien, Howell Chickering, Michael Alexander and Seamus Heaney, the script for Robert Zemeckis’s 2007 film version and two sets of exam notes. Five of our children admitted to studying it at school or university and the other two said they knew the plot thanks to playing a ‘hack and slash’ Beowulf computer game.
It wasn’t a set book in my day, but, 20 years ago, I saw Heaney’s performed in an old boatshed in west Cork and later listened to a recording of Heaney reading it (strongly recommended if you are unfamiliar with the poem, which almost certainly began life 1,200 years ago or more as a recitation). Since then,
