麻豆约拍

In a series of personal essays, Richard Holloway considers the tensions between faith and doubt over the last 3000 years. Author and former Bishop of Edinburgh, Richard Holloway focuses on the Judeo-Christian tradition as he takes the listener from the birth of religious thinking, through the Old and New Testaments, to the developments in subsequent centuries and their influence on thinkers and writers, up to the present day.

In today's programme, Richard Holloway discusses the work of the early 19th century British poets John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley, and how their Romanticism grew out of the rationalism of the 18th century Enlightenment thinkers. He talks to former poet laureate Andrew Motion about Keats' ability to live with uncertainty, without feeling he had to come down on any one side of an argument. And AN Wilson, author of God's Funeral, discusses Keats' belief that he was 'certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart's affections'.

Unlike Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley wanted to proclaim his brand of atheism. His pamphlet The Necessity of Atheism got him sent down from Oxford University.

Producer: Olivia Landsberg
A Ladbroke production for 麻豆约拍 Radio 4.