On Not Having a Classical Education

Peter Porter and Clive James have been in conversation since the day they met. Jill Kitson of Australia's ABC decided that a radio audience should hear something of what the two poets had been saying.

Programme 1: On not having a Classical education.
Date of Show: Sat, April 22, 2000
'There are no libraries in heaven', says Peter Porter, quoting one of his own poems. 'All culture lies in the head.' For Clive James and Peter Porter, culture begins with the books — like Biggles and Ion Idriess — they devoured as children. The classics of ancient Greece and Rome were not drilled into them as part of their school curriculum. They acquired them later, as writers who were determined to make the European heritage of art and literature their own.

Programme 2: From the mechanics of language to the music of Shakespeare.
Date of Show: Sat, April 29, 2000
Clive James and Peter Porter talk about the grounding they acquired in their own tongue: in 'the way the language is bolted together', whether from learning to parse or from reading the literature of the Renaissance. Dante, Chaucer, Goethe, Browning, Montaigne, and above all Shakespeare are as familar to them as friends.

Programme 3: On Shakespeare.
Date of Show: Mon, July 17, 2000
A tribute to Shakespeare as the number one source, the creator of the English language and its literature.

Programme 4: The heritage of Shakespeare.
Date of Show: Mon, July 24, 2000
On the heritage of Shakespeare: his influence on the next generations of English poets and playwrights, and the different literary traditions of their 17th and 18th century European contemporaries.

Programme 5: The Classical Age.
Date of Show: Sat, August 19, 2000
The 18th Century; the Classical Age in music and literature.

Programme 6: On the 19th Century.
Date of Show: Sun, August 26, 2001
The 19th century; the age of Romanticism and the age of nationalism.