It’s the 250th anniversary of the birth of William Wordsworth.
The Royal Mail has issued anniversary stamps and Prince Charles has read a piece of Wordsworth’s poem on Tintern Abbey on the Today programme on Radio 4.
Wordsworth who lived until 1850 is probably best known for his work on the Lake District where he lived and for poems about things like daffodils (nothing wrong with that btw).
I’m sure Prince Charles does not care for the words Wordsworth wrote while in France a year after the revolution, ‘bliss was it in that dawn to be alive/but to be alive was very heaven’.
In the Making of the English Working Class E P Thompson underlined the radicalism of Wordsworth when he was young.
He wrote in 1793 for example:
‘I disapprove of monarchial and aristocratical governments, however modified. Hereditary distinctions and privileged order of every species.. must neccesarily counteract the progress of human improvement. Hence it follows that I am not admirer of the British Constitution’
Again probably not one of Prince Charles favourites.
At 250 take Wordsworth how you will. Young revolutionary or writer of poems about clouds and daffs. Or both
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