From Alfred, Lord Tennyson to Ted Hughes, this remarkable three-CD set offers an audio tour of some of the greatest British poets from the last century. Thirty poets are included in all, each reading from their own work, often with their own spoken introductions.
The selection includes historic recordings by Tennyson and Robert Browning, and British Poet Laureates John Masefield, Cecil Day Lewis, and John Betjeman. There are unforgettable voices, such as Edith Sitwell and Dylan Thomas, and rare recordings by poets such as Philip Larkin and Edwin Morgan. Other poets included are Laurence Binyon, Robert Graves, Basil Bunting, Stevie Smith, Louis MacNeice, Stephen Spender, George Barker, David Gascoyne, Kingsley Amis, and Thom Gunn.
The majority of the recordings are taken from BBC broadcasts and are available here for the first time since they were broadcast, making this the most authoritative and exciting audio survey of a century of British poetry.
“A dream of the perfect literary cocktail party.”—Lev Grossman, Time, on The Spoken Word series
