William Blake Vs the World

Poet, artist, visionary and author of the unofficial English national anthem ‘Jerusalem’, William Blake is an archetypal misunderstood genius. His life passed without recognition and he worked without reward, mocked, dismissed, and misinterpreted. Yet from his ignoble end in a pauper’s grave, Blake now occupies a unique position – an artist that unites and attracts people from all corners of society, and a rare inclusive symbol of English identity. Blake famously experienced visions, and it is these that shaped his attitude to politics, sex, religion, society, and art. In ‘William Blake vs the World’ we return to a world of riots, revolutions, and radicals, discuss movements from the Levellers of the sixteenth century to the psychedelic counterculture of the 1960s, and explore the latest discoveries in neurobiology, quantum physics, and comparative religion.