W. B. Yeats - Innisfree to Easter 1916

In the early 20th century, as the nation of Ireland emerged from the turmoil of centuries of struggle, oppression, poverty and famine, one figure above all others was  both prophet and judge of the tumultuous process. In his early years, William Butler Yeats created a mythology of Ireland, and later, with poems like Easter 1916 and The Second Coming, he wrote of the ambiguity, the "terrible beauty", that was explicit in the uprisings and civil wars which preceded the creation of the Irish Free State. But he was not just a poet; with Maud Gonne, the actress and revolutionary with whom he fell hopelessly in love and who he compared to Helen of Troy, he became involved in the creation of an Irish Theatre, and in direct political action with the Irish Republican Brotherhood, the forerunner of the IRA. On its creation, he became a public figure as a Senator in the Dail, and with the award of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923 became world famous. But he was a man of contradictions, a Republican who detested violence, a Protestant who supported Irish freedom, an intellectual who believed in magic. Join Rupert and Charlie as they look at W B Yeats in a 2 part series.