www.jeremyirons.net is not owned or updated by Jeremy Irons.
No copyright infringement is intended by the use of any of the photos, articles, or other information on this website. All articles, photos, audio clips and video belong to their rightful owners.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Faber have now confirmed a release date of April 5th, 2018 for the audio recording of Jeremy Irons reading the Complete Poems of TS Eliot.
These are the readings, as heard on BBC Radio 4 over Christmas 2016/17.
Six programmes gather together the verse: Prufrock and Other Observations; Poems (1920); The Waste Land; The Hollow Men, Ash Wednesday and Ariel Poems; Four Quartets; and Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.
The release will coincide with the 75th anniversary of Four Quartets being published in the US as a single volume.
Jeremy Irons will be reading all Four Quartets at a special event at the 92Y in New York, which will also see the presentation of the first Four Quartets Prize, presented by the TS Eliot Foundation in partnership with the Poetry Society of America for a unified sequence of poems or verse narrative.
Jeremy Irons reads the complete collection of T.S.Eliot’s English poems, almost in their entirety, across New Year’s Day, 2017, on BBC Radio 4.
Part One – Prufrock and Other Observations
.
.
Martha Kearney talks to award-winning novelist Jeanette Winterson about her first experience of reading T.S.Eliot and the transformative impact of his language on her as a teenager. She explains why the turn of the year is a good time to read Eliot’s work.
Jeremy Irons reads:
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
Portrait of a Lady
Preludes
Rhapsody on a Windy Night
Morning at the Window
The ‘Boston Evening Transcript’
Aunt Helen
Cousin Nancy
Mr. Apollinax
Hysteria
Conversation Galante
La Figlia Che Piange
With contribution from Jeanette Winterson
Part Two – Poems (1920)
.
.
Martha Kearney talks to Anthony Julius ( the new Chair of Law and the Arts and University College London) and writer Jeanette Winterson about the enduring power and beauty of the opening lines of Eliot’s poem ‘Gerontion’ – ‘Here I am, an old man in a dry month, Being read to by a boy, waiting for rain.’ and explore references in the poems that have been judged anti-semitic. They consider how we should read these poems now, and what we can learn from Eliot’s ‘ugly’ references’.
Jeremy Irons reads:
Gerontion
Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar
Sweeney Erect
A Cooking Egg
The Hippopotamus
Whispers of Immortality
Mr Eliot’s Sunday Morning Service
Sweeney Among the Nightingales
With contributions from writer Jeanette Winterson and lawyer and academic Anthony Julius
Part Three – The Waste Land
.
.
Martha Kearney explores the resonance and the contemporary appeal of ‘The Waste Land’ with award-winning novelist Jeanette Winterson. Jeanette explains why this poetry of fragments can still speak to us so powerfully, whilst the former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and the Scots Makar Jackie Kay, both make contributions to explore the emotional and creative impact of the poem.
Part Four – The Hollow Men, Ash Wednesday and Ariel Poems
.
.
Martha Kearney is joined by the acclaimed actress Fiona Shaw, who has performed ‘The Waste Land’, to explore the impact of Eliot’s language on her own life and to consider the imagery and the seductive music of his poems of spiritual struggle.
Jeremy Irons reads:
The Hollow Men
Ash Wednesday
Journey of the Magi
A Song for Simeon
Animula
The Cultivation of Christmas Trees
Part Five – Four Quartets
.
.
Martha Kearney and Rory Stewart MP, ( and author of ‘The Places in Between’ – an account of a six thousand mile trek from Herat to Kabul ) discuss Rory’s unusual encounter with what Eliot regarded as the culmination of his achievement: the sequence he called the ‘Four Quartets’. Rory learned the entire poem whilst walking through Nepal. He explains why he also used language from the poem when he was campaigning in his constituency, and the importance to him of Eliot’s sense that ‘soil’ and roots matter, even in an poem about time and timelessness.
Jeremy Irons recording entire TS Eliot canon, July 2016
Following his acclaimed recordings of The Waste Land, Four Quartets, Prufrock and the Practical Cats, Jeremy Irons is in the process of recording the remaining TS Eliot poems for BBC Radio 4, in order to complete his readings of the poet’s entire canon.
This was revealed at the TS Eliot Festival 2016 by Jeremy Howe, Commissioning Editor for Drama and Fiction for BBC Radio 4. Howe has been responsible for commissioning Irons’s readings to date, and was discussing the recordings and their qualities before the Festival audience.
Howe also revealed that he is considering a way in which all of the recordings might then be broadcast in chronological sequence, in a major single broadcast event which would reflect Eliot’s development throughout his poetic career.
The London Library announced today that Jeremy Irons, Simon Russell Beale, Fiona Shaw, and Ben Whishaw will be taking centre stage in the Library’s special celebration of T.S. Eliot on 21st October 2015.
Taking place at Wilton’s Music Hall – one of the country’s most atmospheric theatres – the single performance promises to be a unique tribute to one of the world’s best known writers.
Philip Spedding, Development Director at The London Library said, “Jeremy Irons, Simon Russell Beale, Fiona Shaw, and Ben Whishaw are intimately associated with some of the most powerful recent performances of Eliot’s work. We are delighted that they are coming together for what promises to be a memorable tribute to a genuinely great writer”.
The evening of readings is looking to include extracts from a range of T.S. Eliot’s work including The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Four Quartets, The Waste Land, The Hollow Men and Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.
With tickets on sale to the public, alongside an invited audience of special guests, all proceeds from the evening at Wilton’s Music Hall will go to support The London Library, a charity which is one of the world’s largest independent lending libraries and will be celebrating its 175th year in 2016.
Tickets for this special fundraising evening are £55 (£45 for London Library members). The performance will take place at 7.30pm on 21st October at Wilton’s Music Hall, 1 Graces Alley, London E1 8JB. To book, telephone Wilton’s (020 7702 2789) or visit www.wiltons.org.uk.
Thank heavens for Ezra Pound! Without his artistic intervention TS Eliot’s modernist poetic masterpiece would have been called He Do the Police in Different Voices instead of The Waste Land. This we learn in the introductory contributions from the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, Jackie Kay, Matthew Hollis and Sean O’Brien that set Eliot’s complex and multi-layered work in its literary and historical context.
But it is the reading of the text itself by Jeremy Irons and Eileen Atkins that is most enlightening for anyone who has ever struggled to catch Eliot’s drift. Their measured delivery, never overdone, captures the poem’s bleak emotional landscape, breathing life into its panoramic sweep and mundane detail, with Atkins chillingly perfect in Death by Water.
About this programme
Eileen Atkins and Jeremy Irons read the poem by TS Eliot, featuring an introduction by the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, Jackie Kay, Matthew Hollis and Sean O’Brien. The author’s seminal work is arguably one of the most influential of the 20th century, and is split into five parts – The Burial of the Dead, A Game of Chess, The Fire Sermon, Death by Water and What the Thunder Said.
jeremyirons.net 
You must be logged in to post a comment.