John Milton's Heaven and Hell by Armando Giovanni Iannucci (BBC Documentary 2009)

a frail man all before his years as making a journey in flight his work from the past 20 years has been overturned he's rejected he's been imprisoned no free he's an enemy of the state and he's blind plague ravages London his home city he's got to get out it could be a sad day and weren't for the fact that this man has just finished writing the greatest poem in the English language he is John Milton and the poem is called Paradise Lost [Music] I'm convinced that John Milton is our nation's great

est poet screaming the pretty extensive field research on a bridge revealed through that knowledge that most people can't even recognize the poor chap you recognize that man if I were to say John Milton to you what comes into your head nothing not a thing is anyone here heard of John Milton anyone okay Milton is deeply unfashionable but why he wrote poetry from a very young age he spent 20 years at the forefront of radical Republican politics then when his cause failed he finally created his mas

terwork Paradise Lost it's an impressive CV although I admit he doesn't look like a bundle of laughs what image do you have your head up John do me do me yes okay long-winded long-winded miserable what makes you say miserable the connotation of Paradise Lost which you think is gonna be miserable I'm ready okay actually it's anything but Paradise Lost is an electrifying poem about love and war a fight between good and evil and an obsession with human freedom that speaks to us now before I went in

to comedy I spent three years as a student at Oxford trying to write a PhD and Paradise Lost no one was more surprised by that than me I'd always been interested in the funny writers like Dickens and Swift to me John Milton seemed like a fun less Protestant who wrote a vast unread poem about biblical stories no one was interested in there any more to a fun-loving Catholic like myself that seemed the last thing I wanted to be spending my student grant on and then I read Paradise Lost and was inst

antly dazzled vegans and the fruit of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste brought death into the world and all our woe with lots of Eden till one greater man restore us and regain the blissful scenes seeing heavenly news John Milton mean anything to you yes yes you've heard of John Milton huh when I say John Milton - Oh bless you bless you I've found someone if I think John Milton to you what do you think Paradise Lost and have you have you read Paradise Lost around yes and what did you make

of there full of energy absolutely wonderful and I take you from your accent you're not native born so we have to go all the way to Australia to find someone who's infused about John Milton standing on this frozen bridge across the ice-cold Thames will bless you for remembering uh-huh thank you I think we should all be celebrating Milton and celebrating his greatest poem so before we plunge in here's a little explanation of the great tale that's about to unfold Paradise Lost is basically a massi

ve dramatic retelling of the story of Adam and Eve God makes the world he makes her first parents Adam and Eve and he puts them in charge of the Garden of Eden he tells them they can do anything apart from eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge Satan a fallen angel disguises himself as a serpent and comes along and tempts Eve to eat the apple she then persuades Adam to do so - God is angry and banishes our first parents from the Garden of Eden paradise it seems it's lost forever what in me is

dark illumine what is lo raise and support that's the height of this great argument I may assert eternal Providence and justify the ways of God to men [Music] Milton surprises from the very start he says he wants to justify the ways of God to men so we're expecting to hear all about Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden but just a few lines in were thrown into a compelling vision of hell to make it work Milton coins new words phrases fresh to the English language satanic pandemonium stunning we j

oin Satan freshly cast out of heaven examining his new surroundings at once as far as angels can he views the dismal situation waste and wild a dungeon horrible and all sides round as one great furnace flamed yet from those flames no light but rather darkness visible this is one of the most famous passages in Paradise Lost I remember when I first read at how memorably dramatic the language seemed but now the closer you examine it the more you realize just how booby-trapped Milton's language actu

ally is at once as far as angels can he views as a Satan at once as far as angels can he views now the sounds there are all very open its it's all about a view space in front of him are at once as far as angels can he views outwards and then suddenly because the line doesn't enter he views the dismal situation dismal is like a great big gate coming down dismal situation waste and wild our dungeon Horrible's I'm not a gate coming down on all sides Road as one great furnace flamed yet from those f

lames no light relay to believe flames has got to give us something fire in glittery no light but rather and here's the great surprise this is where the the phrase says rather darkness visible darkness visible that's an extraordinary expression darkness visible we can sort of see the darkness and yet we know that we can't see it because it's darkness Milton's language here is so ambiguous and the same is true of his characterization of Satan who can seem normal at times even heroic [Music] when

William Blake read Paradise Lost he wondered if Milton was of the devil's party without knowing it Blake should have given Milton more credit he's a lot cleverer than that one who brings a mind this is Satan talking of himself a mind not to be changed by place or time the mind is its own place and in itself can make a heaven of Hell a hell of heaven that Satan's saying I can take words words that mean the opposite of each other and yank them together and somehow they will impress you they will m

ake you feel that I've somehow come up with an argument that is persuasive make a heaven of Hell a hell of heaven here is the start of spin this is poetry telling us what spin and argument is all about the sort of politician who says forward to the past let us start building our tomorrows today victory in defeat it all sounds great especially if you do that with your finger and raise your voice but it is meaningless nonsense all those people are literally doing the devil's work and this sort of

play with language this this use of words without really caring what they mean as long as they sound impressive even though the words themselves are the opposite of each other ends up in the sort of pure evil that you see in phrases like work sets you free and the gates of concentration counselor Milton makes us feel that we are not being told that this is wrong or this as bad or this is manipulative he allows us to work it out for ourselves [Music] from hell we go to heaven via slum in a porter

cabin by the a for a class of 11 year-olds are gathering to discuss Paradise Lost I have at last put up all your pictures to do with Milton's description of health now we're going to pick that work up today and we're going to look at the opposite so what's the opposite of hell yeah heaven Milton's not ragingly popular in schools these days he's often considered too difficult but I watched this lock relish getting the sleeves rolled up and I had a brief goal that being a teacher's assistant have

you come across any strange words Oh in Jubilee hang on I've got my book here Jubilees like a big celebration but I think for someone special hosannah it's like a hooray it's like an angel saying hooray you're really happy really ecstatic you have to start with individual words of course but it's the way Milton puts them together that's a really stunning bit the class for example thought it was great that Milton described heaven as having a river of bliss running through it a river of wort it f

eels so real but it while it feels so real it's also very difficult to kind of put your finger on on every little detail it's like you know you came up with this phrase river of bliss which sounds great but you can't actually imagine what bliss looks like so so have a whole river of it is like unimaginable and yet it feels real and I think what I found about Paradise Lost is it's magical like that it's you feel as you're reading it you sort of know what's going on and yet the more you think abou

t it the more you you you think of it in different ways even when you're 78 still see it as something that you're reading for the first time I'm still learning I've learned a lot today from going around thank you for thank you to teach me more about Paradise Lost thank you very much thank you [Applause] they're all happy to make time for the poem in between bouts of Club Penguin and Nintendo Wii crazy golf but what was John Milton doing at their age [Music] well Milton was born in the dynamic he

art of London here on bred Street in 1608 his family had to work for the money and they brought the son up in a truly urban environment it's not overrun with Milton memorials around here now what to use my imagination a little bit they're actually constructing a giant 500 foot tower depiction of God these are God's ankles that we can see say it's an initiative from Boris Johnson and there you can see a depiction of health the lower regions the massed ranks of the Fallen living in a sort of an et

ernal torment of pain and sadness I think really ah at last a sign John Milton passage there it is it's basically it's basically an office underpass or on the road to hell as I like to think of it okay so it's all corporate and thrusting and run on money that simply doesn't exist but it's still full of activity round here not that different from the London Milton grew up in really down there across the road the corner there is sin poles not just the church and the school but simples at the time

is also the Greek thoroughfare where people would go to gossip the center of the book trade there's also the red-light district we had the black friars theatre further over there where Milton's father was a trustee and and at the time Shakespeare was putting on his his very last plays [Music] Milton's dad was a successful businessman and he had serious ambitions for his little boy in the middle of his massive second defense of English people there's a little tantalizing glimpse by Milton of his

childhood where he writes my father destined me an early childhood for the study of literature for which I had so keen an appetite that for my 12th year scarcely ever did I leave my studies for my bed before the hour of midnight he spent his his nights and his candle lit room learning French and Italian and Hebrew studying the Bible and working his way methodically through all the great English classics of prose and poetry he was at that early age in his own head trying to make himself become th

e great English poet that he wanted to be and this can sometimes add to that image we have of him as someone withdrawn withdrawn from the world spending his days indoors rather than outside but nothing could be further from the truth there's nothing prissy or priggish about Milton he believed that poetry should be simple sensuous and passionate and that's especially true of his description of the Garden of Eden it's really quite a Randy place he's a description of Adam and Eve doing the gardenin

g which you think there's quite an innocent little activity but the description of the trees and the flowers suggests that even they are have only one thing in the mind where any row of fruit trees / woody reached too far their pampered boughs and kneaded hands to check fruitless embraces they laid the vine to Wed her Elm she supposed about him twines her marriage' Balaam's it's just a vine growing on an elm tree branch but it sounds like they're at it like knives she sposed about entwines her m

arriage' Balaam's and with her brings her dorothy adopted clusters to adorn his barren leaves it's a whole marriage just going up a tree and I was looking for another passage but but on the way I came across this which is a description of Eve serving dinner to the Archangel Raphael and it says here meanwhile at table Eve ministered naked and their flowing cups with Pleasant liqueurs crowned or innocence deserving paradise if ever then then had the sons of God excuse to have been enamored at that

sight but in those hearts love on the bid honest reigned not jealousy was understood the injured lovers hell that's a description basically of the angels in heaven potentially lusting after Eve but we're told by Milton that they didn't because they were nice and they hadn't fallen [Music] Milton makes his celestial creatures sole human so tangible he even dazzles us with details of the angels digestive systems the Archangel Raphael comes and visits Adam and Eve in the garden and tells them the

story while he sits and has dinner with them yes in Paradise Lost angels can eat food there's a description of how food is broken down within angels digestive tracts and then emitted as a sort of celestial gas tasting concoct digest assimilate and corporeal to incorporeal turn that's the very first depiction in English literature of angel farts no I don't know how seriously you meant to take it Milton is depicting a slightly crazy world it's a world slightly hippie really nothing's quite what it

seems Milton I think is is like some Hollywood producer taking the story of the Bible the Word of God the word that at that time when he was writing he was told he was indoctrinated to think was literal truth he's taking that story and he's chucking a lot of it away and rewriting bits of it for himself he's making the Bible in his own image now that's an incredibly daring thing to do it makes it much more human but it also makes it a little bit more ambitious arrogant dangerous [Music] in 1625

John Milton went up to Christ's College Cambridge he was a rather boorish place and Milton the sensitive poet with long hair didn't fit in he hated it and when he left he moved back in with mum and dad and they moved here Horton in Berkshire Milton was now a jobless twenty-something living with his parents in the middle of nowhere Milton wrote to his old school friend Charles dear daddy that he was having a great time here he's been given the chance to think to read and to write but I just wonde

r whether that's him being slightly too defensive I'm not sure I'm not sure he would sure he would want to have died here soon there are signs of restlessness 'no gnarly poem called lizard us milton rages against corruption in the church later he began to loathe the bishops and denounce the interlinking of church and state milton wanted to determine his own relationship with God he didn't want anyone else telling him Holmes done something happened in Horton that may have stirred him further when

his mother died she was buried here in st. Michael's but the wrong way round her gravestone was criticized by Church of England inspectors who wanted to enforce uniformity but the Milton's never did turn the grave the right way round I like to think that Milton's contempt for the bishops which have been run about this time may well have been the product of theological inquiries going on in his own head and conclusions he'd come to anyway or we well have been set off by this little petty dispute

that was going on being told that his mother's remains were buried squinty it could be the parcel things that radicalize a young mind and galvanize it against Authority John's mind was bubbling he needed to get away so in May 1638 H 29 John Milton sailed off in search of himself making his way to Italy and beginning what must surely have been one of the most pivotal experiences of his life it was to use one of Milton's most enduring expressions a journey to fresh woods and pastures new [Music]

the first city he spent any significant amount of time in was Florence he was enraptured bite for Milton to see all this for the first time especially after coming from where we've seen [ __ ] the contrast must have been startling I mean quite dramatic and here in Florence suddenly for Milton the Bible comes alive God has built large and painted fresh and vivid and stone and on canvas but it saw his flesh vast pink puddles of flesh painted on renaissance ceilings and hanging from tapestries and

carved from stone in gardens and in public squares this whole city is a celebration not just of spirituality but of the human form of humanity in an intensity that Milton would never have experienced before it must have completely transformed his whole conception of what you could do as an artist here finally he seems happy he makes friends he attends private academies with the city's wits he reads them poems he's written in Latin and Italian and they love them they still do Giovanni piano a sem

plice Tremonti porque food hermes pesto in dubai oh so no mado niveau del mio cuarto mill dono farad Lovato well thank you very much for reading out the Melton it sounded beautiful thank you of course it was in your honor I've got the English translation yes since I am a young simple and candid lover in doubt how to escape from myself lady I will devote we give you the humble it is very romantic because this is a sonnet - not to a real woman but - laughs no it fell that's interesting in that at

that age anyway his most passionate stuff its most emotional stuff like she's expressed in other languages back home - no nose Paradise Lost was finally published almost 20 years later but it may have begun life here around now Milton makes some tantalizing early notes and Paradise Lost as a five act drama he may have been further inspired by an extraordinary meeting because in Florence the young John Milton met old blind Galileo the revolutionary astronomer the meeting may have taken place here

at Galileo's Villa but he was under house arrest for challenging the traditional teachings of the Catholic Church [Music] Galileo wasn't afraid of experimenting asking difficult questions and offering up answers that shook the establishment I think in that respect he was a kind of role model for this young poet from England in Paradise Lost Milton's depiction of God and the heavens seems almost scientific it has a curious distancing effect just looking here at Milton's description of the heaven

s in Paradise Lost and is a very mechanistic scientific very rational physical description of how the heavens work it's almost like Galileo he's trying to not only describe but explain the movement of the stars and of the Angels describes here meanwhile upon the firm a patient's love of this round world whose first convex divides the luminous inferior orbs enclosed from chaos and the inroad of darkness old Satan alighted walks rapacious globe convex luminous of FIRREA orbs it's like walking thro

ugh a Science Museum and yet this is the description of the division between heaven and hell the same mechanistic language applies to Milton's characterization of God whereas Satan gets all the good speeches God comes dangerously close to sounding incomprehensible this is God talking about how if Adam and Eve are going to eat the apple and fall it's their own fault not his even though he knows in advance that they're going to do it it's all about him trying to explain away his foreknowledge of t

heir sin and God says their will disposed by absolute decree or high foreknowledge they themselves decreed their own revolt not I if I for knew foreknowledge had no influence on their fault which had no less proved certain unfor known I have no idea what that means I assume you don't either and I'm not sure you meant to really it's a very very elaborate long-winded justification by God in very abstract theological language of his whole system now I am intrigued as to why Milton writes about God

and heaven like this it's a little bit dull really it's a bit boring is it because he feels a little bit guilty about how carried away he got with himself and his own powers and abilities and describing Satan earlier on he was almost too good at describing evil and as a penance as he decided to be a little bit less ostentatious in describing God I can't quite accept that I was once asked on a radio full program why it was that I gave up very very very early thoughts of becoming a priest and part

of the reason I said was that from my study of theology and religion and interest in sort of spiritual matters no one had actually explained to me why it was that Jesus had to die to save mankind I've heard that phrase again and again and again and in church services it's just assumed that you can understand it but but I couldn't and yet I couldn't find any actual explanation as to why that happened and I said on the programme that no doubt in saying that I'd get lots of letters and I did and t

hese are all very very very well-meaning and understanding attempts to resolve my dilemma someone here says I was surprised to hear you could understand why God had to die for our sins God doesn't have to do anything that is what being God means another one here it says the short answer is Hebrews 2:14 someone said in a diagram someone else said police find the enclosed brochure distributed by Jehovah's Witnesses you'll find the answer on pages 6 and 7 so the answer to the question is don't ask

the question yet Paradise Lost that's precisely what Milton does he saw ambitious he says he's going to write things that run attempted yet in prose and reign he's going to justify the ways of God to man yet he doesn't his God is a dull God is that deliberate does Milton write a boring God because God bores him I wonder whether in the battle in Milton's own head between the theologian and the poet the poet was beginning to win out [Music] John sailed back to England in 1639 and the rumblings of

discontent that had started back in Horton began to get a lot louder he didn't like the way the country was being run so he did something about it he put his poetic ambitions to one side and plunged into politics print was exploding in the 17th century like the web is today a revolutionary way to get your message to the masses milton seized it by the horns as the civil war against Charles the first gathered on the horizon he began writing political pamphlets a one-man opposition interrogating va

lues and challenging beliefs with Radical Republican thinking Milton's was famous pamphlet is this Areopagitica it's his passionate response to new laws designed to ban the work of pamphleteers like him areopagus uka is the most perfect expression in the english language of the defense of freedom of speech it's the greatest attack on state censorship that has ever been written he starts by arguing first of all the books and themselves always have something with intrinsic merit in them there's a

great danger if we ban a book we might ban something that is vitally important that we just don't know the implications of yet he says here books are not absolutely dead things but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are he gets more and more passionately argued vociferously for the value of any book there is and then quite a violent and aggressive way as good almost kill a man as kill a good book basically what Milton is saying is that our fr

eedom to think our freedom to engage in political and religious thought is nothing unless we have the ability to meet head-on our opponents unless we are challenged by the opposite point of view there is no way we can test how firmly we hold our own opinions Areopagitica is fundamental to Milton's work and to our interpretation of that work because in it Milton for the very first time manages to articulate what the point of Milton is it's to write because writing has a point [Applause] as battle

s raged across the country milton fought his civil war with words arguing vociferously against the status quo on January the 30th 1649 King Charles the first was executed the Republicans had won Oliver Cromwell took control and he hired John Milton whose revolutionary ideals and foreign language skills made him the perfect secretary for foreign tunnels basically Milton was in charge of an embryonic foreign office but the nation's hearts and minds were not yet one the new regime needed to exploit

one of Milton's other gifts the ability to write fiery brilliant polemical prose and it was to take him to the very center of political power as Oliver Cromwell's chief propagandist and effectively the new British government spin-doctor milton was 41 he'd always been a solo maverick now he was paid to spin for Britain he even became a government censor at one point exactly what he'd railed against in Areopagitica in Westminster reality violence I just interested the fact that he suddenly went f

rom being a public idealist to someone who was then in the heart of power what does that do to your ideals people lose their evangelism they lose the ability to be able to paint a picture of a big picture of where they're going what they stand for he's struggle to ensure that you've got an anchor that you're holding on to what it is that you came in to do what why are you there yes I was there a bit of that with Milton that he'd like to be on the inside on the outside at the zone no I'm sure oh

I'm sure we all have a bit of that yes but I mean I really don't want to draw the powerless between you you know I was probably hurt I don't know I'm not a Milton he's as they said he is no Milton I just wondered how Milton would have felt as the Republican cause began to fail you think you've got somewhere and there's a change you know the bank's collapse or something yes calamitous like that and what he would have been arguing becomes meaningless in the in the public view and you get swept asi

de as as his arguments were that yes after 11 years of justifying the word of Cromwell to man Milton wasn't just out of a job he was persona non grata the Republic was finished the monarchy was restored under charles ii milton must have been wondering had had all been worth it [Music] in Paradise Lost there's an enormous set piece battle in heaven between God's sight and Satan's forces who revolt because God's created his son the Messiah the Milton seems to be telling another story here strange

to us it seemed at first that angel should with angel war and in fierce hosting meet angel should with angel war this is a civil war with us absolutely clear about this you get the parallel you get the meaning what he's describing is a civil war in heaven but who is Cromwell and who is Charles that's the problem you can't tell which is which here's the description of Satan Satan with vast and haughty strides advanced king towering armed and adamant and gold he he described there as someone very

real something aspiring to kingly Authority is Satan Charles is he easy Charles or is Satan what Cromwell was like at the end of Cromwell's Lane because chrome will aspire to be like a king did not to call himself a king so was crowned Lord Protector and then Satan speaking to his troops speaks almost a defense of liberty and freedom from authoritarian rule that that is like a standard argument for for republicanism for orders and decrees John not with liberty but well consist who can in reason

then or right assume monarchy over such as live by right his equals if in power and splendor less in freedom equal these are the arguments of the republican movement in a parody of modern warfare Satan and his crew invent gunpowder and then the other side come up with a really unique weapon for me it gets he gets he reached the point of absurdity when the good angels suddenly have an idea they're going to come up with a better weapon hills they're going to go and run and pick up hills and mounta

ins and drop them on Satan and his troops their arms away V through and to the hills light as the Lightning glimpse they ran they flew from their foundations loosening to and fro they plucked the seated hills with all their load rocks water woods and by the shaggy tops uplifting bore them in their hands amazed be sure and terror seized the rebel hosts when coming towards them so dread they saw the bottom of the mountains upward turned it's quite quite ridiculous it's a grand magnificent huge cus

tard pie fights going on in the sky it's all very entertaining as I'm sure Milton meant it to be but he makes this war so absurd that I actually find this part of the poem rather unsettling he's almost questioning the whole point of war given that what he's been through and given the disillusion when he's felt he's in his head he he's almost coming it upon saying was all that just a complete waste of time from start to finish was the whole civil war doesn't matter whose side you were on was it j

ust all pointless when you read Paradise Lost you start questioning everything while I was writing at Milton knew he'd lost his political battle he was also coming to terms with an inner tragedy that he'd gone slowly agonizingly blind what happens when you when what happened to you when you lost your sight blindness forces you back into yourself you do in a very real sense lose the world I suppose what I miss most if that's the right word would be the printed page of the human face yes face of b

oth of those disappeared and both of those were absolutely vital to Milton weren't they they were absolutely and and was your loss of sight was it a sudden thing or was it was very gradual like ears and that in a way makes it more desperate my dream life became extremely vivid I was alive in a wonderful world of color and action at night when I woke up every time I woke up I went blind again but the face is very important the loss of the face you mentioned a poem he'd written about that that's r

ight yes he wrote this sonnet in memory of his second wife Katharine who died very suddenly not long after the towpath sonnet 19 me thought is me thought I saw my latest pose at st. he thought I saw my latest pose at st. brought to me like Al cestus from the grave from Joel's great son to her glad husband gave rescued from death by force though pale and faint - whom washed from spot of childbed taint purification and the old law did save and such as yet once more I trust to have full sight of he

r in heaven without restraint came vested all in white pure as her mind her face was veiled yet to my fancied sight love sweetness goodness in her person shined so clear as in no face with more delight but o as to embrace me she inclined I waked she fled and day brought back my night it's just that last line and so I waked she fled and day brought back by night it's just so monosyllabic and sparse as well it's so and I remember what you were saying about every time I woke up I was blind again [M

usic] in Paradise Lost Milton says he wants to tell us of things invisible to mortal sight one of his greatest poetic revelations is the way he writes the fall itself when Satan tempts Eve to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge the single thing God has forbidden her to do so we come to the moment of self this is where the fall of man occurs so saying her rash hand in evil our forth reaching to the fruit she plucked she ate that's it that's it that's the description it's all over in in what tw

o lines four words even she plucked she ate four mono syllables she plucked that's it Milton who's a great command of all the biblical stories and myths and great powers of rhetoric in language and Greek Greek flowing monologues and soliloquies and great it's all down to XI plus XI eight and the the sheer devilish bravery in in attempting something so bold like that is is absolutely gobsmacking you know this was Hollywood film there would be a slow-motion move of the Apple up to the mouth and gr

eat swelling orchestral climaxes and probably a close-up of the teeth and maybe a camera from inside the mouth watching the Apple come closer and the great jaws shut but no she plucked G 8 that's 8 work it out for yourself that's all I'm going to say she plucked she ate it's the most romantic moment in history according to this poem and yet it's given and delivered in the the barest the barest of lines she plucked she ate great Milton wants us to understand that Eve freely chooses to eat the app

le it's entirely her own responsibility the narrative is gripping when Eve comes to visit Adam he can see what's happened he knows she doesn't have to tell him he can see that they the one thing he hoped wouldn't happen has happened Adam soon as he heard the fatal trespass done by Eve amazed astonied stood and blank will horror chill ran through his veins and all his joints relaxed from his slack hand the garland wreath for Eve down dropped and all the faded roses shed speechless he stood and pa

le till thus at length first to himself he inward silence broke it's the energy the life has gone out of him the sounds are sort of empty down dropped and all the faded roses shared that the rhyme slows down to a very very stately quiet and and then speechless he stood after all the language and talk of speeches and rhetoric speechless he stood then just as suddenly as Eve ate the apple sword as Adam for with thee certain he says my resolution is to die they are the tragic couple they fall but t

hey fall together in their world changes forever out in the real world John Milton was in grave danger he was an unrepentant Republican who defended the beheading of Charles the first but now Charles the second was on the throne Milton was on the wrong side he couldn't take any chances Milton went into hiding he let London conceal him it really is a bit of a labyrinth here little lanes little alleyways would be no one can see him he's performing you close we're hidden somewhere somewhere in this

area up some dark little stairwell Milton was bundled away by his friends we're seeing it for the first time must make you realize how frightening it must have felt to be pushed away from your home and somewhere strange and inside knowing that all that you'd fought for you had written about all that you'd work for and believed had been overturned king charles ii issued a proclamation on August the 13th 1660 declaring that many of milton's pamphlets were tantamount to treason he ordered them to

be publicly burned Milton wrote in Areopagitica that you might as well kill a man as kill a good book and yet now his works were being burnt outside the Old Bailey and many of his associates were being put to death soon the new regime caught up with Milton and they threw him in the Tower of London he was a political prisoner Milton was blind far from his friends and family trapped between four walls with only his own thoughts for company can you imagine what must have been going through Milton's

mind and personality being imprisoned what an insight and what would have been happening and I think my experience of having spoken to prisoners whether they're from Guantanamo or Northern Ireland is that they often question things in a way that they'd never done so before I think in Milton's experience it would have been something similar and particularly because I think that when you're unable to express yourself to anybody other than the four walls around you that makes you sharper it makes

you want to express more it makes you want to do it through writing because you know the perhaps you can't say anything nobody's going to hear you but your words will be written and recorded forever and why perhaps the the result that he turns rather than to polemic or to to memoir he turns to poetry I remember the the prisoners from the Arab world in Guantanamo would write amazing poetry there to express themselves and I had been held in solitary confinement so I didn't know until I met some of

them near the end of my time in solitary that we had all come to the same conclusion that poetry had been written in Guantanamo in English in Arabic in Pashto in Weger in Farsi in Turkish and people had come to their own conclusions as to how they wanted to express themselves and it seemed like that the common denominator was poetry [Music] released from the tire after a couple of months with no charges to face the poetry finally flowed from Milton [Music] he'd been thinking about Paradise Lost

since his early 30s now at 53 with an extraordinary series of life experiences behind him Milton was at last able to focus on getting the poem out of his head and onto the page [Music] living a quiet life somewhere here on bun Hill Rowe known then as artillery walk that's exactly what he did Milton claims that the words to Paradise Lost came to him as divine inspiration in the middle of the night in his dreams now whether that claim is true or not we do know that Milton would rise very early in

the morning with vast chunks of the poem already composed in his head the problem was he was blind and he would have to wait until a member of the family stirred or a friend came to Cole and asked them to write it down in the form of dictation so it was a complex complex task one that he had to absolutely focus all his attention on and while all that was going on another great drama came along plague was engulfing the city the poet his family and his precious manuscripts the sum of his life's w

ork had to get out of town the Milton's sought refuge here Chalfont st. Giles in deepest bokkeum sure it's no stratford-upon-avon there isn't a milton industry here no satan sausages no Adam and Eve Tobey marks but jeff monson Charles is the hub of the very modest Milton tourist trade because it's home to the only house he lived in that's still standing well Milton was here he gave a copy of the Paradise Lost manuscript to his friend Thomas Elwood a nervous moment for any author Milton called fo

r the first copy of Paradise Lost and handed it to Elwood and if you did just as we're talking about this if you press a little button by the fireplace there yeah he asked me how I liked it and what I thought of it which I modestly but freely token thou hast said much here of Paradise Lost but what hast thou to say about Paradise fond he made me no answer but sad sometime in a muse then break off that discourse and fell upon another subject a rude man I've just amazed by the reaction which is ye

s and all that science writing and see what did you think I kind of think that's all very well but have you got anything else how about paradise I'm gonna the sequel and Milton just go yes right okay yes fine writing it coming back but if we're very lucky strong yeah yeah absolutely yes yes so that all happened here and that all happened to you yeah um this very wrong yeah milton had to wait two years between finishing the poem and actually publishing it because the great fire of london decimate

d the city's print trade [Music] Paradise Lost finally came out in the 1667 and it looked like this I've never seen inside first edition of Paradise Lost it's very very exciting together man's first disobedience and the fruit of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste brought death into the world this is great but what you get is a sense really of how compact in the end the poem is the publisher summer Simmons said to if we've noticed it doesn't rhyme and the thing what was rhyming couplets at th

e time milton was writing was very popular and he's been asked by his publisher to put in a justification for why it doesn't rhyme so myths and writes a defense of the fact that the poem doesn't rhyme I say defense it's really just a big very very articulate yeah to all those who do use rhyme rhyme being no necessary adjunct or true ornament of poem or good verse in longer works especially but the invention of a barbarous age to set off wretched matter Lane metre graced indeed since by the use o

f some famous modern poets carried away by custom but much to their own vexation hindrance and constraint to express many things otherwise and for the most part worse than else they would have expressed them so he's basically saying sod rhyme I don't need it people who use rhyme are using as an easy way out to get around the fact that they can't push their creativity in other directions sorry I started reading it now they're special I I imagine his bad television but I can't help myself because

I've got Milton's first edition in my hand so I'm going to read it Milton spent his final years completely absorbed in writing and thinking he produced many more great works of poetry and prose in a short time he died in November 16 74 and he's buried here that's in Giles [ __ ] gate in the heart of London the city in which he spent the vast part of his life it's not much of a shrine so suppose the best way to remember Milton is by reading his words [Music] the ending of Paradise Lost is Milton'

s masterstroke it's a beautifully simple piece of poetry about Adam and Eve as they're expelled from the Garden of Eden and walk out into the real world our world these are the closing lines of deportment just listen how everything goes not pitiful not subdued but except him and quite normal and how this couple take on their fate except their humanity all that they've got left and face the fact that this is what they have to deal with the rest of their lives some natural tears they dropped but w

iped them soon the world was all before them where to choose their place of rest and Providence their guide they hand in hand with wandering steps and slow through took the solitary way the epic religious verse of heaven and hell and war and battling said that all disappears what were left with are these bare words they handed and wandering steps and slope through Eden took the solitary way it's a very daring ending here for Milton's reviewers because it's so intensely secular there's no mention

of God and angels in these last few lines it's it's all very earthy it's an anticipation of the life Adam and Eve I wouldn't lead without those fixed certainties of religion I'm going to be any more visits from angels instead they have to make their own way out in the world I think that's because in the end Milton didn't want to justify the ways of God to make we wanted to justify the ways of men to us he wants to leave us that final image an intensely human couple couple have to make their own

choices and decisions a couple the final effect of getting to the end of the poem is to want to go back to the beginning and read it all again business think because Milton puts us in charge the end of the poem he lays down his pen the flow of language disappears and he wants us like Adam and Eve it's work into the real world deal with it [Music] I never did finish my PhD on Paradise Lost maybe that's because the poem defies any definitive interpretation after everything that Milton went throug

h he's urging us to keep examining things to keep celebrating a freedom to think for ourselves a sentient fallen human beings if you want to be inspired disturbed confronted with your failings and reminded of your strength and if you want to read what it feels like to love and to be free then you have to you simply have to read Paradise Lost [Music] and you can find out more about John Milton on art website the BBC poetry season continues with Michael Wood on Beowulf tomorrow at 9:00 on bbc4 and

she the Hancock Ponder's poetry in my life inverse on Friday at 9:00 here on BBC 2 [Music] we're chatting to this week's loser next though in The Apprentice you're fired coming up a Newsnight ethical man goes to Texas the most polluting state in America and find some surprising energy developments and we have the latest of MPs expenses when Roy Hattersley will be speaking out against the whole scandal see you at 10:30 experiment go broke head puffing that was safe oh great still floaty CPB