Two Loves
Poetry and Music from the Age of Elizabeth I. Compiled and presented by Peggy Ashcroft and Julian Bream. Today is the 80th birthday of one of Britain's most celebrated and best-loved actresses, Peggy Ashcroft. This evening she joins Julian Bream in the elegant Long Gallery at Penshurst Place in Kent for a programme of Shakespeare's poetry and Dowland's music. Besides such famous poems as Orpheus with his Lute and Come away Death, Peggy Ashcroft includes extracts from Othello, Venus and Adonis, Phoenix and the Turtle and, of course, some of the sonnets. Julian Bream 's lute solos include John Dowland 's haunting Lachrymae, a galliard dedicated to 'the most Sacred Queene Elizabeth', settings of popular ballads and a fiendishly difficult fancy.
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Wild Nights | Essential Poems (To Fall in Love With)
Daisy Goodwin presents a visual anthology of poems about love, wild nights and marriage, dramatised in contemporary settings and read by well known actors. The erotic intensity of passionate encounters, the tenderness of the "morning after", the anguish of self-reproach and the joyful sound of wedding bells are all evoked as Daisy Goodwin continues to explore various stages of love through poetry. Celebrities including actress Alison Steadman, comedian Bill Bailey and actor Greg Wise recite poems by Shakespeare, Donne and Tennyson that are filmed in the style of mini-dramas.
Literacy | Powerful Texts
Programme aimed at GCSE English students, using a variety of poems and text extracts to deconstruct the work of authors such as Dickens, Shakespeare and Browning.