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Leading literary critic John Carey introduces his new version of John Milton’s Paradise Lost and reveals new insights into the poet’s inspiration.

Carey has shortened the poem to around a third of its length, retaining the greatest pieces of verse and providing linking passages to retain its sweep from the defiance of a ruined archangel to a pair of tragic lovers who find themselves responsible for the fate of the human race. Milton’s epic poem was celebrated across Europe as a supreme achievement of the human spirit when first published in 1667 but is little read today.

Carey is emeritus professor at the University of Oxford. He has published studies of John Donne, Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray, and his memoir, The Unexpected Professor, was a Sunday Times bestseller. He is known for his ‘anti-elitist tone’ although he describes it himself as ‘writing to stimulate and involve the general reader’. Here he talks to Dr David Grylls, associate professor of literature at the University of Oxford.