I am a little ashamed to admit that I began by using William Wordsworth’s The Prelude as my bedtime story, confident that I would be lulled off pretty fast. But it proved altogether too fascinating. Promoted to my striding-the-hills-and-dales book, it is hugely enjoyable, telling not just of Wordsworth’s love of the lakes but of his life in London and in France during the Revolution, and full of course of famous lines (‘Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive / But to be young was very heaven; Rise up, thou monstrous ant-hill on the plain / Of a too busy world!’)

Wordsworth’s poem is one of the fundamental documents of the Romantic period. Written and revised over a period of more than 50 years, it expresses Wordsworth’s moral and aesthetic autobiography in blank verse. It isn’t easy to maintain the listener’s interest in such an abstract subject, but Nicholas Farrell finds the passion and intensity that must have struck readers when this was a new and revolutionary story. At the same time, Farrell’s narration is intimate, not pompous or bombastic. He articulates Wordsworth’s ideas without forgetting this is verse but without over-stressing the metrical regularity and variations. This is an essential listen for anyone interested in the roots of Romanticism.