The Essay

1819 was a stunningly fertile year for John Keats, when he wrote five of the greatest odes in the English language and actually introduced words and phrases never heard before - "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.....", "Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty....." . Five leading contemporary poets each celebrate a single ode. 3. Frances Leviston celebrates perhaps Keats' best-loved and most frequent...

Clive Anderson has always been fascinated by Harold Godwinson whose life and reign came to a bloody end at the Battle of Hastings in 1066, which a thousand years on is still the most famous date in English history. In his humorous look at King Harold, he wonders why Shakespeare never chose to write a play about his life - which has all the elements of a gripping historical drama, and a great trage...

Stephen Baxter creates a vivid portrait of Edward the Confessor. By any standards, Edward the Confessor lived a remarkable life, and left a still more remarkable legacy. He was a central figure in a period of turbulent politics, characterised by factional intrigue, rebellion, invasion and conquest. He personally experienced dramatic reversals in fortune, spending 25 years in exile before reigning...

Aethelred's name is a combination of the Old English word aethel, meaning 'noble, excellent', and raed, meaning 'advice, counsel'. Simon Keynes probes the life of this Anglo-Saxon monarch who ruled over one of the most turbulent times of English history. Producer: Sarah Taylor

The return of the major series which rediscovers the Anglo-Saxons through vivid portraits of thirty individuals - women as well as men, famous we well as humble - written and presented by leading historians, archaeologists and enthusiasts in the field. Starting at the lonely grave of an anonymous smith buried in 7th century rural Lincolnshire, Leslie Webster vividly recreates the life of the smith...

Michael Wood on Alfred the Great, King of Wessex and king of the Anglo-Saxons. Michael Wood chronicles Alfred's achievements: his writings; his reflections on kingship; his military skill; his rejuvenation of education and his legal expertise. Here are Alfred's own words about kingship. 'What I set out to do was to virtuously and justly administer the authority given to me. And I wanted to do it -...

Anglo-Saxon scholar and guide at Durham Cathedral where Bede is buried, Lilian Groves explores the life and times of the saint widely regarded as one of the greatest theological scholars who gave to the world 'The Ecclesiastical History of the English People' and marvels at the thousands of visitors from around the world who still come to worship at his tomb. In his lifetime, Bede lived in Northum...

Another chance to hear an Essay by the Nobel prize-winner the late Seamus Heaney, recorded before he died in 2013. This is his portrait of the great Beowulf bard and of the court poet in general - known as the "scop" in old English - a man skilled in song and the pure art of story telling. Producer: Beaty Rubens

Most of these Anglo-Saxon Portraits are of named individuals, and Eadfrith, the scribe who wrote and ornamented the magnificent Lindisfarne Gospel in around 700, is no exception. But Richard Gameson's vivid and detailed account of Eadfrith is also a fascinating survey of the many unnamed scribes from the Anglo-Saxon period. A leading expert from the University of Durham on the history of the book,...

Historian Tony Morris explores the life of Cuthbert, the popular saint of the Northeast, and his continuing appeal today, both on and far beyond his home, the island of Lindisfarne.

Martin Carver tells the sensational story of the unearthing of Britain's richest ever grave, at Sutton Hoo, in spring 1939. He goes on to describe the role of his own team from the University of York in the second wave of excavations there, and vividly recreates the life, death and burial of its probable inhabitant, King Raedwald. With a fabulous eye for detail, he describes some of the 263 object...

'Dear Albrecht, Everyone had hair like that - did they? I'll take your word for it. You were very good at hair, can I just say?' In a series of imaginary correspondences, Ian Sansom is writing letters to five of history's most celebrated artists and interrogating them about, well, just about everything. 'Dear Caravaggio, you're the sort of man who might know: what is wrong with us?' As the missive...

'Dear Albrecht, Everyone had hair like that - did they? I'll take your word for it. You were very good at hair, can I just say?' In a series of imaginary correspondences, Ian Sansom is writing letters to five of history's most celebrated artists and interrogating them about, well, just about everything. 'Dear Caravaggio, you're the sort of man who might know: what is wrong with us?' As the missive...

'Dear Albrecht, Everyone had hair like that - did they? I'll take your word for it. You were very good at hair, can I just say?' In a series of imaginary correspondences, Ian Sansom is writing letters to five of history's most celebrated artists and interrogating them about, well, just about everything. 'Dear Caravaggio, you're the sort of man who might know: what is wrong with us?' As the missive...

'Dear Albrecht, Everyone had hair like that - did they? I'll take your word for it. You were very good at hair, can I just say?' In a series of imaginary correspondences, Ian Sansom is writing letters to five of history's most celebrated artists and interrogating them about, well, just about everything. 'Dear Caravaggio, you're the sort of man who might know: what is wrong with us?' As the missive...

'Dear Albrecht, Everyone had hair like that - did they? I'll take your word for it. You were very good at hair, can I just say?' In a series of imaginary correspondences, Ian Sansom is writing letters to five of history's most celebrated artists and interrogating them about, well, just about everything. 'Dear Caravaggio, you're the sort of man who might know: what is wrong with us?' As the missive...

The final run of Essays in the long-running series which explores the impact of the First World War on individual artists through the prism of a single great work of art. 4.Alex Walton recalls the Australian artist, Isobel - "Iso" - Rae, who spent the war in the Etaples art colony in the South of France, but whose work, as a female artist, has long been overlooked. Born in Australia in 1860 and tr...

The final run of Essays in the long-running series which explores the impact of the First World War on individual artists through the prism of a single great work of art. 3.Jane Potter on The Forbidden Zone, a depiction of nursing life at the Front by Mary Borden. Mary Borden was an Anglo-American novelist who served for four years as a nurse in a military hospital at the Front. Jane Potter celebr...

The final run of Essays in the long-running series which explores the impact of the First World War on individual artists through the prism of a single great work of art. 2.Janet Montefiore on Rudyard Kipling's 1922 collection, Epitaphs On 27 September 1915, 8,000 out of the 10,000 British troops who took part in the disastrous Battle of Loos were killed or wounded. One of these, 2nd Lieutenant Jo...

The final run of Essays in the long-running series which explores the impact of the First World War on individual artists through the prism of a single great work of art. 1.Imaobong Umoren tells the story behind W.E.B. Dubois' seminal editorial, Returning Soldiers, which laid the early foundations of the Black Lives Matter campaign. Born in 1868 in Massachusetts, Du Bois was raised by a single mot...

Poet Simon Armitage talks about reading Ted Hughes as a child and, later, finding an unexpected in tenderness the poet's work. This essay includes a close reading of Hughes's poem Full Moon and Little Frieda. Ted Hughes died in 2018, and we are still arguing about his legacy. In a new series of the Radio 3 Essay, leading poets bring a sharp eye to the poems themselves, reminding us why Hughes is r...

Poet Zaffar Kunial explores Ted Hughes's personal obsession with dates and anniversaries. Ted Hughes died in 1998, and we are still arguing about his legacy. In a new series of the Radio 3 Essay, leading poets bring a sharp eye to the poems themselves, reminding us why Hughes is regarded as one of the 20th-century's greatest writers, and exploring how the works match up to, inform and contradict w...

Poet Karen McCarthy Woolf on finding solace in Hughes's work during a troubled childhood. To her his books were more a mood: a dark and brooding presence but one that resonated. That subconscious memory left a deep and metaphorical imprint that has infused her own work in its relationships with landscape, loss and grief. Ted Hughes died in 1998, and we are still arguing about his legacy. In this s...

Ted Hughes died in 1998, and we are still arguing about his legacy. In this series of the Radio 3 Essay, leading poets bring a sharp eye to the poems themselves, reminding us why Hughes is regarded as one of the 20th-century's greatest writers, and exploring how the works match up to, inform and contradict what we know of the man. Ted Hughes is perhaps best known for his poems about creatures - fo...

Poet Sean O'Brien considers the reputations of two very different poets: the raw versus the cooked, the shaman versus the rationalist, Ted Hughes versus Philip Larkin. Ted Hughes died in 1998, and we are still arguing about his legacy. In this series of the Radio 3 Essay, leading poets bring a sharp eye to the poems themselves, reminding us why Hughes is regarded as one of the 20th-century's great...