William Wordsworth: The Revolution betrayed

The Napoleonic Quarterly

Assassinating Napoleon Bonaparte, it turns out, was on the minds of lots of people frustrated with how the French Revolution was playing out. Off the back of the Infernal Machine attempt on the First Consul's life we've got an episode here about William Wordsworth, that most revered of English Romantic poets, who was so frustrated by the unfulfilled promise of the Revolution that he dreamed of assassinating Bonaparte in his poem The Prelude. To unpick Wordsworth's direct experience of life in Paris in the early 1790s and his subsequent frustrations with French politics - frustrations which remained firmly locked up in his head at the time - it's great to welcome Ruth N. Halls Professor Emeritus of English Kenneth Richard Johnston to the podcast. Ken's biography The Hidden Wordsworth revealed how the young, radical WW was a strikingly different figure from the more conservative character he was to assume later in life.