Things Fall Apart

The British are brilliant at writing poems. On National Poetry Day, Andrew Marr is using them to tell our story.

Episode three watches the world fall apart as Britain descends into war. Elizabeth I is dead. The Scottish King has inherited the English throne. After the Tudor age, came the greatest crisis in British history - civil war, religious fanaticism, King Vs Parliament, family vs family, faith vs faith in all corners of the land. As the poet John Donne bewailed "'Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone".

But this period of turbulence produced some of Britain's finest poetry; we hear great poems by Andrew Marvell, George Herbert, John Donne and John Milton, together with lesser known works by Anne Bradstreet and Margaret Cavendish.

With readings by Fiona Shaw, Alice Oswald, Barrie Rutter and Simon Russell Beale.