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Hello the winter of 1798 was a terrible one across Europe allegedly the

coldest of the century.

In the small town of Goslar in northern Germany a bitterly cold young English poet wrote some of his finest short poems

and feeling dreadfully homesick then wrote a few consolatory verses about his childhood.

That was William Wordsworth and the poem he started writing was to be his masterpiece, The Prelude,

an epic retelling of Wordsworth's own life and a foundation stone of English romanticism.

With me to discuss the prelude, Roshmy Ashton,

Kwan, Professor of English Language and Literature University College London,

Stephen Gill, University of English Literature and Film. University College,

University of Professor of English Literature and Fellow of Lincoln College,

Oxford, and Emma Mason, senior lecture in English at the University of Warwick.

Rosemary Ashton, Wordsworth is 28 years old, a lyrical balance, his great collaboration

with Samuel Teleco, which had just been published.

...