Break out the bunting. Crack open the champagne. Spit-roast the capon and prepare to party. Or, come to think of it, don’t bother.
Break out the bunting. Crack open the champagne. Spit-roast the capon and prepare to party. Or, come to think of it, don’t bother. The fourth centenary of John Milton, which falls on 9 December, is unlikely to be greeted by an outburst of joyful carousing. Of all the great English writers (and he ranks among the half dozen greatest poets in all literature) Milton is the least cherished, the most lacking in glamour, the hardest to adore. His peculiar misfortune is to have been always out of fashion. In 1658 he began work on Paradise Lost, an epic celebrating the virtues of Christian fundamentalism just as the Puritans’ grip on power was slackening.
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