28 min listen
Auden
FromIn Our Time
ratings:
Length:
53 minutes
Released:
Dec 19, 2019
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and poetry of WH Auden (1907-1973) up to his departure from Europe for the USA in 1939. As well as his personal life, he addressed suffering and confusion, and the moral issues that affected the wider public in the 1930s and tried to unpick what was going wrong in society and to understand those times. He witnessed the rise of totalitarianism in the austerity of that decade, travelling through Germany to Berlin, seeing Spain in the Civil War and China during its wars with Japan, often collaborating with Christopher Isherwood. In his lifetime his work attracted high praise and intense criticism, and has found new audiences in the fifty years since his death, sometimes taking literally what he meant ironically.
With
Mark Ford
Poet and Professor of English at University College London
Janet Montefiore
Professor Emerita of 20th Century English Literature at the University of Kent
And
Jeremy Noel-Tod
Senior Lecturer in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia
Producer: Simon Tillotson
With
Mark Ford
Poet and Professor of English at University College London
Janet Montefiore
Professor Emerita of 20th Century English Literature at the University of Kent
And
Jeremy Noel-Tod
Senior Lecturer in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia
Producer: Simon Tillotson
Released:
Dec 19, 2019
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (100)
Writing and Political Oppression: Melvyn Bragg examines whether writers have a political role in modern society. by In Our Time