Last week’s In Our Time focused on the Old English poem Beowulf, and included many references to Tolkien’s scholarship and translation of the poem. You can listen to the programme for free on the BBC website.
Host Melvyn Bragg is joined by scholars Dr Laura Ashe, Professor Clare Lees, and Professor Andy Orchard.
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the epic poem Beowulf, one of the masterpieces of Anglo-Saxon literature. Composed in the early Middle Ages by an anonymous poet, the work tells the story of a Scandinavian hero whose feats include battles with the fearsome monster Grendel and a fire-breathing dragon. It survives in a single manuscript dating from around 1000 AD, and was almost completely unknown until its rediscovery in the nineteenth century. Since then it has been translated into modern English by writers including William Morris, JRR Tolkien and Seamus Heaney, and inspired poems, novels and films.
