A long lost Shelley poem has resurfaced this year, and has now been acquired by the Bodleian Library, Oxford. The actress Vanessa Redgrave read  a very moving excerpt from it on R4’sToday progamme, and the librarian was interviewed…

The story is that Shelley got kicked out of Oxford because he published a tract advocating atheism and this poem, called ‘The Existing State of Things’, an anti-war poem. All copies were destroyed, but Shelley managed to keep one which he sent to a relative in Italy, where it remained stashed away ever since.

Below the link:

Check it out. It chimes with the situation as it still is….

Martin J