In a series of personal essays, Richard Holloway considers the tensions between faith and doubt over the last 3000 years. Author and former Bishop of Edinburgh, Richard Holloway focuses on the Judeo-Christian tradition as he takes the listener from the birth of religious thinking, through the Old and New Testaments, to the developments in subsequent centuries and their influence on thinkers and writers, up to the present-day.

In this omnibus edition, Richard Holloway moves into the 19th century, as he looks at the work of some of the Romantic poets like John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley, whose beliefs were a reaction to the cold rationalism of Enlightenment thinkers. He discusses the struggles of some of the 'believer' poets like Robert Browning and Arthur Hugh Clough, with contributions from Clough's biographer Sir Anthony Kenny.

As well as 'the poetics' of doubt, Richard looks at 'the forensics' as he explores the impact of Charles Darwin's discoveries on the creation story, and the emerging tradition of 'biblical criticism'. These factors contributed to the Victorian crisis of faith, and poets like Matthew Arnold and Thomas Hardy expressed the sense of mourning and nostalgia of the time.

Meanwhile, European thinkers were considering the possibility that 'maybe there wasn't anything on the other side of the window-pane - no God, just a gradually fading projection of our own longing'. He looks at the characters of Friedrich Nietzsche and Fyodor Dostoevsky along with some of the nineteenth century philosophers.

With contributions from philosopher Sir Anthony Kenny, Chris Janaway from Southampton University, author AN Wilson and former Poet Laureate Andrew Motion.

Producer: Olivia Landsberg
A Ladbroke production for BBC Radio 4. Show less