The Prelude

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the greatest long poems in the English language - The Prelude. Begun in Northern Germany during the terrible winter of 1798 by a young and dreadfully homesick William Wordsworth, The Prelude was to be his masterpiece - an epic retelling of his own life and the foundation stone of English Romanticism. In language of aching beauty wordsworth expressed thoughts about memory, identity, nature and experience familiar to anybody who has walked alone among the hills. With Rosemary Ashton, Quain Professor of English Language and Literature at University College London; Stephen Gill, University Professor of English Literature and Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford; Emma Mason, Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Warwick.

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Guests

• Rosemary Ashton 10 episodes
  Quain Professor of English Language and Literature at University College London
• Stephen Gill No other episodes
  University Professor of English Literature and Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford
• Emma Mason No other episodes
  Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Warwick

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Programme ID: b00899w0

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00899w0

Auto-category: 821.7 (English poetry)

Hello (First sentence from this episode)

Hello, the winter of 1798 was a terrible one across Europe, allegedly the coldest of the century.