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Lost Voices

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Factual: Life Stories

BBC Radio 4 Extra

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Poet Brian Patten explores the life and work of lesser-known or forgotten poets

Lost Voices: Series 3

Lost Voices: Series 3: Episode 4: Robert Service

Episode 4

Episode 4: Robert Service

Series 3

Robert Service

BBC Radio 4 Extra - Lost Voices, Series 3, Robert Service

Brian Patten explains why the work of Robert Service deserves to be more widely remembered

Robert Service has long been one of Brian Patten's favourite poets, and here he explains why. The reader is James Cosmo.

As a young man, Brian Patten was fascinated by the life and work of Robert Service, who in the early years of the 20th century left a banking job in Glasgow for the excitement of the goldrush in the Yukon. He almost immediately found himself working in a bank again, but he was now in a romantic wilderness. In the bars of Whitehorse he heard wonderful stories of life in the Gold Rush which he transmuted into Kipling-inspired verse, and he was soon the best-paid poet in the western world. Yet despite his huge popularity, he remained the self-described "man who wouldn't fit in." Now, though honoured in Canada, his work is almost forgotten.

The poems are read by James Cosmo.

Producer Christine Hall.

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Episode 4: Robert Service

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