Early C20th Poets: W.H. Auden

W H Auden wrote some of the most beautiful and complex poetry of the 20th century. Best known to modern audiences as the author of “Stop all the Clocks”, read by John Hannah in Four Weddings and a Funeral, he grew up in Yorkshire and the Midlands, and his parents were a psychiatrist and a nurse; this provincial, professional background pervades his poetry with its images of industry and science. Like many of his generation, he was on the left and went to Spain to support the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War. But when World War Two started, he left for America, from where he observed the carnage with a combination of detachment and guilt. Like his contemporaries Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene and T.S Eliot, he converted to Christianity as an adult, and his later work is an extraordinary fusion of private love, public engagement and religious exploration. There are many recordings of him on TV chat shows in his later years, and his extraordinary,Rembrandtesque appearance and gravelly voice convey a public intellectual of a kind which no longer exists in the modern world. Join Charlie and Rupert as they explore the poetry of this brilliant and underestimated poet.