Use BBC.com or the new BBC App to listen to BBC podcasts, Radio 4 and the World Service outside the UK.

Find out how to listen to other BBC stations

Episode details

Radio 4 Extra,29 Mar 2026,30 mins

Things Fall Apart

Poetry Extra

Available for 28 days

Poet Daljit Nagra revisits the BBC's poetry archive and selects Things Fall Apart featuring WB Yeats' The Second Coming. Yeats' biographer, Roy Foster, explores why The Second Coming, one of his celebrated poems, written in 1919, has continued to capture the zeitgeist. Once more, as so many times before, a beast seems to be slouching towards Bethlehem. Foster explores why his poems still tell truths. Originally broadcast to mark 150 years since the birth of WB Yeats. With readings by Sinead Cusack and Stephen Rea. Producer: Tim Dee First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2015.

Programme Website
More episodes