Sir John Gielgud is joined by an outstanding repertory of actors – including Dame Peggy Ashcroft, Sir Anthony Hopkins, Lee Remick, Ian Richardson and Julian Glover – in this pioneering, imaginative series demonstrating the immense variety and emotional impact of English-language poetry, from the fourteenth century to the contemporary era. Screened in 1984 and compiled by writer and poet Anthony Thwaite, Six Centuries of Verse was the first television series to provide a systematic and chronological overview of the art, taking in Chaucer, the Medieval and Renaissance periods, Shakespeare, the Metaphysical poets, Milton, the Romantic period and modernism, through to Philip Larkin and Ted Hughes; the chosen poems, both classics and overlooked treasures, are placed into context historically and geographically and read in richly evocative settings.