Omnibus: AL Rowse

16th century England historian AL Rowse (1903-1997) talks about his life, and people he knew including Bertrand Russell, Clement Attlee, HG Wells and Winston Churchill.

Dr. Alfred Leslie Rowse "is one of Britain's best known, and most controversial, historians. His specialist field is 16th century England, his reputation rests on such books as the England of Elizabeth, The Expansion of Elizabethan England and the Elizabethans and America....

His forays from history into fields usually of the preserve to the literary critics have provided some of the controversy….sacrilege to some,...modernising the text of Shakespeare’s plays to make them more accessible to the present day reader....

But Dr Rowse's interest go far beyond Tudor England. He’s a poet and has published many books not about the first Elizabethan age. One of the best known is A Cornish Childhood. Dr Rowse is Cornishman and very proud of Cornwall. His most recent book is called Glimpses of the Great, a series of pen portraits of famous people he has known in his long life - he is now in his eighties.

Presenter: Michael Oliver

First broadcast on the BBC World Service in 1985.