Melvyn Bragg and guests analyse 25 key poets and literary works, tracing the evolution of poetry over 550 years.

Since its debut in 1998, In Our Time has amassed a dedicated following of more than 2 million listeners. Hosted by Melvyn Bragg, with a panel of guest experts, each show features a plethora of fascinating facts and inspirational discourse on topics ranging from democracy to dark matter.

This specially curated collection celebrates the rich diversity of poetry in English, focusing on 25 major works and writers from the mediaeval era to the 20th Century. Opening with a programme on Geoffrey Chaucer, often called the father of English literature, it encompasses some of the greatest poets of all time, including John Donne, Pope, Milton, Emily Dickinson, Christina Rossetti, W B Yeats and Wilfred Owen.

Among the influential poems discussed are Shakespeare's sonnets, Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience, Coleridge's 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner', Wordsworth's 'The Prelude' and the epic that made Byron famous, 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage'. Also featured is a bonus episode, 'The Sonnet', exploring the most enduring form in the poet's armoury and how its fourteen lines have exercised poetic minds.

Packed with stimulating ideas and spellbinding rhetoric, this absorbing anthology is guaranteed to bring unfettered enjoyment to all lovers of the written word.

Production credits

Presented by Melvyn Bragg

Produced by Simon Tillotson, Thomas Morris and Natalia Fernandez

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on the following dates:

Chaucer 9 February 2006

Piers Plowman 29 October 2020

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight 13 December 2018

Shakespeare's Sonnets 24 June 2021

John Donne 12 January 2023

Milton 7 March 2002

Pope 9 November 2006

Songs of Innocence and of Experience 23 June 2016

Lyrical Ballads 8 March 2012

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner 4 March 2021

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage 6 January 2011

The Prelude 22 November 2007

John Clare 9 February 2017

Emily Dickinson 11 May 2017

Christina Rossetti 1 December 2011

The Charge of the Light Brigade 10 January 2008

Tennyson's In Memoriam 30 June 2011

Aurora Leigh 24 March 2016

William Morris 5 July 2018

Gerard Manley Hopkins 21 March 2019

Walt Whitman 27 April 2023

Thomas Hardy's Poetry 13 January 2022

Yeats and Mysticism 31 January 2002

Yeats and Irish Politics 17 April 2008

Wilfred Owen 27 October 2022

The Sonnet 21 June 2001