Episode Details

William Wordsworth crossed the English Channel as a young man, fell in love with the French Revolution and a French woman, fathered a child, and returned to England a radical. By the time he became Poet Laureate he had transformed into a conservative churchgoer who embarrassed his younger admirers. The arc from rebel to establishment defined Romantic-era politics.

This episode traces Wordsworth from the Lake District through his revolutionary years, his collaboration with Coleridge on Lyrical Ballads, and his long evolution into the grand old man of English poetry.

• He fathered a daughter in France during the Revolution and did not see the child for years
• Lyrical Ballads, co-written with Coleridge in 1798, launched the English Romantic movement
• He was appointed Poet Laureate in 1843 and held the position until his death
• His younger self would have despised the conservative he became in old age