Percy Bysshe Shelley
Tuesday 3 July 2007 21:45-22:30 (Radio 3)
Isabel Hilton and guests discuss the life and work of the romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.
Despite the fact he died before his 30th birthday, his admirers have stretched from painter Rossetti to Karl Marx and radical journalist Paul Foot. He famously said that 'poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world' but two centuries on, what should we make of his life's fusion of the literary imagination and political activism?
Playlist
Ken Russell
Isabel Hilton talks to the filmmaker Ken Russell. Although best known for a distinguished film output, many of them on musical subjects, he began his career as a documentary photographer. As a new exhibition of recently-discovered pictures from the 1950s opens in London, Ken Russell recalls this earlier career and reflects on how his life as a photographer influenced his approach to film.
Ken Russel's Lost London Rediscovered is at the Proud Galleries, 5 Buckingham Street, London WC2N 6BP from July 4th. Entry is free.
View the Ken Russell Gallery
Shelley
And a new biography of Shelley seeks to write the life of the poet rather than the man - its author Ann Wroe, and the critic John Mullan join Isabel to discuss the Romantic poet and his place in culture today; and what we can learn from the scribblings in a poet's notebooks.
Being Shelley, by Anne Roe, is available now.
The Silent Twins
Isabel also talks to the composer Errolyn Wallen and librettist April de Angelis, who have collaborated on an opera based on the story of teenage twins imprisoned in Broadmoor in the 1980s for a wave of burglaries and arson attacks.
Performances of The Silent Twins are on the 5th, 8th, 14th and 16th July at the Almeida theatre, London.
Memoirs of The Pianist
And Alfred Hickling reports from the opening night in Manchester of a theatrical event based on the memoirs of the musician who inspired Polanski's film The Pianist.
The Pianist runs from 3rd-15th July at the 1830 Warehouse, Museum of Science and Industry, Manchester. It is part of the Manchester International Festival.
