Michael Wood on Beowulf

[davem]

This Thursday night at 9.00 on BBC4

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00kpv23

Historian Michael Wood returns to his first great love, the Anglo-Saxon world, to reveal the origins of our literary heritage. Focusing on Beowulf and drawing on other Anglo-Saxon classics, he traces the birth of English poetry back to the Dark Ages.

Travelling across the British Isles from East Anglia to Scotland and with the help of Nobel prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney, actor Julian Glover, local historians and enthusiasts, he brings the story and language of this iconic poem to life.

Michael Wood is one of my great influences - in the late 70's he did a series for the BBC called 'In Search of the Dark Ages', where he introduced folk like me to Athelstan, "Sutton Hoo Man", & Eric Bloodaxe. The Dark Ages was a period I knew nothing about before that series, & I can't thank Wood enough for that introduction. Plus, I'm fairly certain Tolkien will pop up in this programme, so well worth a look...

And I've just found out that a week later Simon Armitage is fronting a programme on Gawain & the Green Knight.