Why does the poet who began as the golden boy of the 1930s and ended up as the craggy-faced laureate-we-never-had have a greater hold on our imaginations than ever before?
Thirty-five years after his BBC film The Auden Landscape, director Adam Low returns to the poet and his work. Following Auden’s surges of popularity from featuring in Four Weddings and a Funeral to being the poet New Yorkers turned to after 9/11, Low reveals how Auden’s poetry helps us to have a better understanding of the 21st century and the tumultuous political climate in which we now live. Writers Alan Bennett, Polly Clark, Alexander McCall Smith and Richard Curtis, and poets James Fenton and Paul Muldoon share their passion for Auden and celebrate the potent impact of his work.
Broadcast 24 Aug 2022 BBC Two