Transcripts for BBC Radio 4 LW BBC Radio 4 LW 20200205 09000

Ces advised all Britons in mainland China to leave if they can the latest figures from the Chinese authorities show a big leap in the number of infections in the past 24 hours from 1000 and a half 1000 to more than 24000 the health secretary Matt Hancock said the British government was taking the necessary precautions we want to take a science led approach the approach that we been taken is very much been driven by the advice of the chief medical officer and this is a very serious virus and having a very serious impact in China as you say there's 2 cases only here and in the u.k. But we do expect more and so we're taking no chances Mr Hancock said a man who fell ill on a plane returning to the u.k. From earlier this week had tested negative for the virus and the chief executive of the Hong Kong based airline Cathay Pacific is asking 27000 members of staff to take 3 weeks of unpaid leave because of the coronavirus yesterday it announced plans to cut about 90 percent of its flights to mainland China. President Trump has made his final State of the Union address before next the next presidential election to a deeply divided Congress Mr Trump snubbed the Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi refusing to shake her hand afterwards she ripped up his speech on camera and described it as a manifesto of mistruths partial results of the 1st vote to choose the Democratic nominee for president are in peak beauty Gedge and Bernie Sanders are in the lead with just over 70 percent of the Iowa caucus votes counted and an investigation into is under way into how a gun was reportedly left in a toilet on a transatlantic flight by a bodyguard to the former prime minister David Cameron the Metropolitan Police says an officer has been removed from operational duty b.b.c. News. Good morning now on Radio 4 it's time for a further leg of William Wordsworth life journey to mark the 250th anniversary of the great poets birth professor Professor Jonathan Bate the author of a new biography has been following in his footsteps today he goes to France at the time of the French Revolution with Simon Russell Beale as Wordsworth's he is with Episode 2 in Wordsworth's footsteps. In a very early morning in a beautiful July day in edgier to the poet William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy stored on Westminster Bridge earth has not anything to show more for. Dull would he be of soul who could pass by a sight so touching in its majesty. This city now did like a garment where the beauty of the morning silent bath ships towers dome there to his temples lie open under the fields and the sky all bright and glittering in the smokeless and. Never did sun more beautifully steep in his 1st spend Valley rock or hill and there saw I never felt a calm so deep. The river glided that his own sweet will. To God. The fairy houses seem asleep. And all that mighty hot is lying still. Was. Put in words with the sister Dorothy were on Westminster Bridge that somebody too because they were only to frogs that come south from the Lake District that was that. They were travelling to the Channel coast this trip with Dorothy was going to involve a key meeting but it wasn't Wordsworth's 1st time in frogs just over a decade earlier when he was still an undergraduate at Cambridge University he'd gone on a summer walking tour with close college friend Robert Jones It's kind of the 18th century equivalent of 2 students taking an interest in their summer vacation. Which was in Jones decided they were going to move all 3 frogs down to Switzerland cross the Alps around the Italian lakes back up the rivers of Germany huge undertaking all of foot. And they arrived in Calif they found themselves literally walking into a resolution. It was the 14th of July 17th 90 the exact 1st anniversary of the storming of the Bastille could have been the beginning of the French Revolution the overthrow of the old regime the beginning of the tip of a new form of politics a new way of ordering society liberty equality for eternity. And over little towns they passed through as they walked south from college they bumped into people celebrating the fact to laugh at ASIO feast of the Federation the origin of the Bastille Day that is still celebrated today and for us it was an incredibly exciting time for these 2 young students they really felt that the world was being made and knew they were part of it. Bliss was it in that to want to be a life was worth it right and to be young was very heavy. It's a moment ever incredible happiness amazing euphoria and incredible excitement and at the same time an amazing feeling of togetherness despite the fact that there are already cracks showing in any kind of unified front there's still a moment of we are in this together and we have done something amazing. On the return trip a decade later what's with recapture the feeling of joy at that time addressing it to his college friend Robert chance Jones went from calories southward you and I traveled on foot together then this way which I'm pacing now was like the main with festivals of newborn liberty. The homeless sound of joy it was in the sky the antiquated earth as one might say beats like the heart of man songs garlands playing the banners and happy faces far and I. And now. Soul register that these things were too solid to recreating so my heard good morrow citizen. A hollow word as if a dead man spake it. Yet despair I feel not. Happy am I as a bird. Fair seasons yet will come. And hopes as fact. Wordsworth remained close friends with Robert Jones for the rest of his time at Cambridge he went to stay with him at his home in Snowdonia and they walked in the mountains together but then they graduated and like a lot of students Wordsworth just didn't know what to do he stayed in London for a while and then he decided to return to France to improve. Language maybe get a job as a tutor he went down to Brighton and while he was waiting for the tide to turn to the wind to change he stayed with a poet Smith she was very successful writer whose work he greatly admire but she was also very connected to politically radical circles in front of us and she gave words with letters of introduction to various figures. It must have been incredibly exciting for the young words arriving here in Paris in those heady early days of the revolution. I think the 1st place that he went would have been whites who tell . I come to try to find a spot of it it's a little passageway in the 2nd better on the small of the passage he pretty packed just behind the polling Royale close to Volusia it's changed a lot now but you can still imagine the English and American radicals visitors to Paris wanted to get a piece of the revolution they congregated here and they talked politics. One of the letters of introduction that Wordsworth had from Charles Smith once to another poet called Helen Mariah Williams she was also a sort of journalist reporter of sending news back to England of the progress of the revolution. The politics of those early years in frogs in the seventy's ninety's were really complicated lived Hunt is an expert when it comes to Paris towards the end of $1791.00 she's caught up in a circle of people who have similar ideas both the English and the French about the abolition of slavery about the possibility and the greatness of the possibility of a Republic and he's arriving at the very moment when the fate of the French monarchy is most up in the air the king has tried to flee. There's growing sentiment that the monarchy is going to have to be abolished but there's a norm. Division about this so he's in the midst of the most consequential discussions between not just English radicals and their French counterparts but a whole international coterie of people are people from Germany from Italy and there are South Americans they're all meeting together not as an organized group but they have these personal contacts the way Wordsworth does with his letters of introduction and they're exchanging these incredibly exciting ideas but in a moment and a place where these ideas have serious practical consequences will there be a king will there be an uprising what is going to happen to those who support a republic will they be arrested it's an amazing moment of division but also of hope and expectation and aspiration about what the future might bring openness and exercise of hope and. Great with lives which then stood upon our side we who was strong in. Bliss was it in the tone to be alive. But to be. Was very few. Times in which the state for bidding ways of custom Institute to could once the attraction of a country in romance. When reason seemed the most to assert her rights when most intent on making of a self a prime in chanter to assist the work which then was going forwards in her name. Not favored spots alone. But the whole of. The beauty war of promise. Wordsworth only stayed in Paris a couple of weeks he was told that Helen nor I were him so I'd gone south to the city of all male. So he followed her. The following months were a time of incredible joy young Wordsworth's life to be young was very have a he was free was full of hope because of the revolution and he fell in love for the 1st time. She was a young woman a couple of years older than him cold and value on a relative of the family he was lodging with. He taught her English and they would walk together by the river having a passionate affair. By the summer she was pregnant but there was no prospect of them getting married she was Catholic he was Protestant He was English and English was on the brink of war with revolutionary France and he was penniless he realized that he'd have to return to Paris indeed to London in order to earn some money to send to his pregnant girlfriend. It was also a time of in a conflict for words where the heart of the young lover was with Arnett but his revolutionary head was elsewhere because another friend had made him a law that was a soldier and they Michel beaupré who is a passionate advocate of the revolution and that Stanley were royalists but no pre educated Wordsworth in the revolutionary values of liberty equality fraternity sympathy for the poor so one day be walking with his lover by the law and the next he'd be talking radical politics with. On one memorable occasion they were walking through a country lane and saw a hungry guy Wordsworth wrote vividly about this in his autobiographical poem The prelude. And when we chanced one day to meet a hunger bitten girl. Who crept along fitting her languid self into a heifers motion by a cord tied to her arm and picking us from the lane at sustenance while the girl with her 2 hands was busy knitting in a heartless mood of solitude and at the sight my friend in agitation said Tis against that which we are fighting I with him believed devoutly the despair it was abroad which could not be withstood that poverty at least like this would in a little time be found no more all institutes were ever blotted out that legalized exclusion empty pomp abolished sense or state and cruel power whether by edict of the one or few and finally a sum of the crown of all should see the people having a strong hand in making their own laws whence better days to mankind. When Wordsworth left pregnant and yet in the early autumn of 79 to 2 he returned to Paris and he found it was a very different place from the previous year now the city was in turmoil. The King and the royal family had been held prisoner in the palace of the 2 leaders and in August it had been stormed by a mob the Swiss guard who protected the all family was slaughtered and Wordsworth arrived walked across the plaster carousel and saw the blood stains on the ground. A few weeks later there was a mass of Paris to crack the September massacre. Wordsworth was horrified Alice he had welcomed the revolution Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive and now he felt in some sense implicate. These were thoughts that he had seen a through a sleepless night in his home town with an extinguished paper I kept watch reading it intervals fair gone by pressed on me almost like a fear to come I thought of those September massacres divided for me by little month and felt and touch them a substantial dread the rest was conjured up from tragic fictions and mournful calendars of true history remembrances and diminishment and in such way I wrought upon myself until I seem to hear of voice that cry to the whole city sleep nomo. This comments of a common mind from which I could not gather for security but at the best it seemed a place of fear I'm fit for the repose of night defenseless as a woodland Tigers Rose. In the morning after that sleepless night Wordsworth right round the corner from his hotel to the gardens of the political. The still here today it's a very calm sea manicured trees fountain children playing people walking about dogs it wasn't like that in Wordsworth's time that this was the place where everybody gathered to hear the latest news there were vendors and hawkers and as he walked through the crowds he had someone saying denunciation of the crimes of Maximillian robes. He probably bought the newspaper and what he would have discovered was that one of the leading figures in the general down faction of the moderates that he was close to had denounced robes here in the National Assembly So this was the time when the revolution was splitting apart into different factions all the English in Paris at the time are now beginning to be very worried about what is happening because they see the people they most identify with. Going to the. Being executed by their fellow Republicans what can this mean that Republicans are killing fellow Republicans eventually there will be very few protections for those who are accused and people are being executed sometimes in batches of people in Paris it's very striking because everyone knows where the execution spot is and there are crowds watching people back to the king in January 793 the Queen in October 793 that people who are on the wrong side of developments in the national convention anybody who can be defined as an enemy of the country is in danger not just a prison but death by this very public method. So there's an atmosphere of fear of suspicion. Of division about what is going to happen in France. So the Jacobin extremists met by a taking a vote on the hands with friends being punched clearly it was dangerous for him to stay in Paris is such a time so he headed back to England did he left for the birth of his daughter named Caroline. Astonishingly the following. Risk he seems to have returned to Paris at the height of the terror. Before he was at one end of the 3 league office witnessing the blood on the grass. And after the slaughter of the Swiss God at the other end of the tweet is the huge square now called the plaster la Concorde it's a heart of Paris it's now full of buses and pedestrians taxis bustling heart of the city and Wordsworth return to Paris and 793 is very different place is to find buildings over to my right but with that in Wordsworth's day you can see them in original engravings of the guilty ones now a posh hotel owned by the Saudis the other a government administrative building and it's in front of that but Wordsworth stood and saw the blade form on the neck of his friend Antoine Dawson. A journalist key figure in the German town faction. To have witnessed the execution of that man to be the shattering experience and after that Wordsworth completely lost faith in the revolution lost faith in political revolution and he turned instead to be idea of a kind of in a revolution a revolution of the self and of the feelings achieved through poetry he still cared about the poor and the dispossessed but no he was going to create sympathy for them through his poetry. He wouldn't return to France for another decade because Paris has always been a place of revolution straight ahead of me here in the past that I see visions and he's a weather delay showed were rioting not so long ago and to my left just across the se is the site of there's a venerable of 1968 when the students of the Sorbonne took to the streets and in the hideous atmosphere tried to launch another revolution. Over the brac like Wordsworth was brought up in the Lake District then went to university and soon after that he found himself coming to Paris in an atmosphere of revolutionary fervor not unlike what words with a. Experience nearly 200 years earlier I think what he did was to soak him in a feeling of what was right and rule in a way feeling of the boys his must be heard I think he got that out of Paris and it was a very complicated time print there was no it with the illegitimate child but yeah but he what he seems captures so perfectly in there the French Revolution section of produce this extraordinary contrast of feelings on the one hand Bliss was that dawn to be alive but to be young was very heaven but on the other hand he sees the revolution turning to violence he would he walks across the plaster like our saw just after the September massacres where the bodies have been piled up and and then some of his friends and give it to you I mean this you know has has been extraordinary sect I guess on the other hand I would hold to what he's getting out of it he's getting out of it is the value of many voices the value of unheard forces me to guess terror like anyone would in like this country did on the whole very much Hotel against the the idea of terror and that plays a part but I see I think the 1st impression there's a strong go on that comes through what he kept his back with him is the force of human nature disregarded human nature insisting on having its a voice is good and empathy with them and that's part of his political conviction or in life and not line in. Hungry Girl walking down the lane with a starving cow it is this is against which we are fighting because if there is one yes for sure but and he's always picking that sort of thing yes and he said absolutely right here is that he gets his They're fighting so he's on to it this is the revolution. You do hear the great human lament in letter to you here this kind of. Majestic sadness the award winning contemporary I saw as well. But in a way there's something so muscular about his sadness that it does I think. Give a kind of optimism about human voice and human language it's not to me at any rate it doesn't feel broken in the way that later writers feel that they they write from a kind of injured point of view whereas Wordsworth feels vigorously walking the healthy and even though he expresses unease about the project or the French Revolution and often despairs about the human the actual fabric of his voice is seamless You know he has these rolling metrical phrases that seem just in their sound to suggest optimism Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive. But to be done. It was very helpful. What about couldn't go back to France for many years the terror had taken hold and England was at war with France so he spent many years full of in a conflict he loved his native country but he also wanted to stay true to those principles of liberty fraternity and equality and he was anxious about what would happen to Annette and little Caroline It wasn't until 18 o 2 that he could return at that point there was a brief suspension of hostilities the Soho piece of Emil so with Dorothy he was able to go back across the Channel to return to Cally where he would meet Annette and see his daughter Caroline now 9 for the 1st time. And it was as he was setting off on that journey that he and Dorothy stood on Westminster Bridge at dawn and he came up with the idea of that beautiful sonnet estate a whole month there wasn't much to do apart from walk on the sands or down to the end of the pier but it seems to have been a time of of great happiness in many ways callus hands haven't really changed there are no high r

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