7 December 08  – 2 January 09, BBC Radio 3

During December 2008 and through into the New Year Radio 3 commemorates the 400th anniversary of the birth of poet John Milton (1608 – 1674) with a host of programmes exploring his life and works.

• The Sunday Feature: Adventurous Song explores evolving views of Milton and importance today.
• The Essay  looks at John Milton as an essayist.
• Drama on 3 presents a new production of Samson Agonistes.
• The Verb  with Ian McMillan.
  
  Paradise Lost
  Acclaimed actor Anton Lesser reads the complete Paradise Lost (12 books), Milton’s best know work, every weekday at 5pm and at the weekend at 9.30pm from 22 December - 2 January.
  
  
  Other Highlights:
  
  • Every day from 7 – 14 December actor Robert Glenister reads many of Milton’s poems including Lycidas, On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity and Sonnet X1X. The poems are dropped in three times a day at Breakfast, at 2pm and during In Tune at 6.00pm. Robert Glenister has appeared in BBC TV’s Spooks and Hustle as well as with the RSC and at the National Theatre.
    
    
  • The Australian poet John Kinsella, who has written what he calls a Miltonic anti-masque will be among Ian McMillan’s guests on The Verb on 12 December at 9.15pm.
    
    
  • The Early Music Show focuses on Milton’s masque in honour of chastity, Comus recorded at Ludlow castle, where Milton’s masque was first performed in 1634 (13 December, 1.00 – 2.00pm).
  
  
  
  John Milton was also a polemicist and civil servant for the Common Wealth of England and is best known for his epic poem Paradise Lost, his treatise Areopagitica and his radical republican views and thoughts on divorce.
  
  
  Top banner shows Milton's house in Chalfont St Giles, England.