It’s 50 years on from the first screening of the TV series I, Claudius – the hugely popular and perhaps surprising cultural phenomenon that brought the story of a lesser-known Roman emperor into the living rooms of millions of families across the world. The person who wrote the novels that the series was based upon was the high-minded lyric poet Robert Graves, who was always quick to dismiss his achievements in prose, saying he’d knocked the books off as means of paying a bill.

Graves was a survivor of the Somme, with a pedigree background and a cut-glass English accent – but he was deeply connected to Wales, Germany and Ireland and spent most of his adult life living in Mallorca, have said goodbye to all that class-ridden England had to offer. He developed an elaborate personal pagan mythology of muse worship that made him hugely influential on a generation of mid-century poets like Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath – and had, across the course of his career, four women who served as muse to his poetic efforts.

The poet Michael Symmons Roberts was too young to see I, Claudius on its first outing, and is only now catching up. Through exploring the rich archive of Graves himself, along with conversations with members of his family and his fourth and final muse, Michael investigates Graves’ extraordinary life and literary legacy. He seeks to discover whether, despite Graves’s desire to be remembered as a poet, he will instead be chiefly known for his war memoir Goodbye to All That and the imperial intrigues of I, Claudius.

Presented by Michael Symmons Roberts
Produced by Geoff Bird
Executive Producer – Jo Meek
A Naked production for BBC Radio 4

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