A meditation on the Royal Military Canal constructed as a defence against invasion by Napoleon Written and narrated by Patric Dickinson
Others taking part:
Patricia Leventon
Mary Wimbush , Peter Bartlett Hugh Burden , Wilfrid Carter William Devlin. Hugh Dickson Frank Duncan , Noel Howlett
Humphrey Morton and Stephen Thorne
Produced by JOE BURROUGHS
The author takes as his starting point a poem he wrote in 1947 on the Royal Military Canal. Reconsidering the poem he reflects on war and the impact of the threat of Napoleonic invasion on early nineteenth-century England. The voices of Wordsworth and Coleridge and other poets of that time are set against the voices of poets of our own times writing of the threatened invasion by Hitler in 1940. The Royal Milttary Canal seen as a symbol of man's need for defence against himself.
Third broadcast followed by an interlude at 7.25