Service Alert
Delay in delivery of Direct to Player materials
You may experience a delay in delivery of Direct to Player materials. All requests for materials will be delivered as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience.
You may experience a delay in delivery of Direct to Player materials. All requests for materials will be delivered as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience.
Showing 161 - 180 of 19505 items
By Rabindranath Tagore. 2010
The poems of Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) are among the most haunting and tender in Indian and in world literature, expressing…
a profound and passionate human yearning. His ceaselessly inventive works deal with such subjects as the interplay between God and the world, the eternal and transient, and with the paradox of an endlessly changing universe that is in tune with unchanging harmonies. Poems such as 'Earth' and 'In the Eyes of a Peacock' present a picture of natural processes unaffected by human concerns, while others, as in 'Recovery - 14', convey the poet's bewilderment about his place in the world. And exuberant works such as 'New Rain' and 'Grandfather's Holiday' describe Tagore's sheer joy at the glories of nature or simply in watching a grandchild play.By Rudyard Kipling. 1993
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) is often regarded as the unofficial Laureate of the British Empire. Yet his writing reveals a ferociously…
independent figure at times violently opposed to the dominant political and literary tendencies of his age. Arranged in chronological order, this diverse selection of his poetry shows the development of Kipling's talent, his deepening maturity and the growing sombreness of his poetic vision. Ranging from early, exhilarating celebrations of British expansion overseas, including 'Mandalay' and 'Gunga Din', to the dignified and inspirational 'If -' and the later, deeply moving 'Epitaphs of the War' - inspired by the death of Kipling's only son - it clearly illustrates the scope and originality of his work. It also offers a compelling insight into the Empire both at its peak and during its decline in the early years of the twentieth century.By John Milton. 1992
The poems of John Milton (1608-74) have inspired readers for generations and the selection in this new edition spans his…
entire career, from his earliest works to the magnificent epics of his later life. The devotional ‘On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity’, his first great poem, anticipates the probing religious questions of Paradise Lost. Works such as ‘L’Allegro’ and ‘Il Penseroso’ consider divisions of loyalties, while ‘A Masque’ (‘Comus’) explores Milton’s great theme of temptation, and the pastoral elegy ‘Lycidas’ contemplates mortality and the meaning of human life. This volume includes considerable selections from Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained - Milton’s late epics on the Fall of Man and Christ’s temptation in the wilderness - and the complete Samson Agonistes, in which the great hero undergoes a profound crisis of faith in his final hours.By Osip Mandelshtam. 1970
By Roger McGough. 2006
An updated selection of Roger McGough's finest, best-loved verse. The complete span of McGough's writing, from the 1960s to the…
new millennium, is represented. 'McGough's trademarks: the craft worn as lightly as the crown, the jokes that are something more, the underlying heartache, the acute sense of the way time slips away' Ian McMillan, Poetry Review 'McGough has done for poetry what champagne does for weddings' Time OutBy John Keats. 2019
Over the course of his short life, John Keats (1795-1821) honed a raw talent into a brilliant poetic maturity. By…
the end of his brief career, he had written poems of such beauty, imagination and generosity of spirit, that he had - unwittingly - fulfilled his wish that he should ‘be among the English poets after my death’. This wide-ranging selection of Keats’s poetry contains youthful verse, such as his earliest known poem ‘Imitation of Spenser’; poems from his celebrated collection of 1820 - including ‘Lamia’, ‘Isabella’, ‘The Eve of St Agnes’, ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ and ‘Hyperion’ - and later celebrated works such as ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci’. Also included are many poems considered by Keats to be lesser work, but which illustrate his more earthy, playful side and superb ear for everyday language.By William Wordsworth. 2004
One of the major poets of Romanticism, Wordsworth epitomized the spirit of his age with his celebration of the natural…
world and the spontanous expression of feeling. This volume contains a rich selection from the most creative phase of his life, including extracts from his masterpiece, The Prelude, and the best-loved of his shorter poems such as 'Composed Upon Westminster Bridge', 'Tintern Abbey', 'I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud', 'Lucy Gray', and 'Michael'. Together these poems demonstrate not only Wordsworth's astonishing range and power, but the sustained and coherent vision that informed his work.By Tony Harrison. 2006
A revised edition of Tony Harrison's award-winning Selected Poems This indispensable new selection of Tony Harrison's poems includes over sixty…
poems from his famous sonnet sequence The School of Eloquence and the remarkable long poem 'v.', a meditation in a vandalized Leeds graveyard which caused enormous controversy when it was broadcast on Channel 4 in 1987 and is now regarded as one of the key poems of the late twentieth century.This substantially revised and updated edition now also features a generous selection of Harrison's most recent work, including the acclaimed poems he wrote for the Guardian on the Gulf War and then from the front line in the Bosnian War which won him the Wilfred Owen Award for Poetry in 2007.Selected Poems is a collection to be savoured by fans of Carol Ann Duffy, Seamus Heaney, Simon Armitage and Sophie Hannah.'A voracious appetite for language. Brilliant, passionate, outrageous, abrasive, but also, as in the family sonnets, immeasurably tender' Harold Pinter'In the front rank of contemporary British poets. Harrison's range is exhilarating, his clarity and technical mastery a sharp pleasure' Melvyn Bragg'The poem "v." is the most outstanding social poem of the last twenty-five years. Seldom has a British poem of such personal intensity had such universal range' Martin Booth'Poems written in a style which I feel I have all my life been waiting for' Stephen Spender'A poet of great technical accomplishment whose work insists that it is speech rather than page-bound silence' Sean O'Brien, The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century PoetryBy Alfred Lord Tennyson. 2003
'Tennyson', wrote T. S. Eliot, 'has the finest ear of any English poet since Milton,' and his verse remains unrivalled…
in its combination of verbal richness, emotional depth and intellectual engagement. Tennyson drew on classical and medieval legends in poems like 'The Lotos-Eaters' (1832) and 'The Lady of Shalott' (1832) to explore the spiritual tensions of the nineteenth century. In one of the great works of his maturity, 'In Memoriam' (1850) - written after the loss of his dearest friend - Tennyson vividly negotiated contemporary scepticism and the modern sciences of geology and evolution. Similar ground is covered in a dramatically darker mood in 'Maud' (1855), a poignant account of psychological disintegration.By Lord Byron. 1996
Described as 'Mad, bad and dangerous to know' by one of his lovers, Lady Caroline Lamb, Lord Byron was the…
quintessential Romantic. Flamboyant, charismatic and brilliant, he remains almost as notorious for his life - as a political revolutionary, sexual adventurer and traveller - as he does for his literary work. Yet he produced some of the most daring and exuberant poetry of the Romantic age, from 'To Caroline' and 'To Woman' to the satirical English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, his exotic Eastern tales and the colourful narrative of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, the work that made him famous overnight and gave birth to the idea of the brooding Byronic hero.By William Yeats. 2000
This selection of the works of W B Yeats, includes the final book from the unfairly neglected narrative poem 'The…
Wanderings of Oisin' and a number of lyrics from Yeats's work as poetic dramatist. It breaks new ground by allowing the reader to engage with a dozen poems in alternative versions; in many other cases it provides significant variants, so that Yeats's struggle to revise his poetry can be experienced with unusual immediacy.By Fernando Pessoa. 1974
The writing of Fernando Pessoa reveals a mind shaken by intense inner suffering. In these poems he adopted four separate…
personae: Alberto Caeiro, Alvaro de Campos, Ricardo Reis and himself, using them to express 'great swarms of thought and feeling'. While each personae has its own poetic identity, together they convey a sense of ambivalence and consolidate a striving for completeness. Dramatic, lyrical, Christian, pagan, old and modern, Pessoa's poets and poetry contribute to the 'mysterious importance of existence'.By Robert Burns. 1993
This selection gives equal weight to the two aspects of Robert Burns's reputation, as a lyricist and as a much-loved…
Scottish poet. Placing works in probable order of composition, it includes lyrics to his most well known songs, such as the nostalgic Auld Lang Syne, the romantic A Red, Red Rose, and the patriotic Scots What Hae. As a poet, Burns wrote with deceptive simplicity and imaginative sympathy, and demonstrated enormous range - from comic dramatic monologues such as Holy Willie's Prayer, which mocks hypocrisy, to narratives including the celebrated Tam O' Shanter, about the ghostly visions of a drunk.By Robert Browning. 2004
Robert Browning was one of the greatest of English poets, whose intense and original imagination enabled him to transform any…
subject he chose - whether everyday or sublime - into startling memorable verse. In his work he brought to life the personalities of a diverse range of characters, and introduced a new immediacy, colloquial energy and psychological complexity to the poetry of his day. This selection brings together verse ranging from early dramatic monologues such as the chilling 'My Last Duchess' and the ribald 'Fra Lippo Lippi', which show his gift for inhabiting the mind of another, to the popular children's poem 'The Pied Piper of Hamelin' and many lesser known works. All display his innovative techniques of diction, rhythm and symbol, which transformed Victorian poetry and influenced major poets of the twentieth century such as Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot and Robert Frost.By A. S. Byatt, George Eliot. 1990
The works collected in this volume provide an illuminating introduction to George Eliot's incisive views on religion, art and science,…
and the nature and purpose of fiction. Essays such as 'Evangelical Teaching' show her rejecting her earlier religious beliefs, while 'Woman in France' questions conventional ideas about female virtues and marriage, and 'Notes on Form in Art' sets out theories of idealism and realism that she developed further in Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda. It also includes selections from Eliot's translations of works by Strauss and Feuerbach that challenged many ideas about Christianity; excerpts from her poems; and reviews of writers such as Wollstonecraft, Goethe and Browning. Wonderfully rich in imagery and observations, these pieces reveal the intellectual development of this most challenging and rewarding of writers.By Shelley Klein. 2020
'A charming account of a daughter, a house and a fastidious dad' Sunday TimesShelley Klein grew up in the Scottish…
Borders, in a house designed on a modernist open-plan grid. With colourful glass panels set against a forest of trees, it was like living in a work of art. Her father, Bernat Klein, was a textile designer whose pioneering colours and textures were a major contribution to 1960s and 70s style.Thirty years on, Shelley moves back home to care for her father, now in his eighties: the house has not changed and neither has his uncompromising vision - or his distinctive way of looking at the world. Told with great tenderness and humour, this is Shelley's account of looking after an adored yet maddening parent and a piercing portrait of the grief that followed his death. 'A sad, funny, utterly fascinating book about families, home and how to say goodbye' Mark Haddon'Original, moving and bracingly honest... often hilarious' Blake Morrison, Guardian'It is strange that grief should produce such a life-affirming book, but it has. Read it for the solace it contains, or for its captivating descriptions. Either way, it's a delight' TelegraphBy Christopher P. Atwood. 2023
A new translation of a great historical epic, recounting the turbulent life and times of Chinggis Khan'Bear the sword andHew…
asunder high and haughty necksSlash apart all strong and self-willed shoulders'Born poor into a world of dangers and hardships, Chinggis (or Genghis) Khan would grow up to unify Mongolia and conquer a vast empire stretching from modern-day Beijing to Baghdad. The Secret History of the Mongols, written after Chinggis's death in the thirteenth century, is a great historical saga recounting not only his turbulent life and times, but that of his loved ones, ancestors and heirs. This remarkable new translation of the earliest surviving work written in Mongolian gives insight into a world of warlords, kinship, horses, yurts, shamans and vast landscapes, where bloody battles and violent family conflicts are impelled by Heaven's destiny.Translated with an introduction by Christopher P. AtwoodBy Louis Stott. 2013
Scottish history is unarguably rich and a number of notable anniversaries are looming, not least the quincentenary of Flodden in…
2013 and the 700-year-anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn in 2014. There’s no better time, then, for Scottish History in Verse.This unique anthology consists of some 230 poems and songs that mark various Scottish occasions and celebrate famous Scots. Topics range from the Carron Ironworks to the launch of the Hillman Imp, from Hardicanute to Georgie Porgie, from Somerled to John Maclean, and from James Watt to Ronald Ross. Places stretch from Clydebank to the Zambezi. Burns and Scott are there of course, but so are Shakespeare and Southey, not to mention W.N. Herbert and Robert Crawford.By Robert Crawford. 2018
One of Scotland’s most celebrated poets, Robert Crawford has long been a passionate and articulate ambassador for his country and…
its culture, its people and its landscape. The Scottish Ambassador fuses individual and communal voices in poems that resonate far beyond their points of origin. Engaging with Zoroastrian, Chinese and Greek as well as with Scottish antecedents, Crawford’s poems have an arresting range and a lyrical energy. He negotiates with intensity and wit between a deep sense of human universals and a heartfelt fidelity to individual places. Ranging from Jerusalem to Iona, New York City to Shetland, this is a collection of international range that continually zeroes in on the particular – and the particularly Scottish. At the book’s centre is a series of intimate, funny, eloquent portraits of cities which are at once remarkable public poems and outpourings of love.‘Oh my goodness – another girl Mrs Swain!’ Clara’s normal iron composure broke and she screamed, ‘No! That’s not the…
bloody deal!’And that is how my nanna, Bertha Swain, entered the world.When Helen Batten’s marriage breaks down, she starts on a journey of discovery into her family’s past and the mysteries surrounding her enigmatic nanna’s early life. What she unearths is a tale of five feisty red heads struggling to climb out of poverty and find love through two world wars. It’s a story full of surprises and scandal – a death in a workhouse, a son kept in a box, a shameful war record, a clandestine marriage and children taken far too soon. It’s as if there is a family curse. But Helen also finds love, resilience and hope – crazy wagers, late night Charlestons and stolen kisses. As she unravels the story of Nanna and her scarlet sisters, Helen starts to break the spell of the past, and sees a way she might herself find love again.