Shakespeare's tragic history of a ruler losing his grip on power, this edition of 'Richard II' includes explanatory notes and an introduction to Shakespeare's career and the Elizabethan theatre.

This fresh new edition of one of Shakespeare's last plays, developed with the RSC, presents an easy-to-read overview of the play's performance history, including interviews with directors Dominic Cooke, Adrian Noble and Gregory Doran, and provides concise scene-by scene analyses and textual notes offering innovative new insights into the text.

In the brilliantly engaging style that characterised The Genius of Shakespeare, Jonathan Bate has written a series of compelling pieces on the link between literature and the environment and why poetry matters in the new millennium. In fascinating detail, Bate explains how words like 'culture' and 'environment' have evolved since the writing of Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy and the Romantics to the present day.

'Ambitious, exceptionally well informed and immensely engaging . . . Bate writes with unflagging energy, intelligence, with and enthusiasm' Daily Telegraph

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2015 SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE'Gripping and at times ineffably sad, this book would be poetic even without the poetry. It will be the standard biography of Ted Hughes for a long time to come' Sunday Times'Seldom has the life of a writer rattled along with such furious activity ... A moving, fascinating biography' The Times

The definitive biography of John Clare -- the poet's poet -- from Jonathan Bate