A BBC Radio 4 dramatisation

Paradise Lost

A brand new dramatized re-telling of Milton’s epic poem, adapted by the poet Michael Symmons Roberts and starring Ian McKellen as Milton

Sir Ian McKellen stars as Milton in this dramatised retelling of John Milton’s epic poem about the fall of Man 
 
"devilishly good... I urge you to give it a listen" The Telegraph 
 
Milton’s biblical masterpiece, first published in 1667, is one of English literature’s most seminal works. Straddling three worlds – Heaven, Hell and Earth – it tells the gripping story of fallen angel Satan’s rebellion against God, his temptation of Adam and Eve and their subsequent expulsion from the Garden of Eden. 
 
Written to ‘justify the ways of God to men’, it aimed to show what caused Mankind's fall and the consequences for the world, both bad and good. By reaching back to the beginning of time, Milton hoped to discover the events that had led to the political and societal upheaval of his own era – as well as using allegory to ask powerful questions about authority, government, tyranny and disobedience. In this brand new dramatisation, Milton himself (Sir Ian McKellen) is the blind narrator grieving the loss of his wife, played by Frances Barber. 
 
Also starring Simon Russell Beale as Satan, and adapted by award-winning poet and broadcaster Michael Symmons Roberts, this enthralling drama is a vital piece of storytelling with striking parallels to contemporary events. 
 
Cast and credits 
 
Milton……………………Sir Ian McKellen 
Elizabeth……………………Frances Barber 
Satan……………………Simon Russell Beale 
Beelzebub……………………Jonathan Keeble 
Adam……………………Ashley Margolis 
Eve……………………Emily Pithon 
Christ……………………David Seddon 
Raphael……………………Conrad Nelson 
God……………………Russell Dixon 
All other parts were played by members of the company 
 
Written by John Milton 
Dramatised by Michael Symmons Roberts 
Produced and directed by Susan Roberts

Two BBC Radio 4 dramatisations

Paradise Lost & Paradise Regained

The highly-acclaimed BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of Milton's epic poem telling the story of the fall of man, plotted by Satan, and also its sequel, Paradise Regained.

John Milton was born on 9 December 1608. He studied at St Paul's School and then at Christ's College, Cambridge. He wrote poetry in Latin and Italian as well as English and travelled in Italy between 1638 and 1639. He married Mary Powell in 1642 but their relationship quickly broke down and they lived apart until 1645. They had four children, three daughters and a son who died in infancy. During the Interregnum after the execution of Charles I, Milton worked for the civil service and wrote pamphlets in support of the new republic. He also began work on his masterpiece, Paradise Lost, as early as 1642. His first wife died in 1652 and he married again in 1656, although his second wife died not long afterwards in 1658. When the monarchy was restored in 1660 Milton was arrested but was released with a fine. In 1663 he married his third wife, Elizabeth Minshull and he is also thought to have finished Paradise Lost in this same year. He published the companion poem, Paradise Regained, in 1671. John Milton died on 8 November 1674.

The highly-acclaimed BBC Radio 4 dramatisation of Milton's epic poem telling the story of the fall of man, and also its sequel, "Paradise Regained". 
 
Out of chaos shall come order and out of darkness shall come light. Paradise is lost - and then regained. 
 
John Milton's epic, biblically inspired poems are wonderfully dramatised for BBC Radio starring Denis Quilley as Milton, Ian McDiarmid as Satan and Robert Glenister as Christ, enhanced by specially composed music. 
 
First published in 1667, Paradise Lost describes Satan's plot to ruin God's new and most favoured creation, Mankind, and recounts the temptation of Adam and Eve and their banishment from the Garden of Eden. 
 
Paradise Regained, published in 1671, tells of the temptation of Christ by Satan as he wanders in the wilderness for forty days and nights. 
 
Full cast: 
Milton: Denis Quilley 
Satan: Ian McDiarmid 
Christ: Robert Glenister 
Raphael: John Rowe 
God: Godfrey Kenton 
Adam: Linus Roache 
Michael: Mark Straker 
Abdiel/Andrew: Julian Rhind-Tutt 
Nisroc: John Church 
Simon/Angel: Matthew Morgan 
Belial: Steve Hodson 
Angel: David Thorpe

Areopagitica and Other Writings

John Milton was celebrated and denounced in his own time both as a poet and as a polemicist. Today he is remembered first and foremost for his poetry, but his great epic Paradise Lost was published very late in his life, in 1667, and in his own time most readers more readily recognised Milton as a writer of prose. This superbly annotated new book is an authoritative edition of Milton's major prose works, including Of Education, The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates and the Divorce tracts, as well as the famous 1644 polemical tract on the opposing licensing and censorship, Areopagitica.

John Milton (1608-74) was born in London, and was educated at St Paul's School and subsequently at Christ's College, Cambridge. Thereafter he spent some years in private study, visiting France and Italy in the late 1630s. Upon his return to a nation now in political crisis, he devoted himself to teaching and to the publication of a series of increasingly radical pamphlets on religious and political liberty, including defences of divorce, a free press, and the right of a people to depose and execute a tyrannical king. He became completely blind in 1652. After the Restoration he was politically muzzled, but in this period he published his mature poetic masterpieces, including Paradise Lost (1667). Today, Milton is best known as a poet; in his own time, it was for his polemical prose that he was both celebrated and reviled. 
 
 
Dr William Poole is a tutorial fellow at New College, Oxford. He has published widely in the areas of early-modern literary, intellectual and scientific history.

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Milton's celebrated epic poem, now in a gorgeous new clothbound edition designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith. These delectable and collectable editions are bound in high-quality, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design. 
 
In Paradise Lost Milton produced a poem of epic scale, conjuring up a vast, awe-inspiring cosmos and ranging across huge tracts of space and time. And yet, in putting a charismatic Satan and naked Adam and Eve at the centre of this story, he also created an intensely human tragedy on the Fall of Man. Written when Milton was in his fifties - blind, bitterly disappointed by the Restoration and briefly in danger of execution - Paradise Lost's apparent ambivalence towards authority has led to intense debate about whether it manages to 'justify the ways of God to men', or exposes the cruelty of Christianity. 
 
John Milton (1608-1674) spent his early years in scholarly pursuit. In 1649 he took up the cause for the new Commonwealth, defending the English revolution both in English and Latin - and sacrificing his eyesight in the process. He risked his life by publishing The Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth on the eve of the Restoration (1660). His great poems were published after this political defeat. 
 
 John Leonard is a Professor of English at the University of Western Ontario.

John Milton (1608-1674) spent his early years in scholarly pursuit. In 1649 he took up the cause for the new Commonwealth, defending the English revolution both in English and Latin - and sacrificing his eyesight in the process. He risked his life by publishing The Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth on the eve of the Restoration (1660). His great poems were published after this political defeat. 
 
John Leonard is a Professor of English at the University of Western Ontario.

In Paradise Lost Milton produced a poem of epic scale, conjuring up a vast, awe-inspiring cosmos and ranging across huge tracts of space and time. And yet, in putting a charismatic Satan and naked Adam and Eve at the centre of this story, he also created an intensely human tragedy on the Fall of Man. Written when Milton was in his fifties - blind, bitterly disappointed by the Restoration and briefly in danger of execution - Paradise Lost's apparent ambivalence towards authority has led to intense debate about whether it manages to 'justify the ways of God to men', or exposes the cruelty of Christianity.

Poems of John Milton

John Milton was born in London on December 9, 1608, and studied at the University of Cambridge. He originally planned to become a clergyman, but abandoned those ambitions to become a poet. Political in his writings, he served a government post during the time of the Commonwealth. By 1660, he was completely blind but continued to write, finishing Paradise Lost in 1667, and Paradise Regained in 1671. He died in 1674 
 
 
Biographer Claire Tomalin was born in London in 1933. She is the author of highly acclaimed biographies of Mary Wollstonecraft, Katherine Mansfield and Jane Austen. Her biography of the seventeenth-century diarist Samuel Pepys (2002) won the the Samuel Pepys Award, and the 2002 Whitbread Book of the Year award. Claire Tomalin lives in London with her husband, the playwright and novelist Michael Frayn.

John Milton was a master of almost every type of verse, from the classical to the religious and from the lyrical to the epic. This is a new selection of his poems, edited and introduced by Claire Tomalin.

Selected Poems: Milton

John Milton was born in London in 1608 and studied at the University of Cambridge. He originally planned to become a clergyman, but abandoned those ambitions to become a poet. Political in his writings, he served a government post during the time of the Commonwealth. By 1660, he was completely blind but continued to write, finishing Paradise Lost in 1667 and Paradise Regained in 1671. He died in 1674.

The poems of John Milton (1608-74) have inspired readers for generations and the selection in this new edition spans his entire career, from his earliest works to the magnificent epics of his later life. The devotional &lsquo;On the Morning of Christ&rsquo;s Nativity&rsquo;, his first great poem, anticipates the probing religious questions of Paradise Lost. Works such as &lsquo;L&rsquo;Allegro&rsquo; and &lsquo;Il Penseroso&rsquo; consider divisions of loyalties, while &lsquo;A Masque&rsquo; (&lsquo;Comus&rsquo;) explores Milton&rsquo;s great theme of temptation, and the pastoral elegy &lsquo;Lycidas&rsquo; contemplates mortality and the meaning of human life. This volume includes considerable selections from Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained - Milton&rsquo;s late epics on the Fall of Man and Christ&rsquo;s temptation in the wilderness - and the complete Samson Agonistes, in which the great hero undergoes a profound crisis of faith in his final hours.

John Milton

The great British epic, a work of rich and fascinating poetry and one of the most enduring books ever created. This edition contains both Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. 
 
&lsquo;Paradise Lost was the first literary work in English written on a planetary scale&rsquo; Guardian 
 
Satan is out for revenge. His rebellion has failed, he has been cast out from heaven and is doomed to spend eternity in hell. Somehow he must find a way to prove his power and wound his enemies. He fixes upon God's beloved new creations, Adam and Eve, as the vehicles of his vengeance. In this dramatic and influential epic, Milton tells the story of the serpent and the apple, the fall of man and the exile from paradise in stunningly vivid and powerful verse. 
 
INTRODUCED BY ORLANDO READE, AUTHOR OF WHAT IN ME IS DARK 
 
'Milton's language ravishes the ear, yet the verse also floods the inner eye with spectacular imagery' The Times

John Milton

Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained

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