Actors, Celebrities, Relatives Gather for William Wordsworth's 250th

The Guardian's Alison Flood tells readers about a new initiative called Wordsworth 250 which aims to mark the 250th anniversary of the Romantic poet's birth with recordings, readings, and other enticing activities. "Stephen Fry and Brian Cox’s sonorous tones can be heard declaiming William Wordsworth’s The World Is Too Much With Us, Caroline Quentin is reading the Romantic poet’s Lines Written in Early Spring, and William H Macy has taken on his She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways," Flood begins. From there: 

A host of actors and celebrities have jumped at the chance to record their favourite Wordsworth poems to mark the 250th anniversary of his birth, with the poet’s descendants now appealing to the public to send in their own readings to help them build a living archive of his writing online.

The project, Wordsworth 250, arose after the coronavirus pandemic put paid to his descendants’ plans to mark the anniversary with a range of celebrations in the Lake District. “After that was cancelled, I emailed everybody in the family and said, ‘Look, why don’t we all send in our favorite Wordsworth poems, we could just put those out, us recording them on our iPhones’. I thought Wordsworths reading Wordsworth would be a bit amusing,” said Christopher Wordsworth Andrew, the poet’s great-great-great-grandson.

It was initially intended to be just a family memorial – there are around 50 direct Wordsworth descendants, and the majority got involved. But then Andrew managed to contact Fry, who was keen to join in, and he suddenly found himself with dozens of celebrities reading for the archive, including Ruth Wilson, Tom Conti and Hugh Bonneville.

Continue at The Guardian.