Book In
Book In is a podcast in which brothers Rupert and Charlie Fordham discuss all things English Literature. From Chaucer to the present day, covering drama, novels and poetry, they cover all the classics and much more, from the UK, Ireland, the US, Europe and the rest of the world. Informative but lighthearted, Book In is suitable for all readers, and will be helpful for students doing GCSE, A-Level and university English degrees as well.
Both Rupert and Charlie have been keen readers all their lives and both studied English at university. For many years Charlie taught English at GCSE and A-level.
Book In
W.B. Yeats - An Irish Airman, Rough Beasts and Golden Birds
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“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold” – the famous lines from W.B Yeats’ visionary and apocalyptic poem The Second Coming are as resonant today as they were when he wrote them in the aftermath of the First World War, with Europe decimated economically, spiritually and culturally. He wrote that “The best lack all conviction, and the worst/Are full of passionate intensity”, and as he grew older, his poetry articulated the worries and anxieties of the age. But he remained a private as well as a public artist, and in his later poems he explored the role of the artist in society, and confronted old age, illness and mortality in some of the greatest poems he ever wrote. But why did W.H.Auden call him silly? Was it OK that within the space of a few hours he proposed not only to Maud Gonne, but also her daughter? And what was automatic writing? Join Rupert and Charlie in the second part of the Book In episode on W.B.Yeats.