John Milton: Writing of Paradise

Liz Waid and Joshua Leo look at the singer Prudence Mabhena. She has faced many difficulties in her life, but today she is making beautiful music.http://spotlightenglish.comDownload our app for Android at http://bit.ly/spotlight-androidDownload our app for iOS at http://bit.ly/sp ... Show More

How do you greet people? Do you say hello, or shake hands? Tell us what you think. And then listen to today's Spotlight program on handshakes.http://spotlightenglish.comDownload our app for Android at http://bit.ly/spotlight-androidDownload our app for iOS at http://bit.ly/spotli ... Show More

How can the world learn about a terrible war? Liz Waid and Adam Navis tell about a film about real life in the Syrian civil war.http://spotlightenglish.comDownload our app for Android at http://bit.ly/spotlight-androidDownload our app for iOS at http://bit.ly/spotlight-appleFaceb ... Show More

Nearly four centuries after his death, no writer has matched William Shakespeare’s influence across drama, theatre and poetry but a few have come close. John Milton, say his fans, works on an altogether different, higher plane. In Paradise Lost – one of the most significant poems ... Show More

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the celebrated Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas (1914 - 1953). He wrote some of his best poems before he was twenty in the first half of his short, remarkable life, and was prolific in the second half too with poems such as those set in London under the Bl ... Show More

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the celebrated Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas (1914 - 1953). He wrote some of his best poems before he was twenty in the first half of his short, remarkable life, and was prolific in the second half too with poems such as those set in London under the Bl ... Show More

In a special episode of the Poetry Podcast, Tracy K. Smith, Marilyn Nelson, and Terrance Hayes join Kevin Young to read their work, and to discuss its relationship to protest and liberation. Tracy K. Smith served two terms as a U.S. poet laureate, and has won an Anisfield-Wolf Bo ... Show More

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and works of Emily Dickinson, arguably the most startling and original poet in America in the C19th. According to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, her correspondent and mentor, writing 15 years after her death, "Few events in American literary ... Show More

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and works of Emily Dickinson, arguably the most startling and original poet in America in the C19th. According to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, her correspondent and mentor, writing 15 years after her death, "Few events in American literary ... Show More

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Hardy (1840 -1928) and his commitment to poetry, which he prized far above his novels. In the 1890s, once he had earned enough from his fiction, Hardy stopped writing novels altogether and returned to the poetry he had largely put aside sinc ... Show More

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Hardy (1840 -1928) and his commitment to poetry, which he prized far above his novels. In the 1890s, once he had earned enough from his fiction, Hardy stopped writing novels altogether and returned to the poetry he had largely put aside sinc ... Show More

Toni Morrison's literary and academic career was honoured with a Pulitzer Prize, Nobel Prize and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Her writing explored, celebrated, questioned and critiqued the space of black lives in America, up until her death on Monday at the age of 88. Today ... Show More

No less a figure than the national bard, William Shakespeare, is nominated for great life status by poetry curator and TV producer, Daisy Goodwin. Dominic Dromgoole, Artistic Director of the Globe Theatre joins Matthew Parris to put flesh on the life that is remarkably light on k ... Show More