Seamus Perry
speaker
386 appearances
5 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2026
last heard 31 Aug
Seamus Perry’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 5 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 2.
Appearances
"'He is a wonderful man.
His conversation teems with soul, mind and spirit.
Then he is so benevolent, so good-tempered and cheerful, and, like William, no higher praise, interests himself so much about every little trifle.
At first I thought him very plain, that is, for about three minutes.'
He is pale and thin, has a wide mouth, thick lips, and not very good teeth, longish, loose-growing, half-curling, rough black hair.
But if you hear him speak for five minutes, you think no more of them.
She's writing from Dorset, where Coleridge had just paid her and her brother William a memorable visit.
Shortly afterwards, the Wordsworths returned the visit, going into Coleridge's tiny cottage in Nether Stowey in North Somerset, taking great walks together through the Quantock Hills and generally falling in love with one another.
The Wordsworths were so taken with their brilliant new friend that they found a house to rent near Nether Stowey, and so began one of the most remarkable years in English literary history.
It was a year that gave rise to one of the most famous volumes of English verse ever, 1798 Lyrical Ballads, co-authored by Wordsworth and Coleridge, and the opening poem of Lyrical Ballads is what we're going to talk about today, The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner.
My name is Seamus Perry.
I teach English literature at Balliol College in Oxford.
And as always, I'm talking to Mark Ford, poet, critic, and professor of English at University College London.
So, Mark, we all know that The Ancient Mariner was by Coleridge, and many Coleridgeans, including me, think it's the greatest thing he ever wrote.
But originally, it was meant to be a collaborative work, wasn't it?
Wordsworth and Coleridge were meant to write it together.
Absolutely.
It's got a great kind of visceral force and power, hasn't it?
We know, oddly enough, very precisely when it was begun, because Dorothy has another letter, this time from November the 20th, 1797, where she describes embarking on a walking expedition with...
William and Coleridge.
Showing 221–240 of 386 · page 12 of 20
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