Music by Vivaldi, Dowland, Mendelssohn & Stravinsky - 2 COMPACT DISCS - 2 hours, 33 minutes

Publisher, Naxos Audiobooks (February 2000)

WINNER OF THE 1998 TALKIES AWARD FOR BEST POEtrY

"One of the best anthologies of the year... An arresting, deeply moving collection of the best of British poetry read by a star-studded cast." --The Independent

"The classic poems that everybody loves." --Karen Robinson, Talk Radio

"An absolutely wonderful, top-class collection" --Talk Radio

Based on Lord David Owen's book Seven Ages - Poetry for a Lifetime.

150 POEMS READ BY 40 LEADING ACTORS

PERFORMERS IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE:

• Sir lan McKellen
• Catherine McCormack
• Dame Glenda Jackson
• Gayle Hunnicutt
• Mark Rylance
• Prunella Scales
• Connie Booth
• Ralph Fiennes
• Juliet Stevenson
• Stella Gonet
• John Cleese
• Andrew Sachs
• Joss Ackland
• Leo Sayer
• Emma Fielding
• John Sessions
• loan Gruffudd
• Jenny Agutter
• Michael Williams
• Michael Caine
• Timothy West
• Terence Stamp
• Michael Maloney
• David Suchet
• Art Malik
• HRH The Duchess of Kent
• Felicity Kendal
• Clark Peters
• Janet Suzman
• Hannah Gordon
• Robert Lindsay
• Samuel West
• Charles Dance
• Pete Postlethwaite
• William Houston
• Dame Judi Dench
• Robert Powell
• Lord Owen
• Ed Bishop
• Robert Hardy

“All the world's a stage
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.”

If by Rudyard Kipling read by Michael Caine
The Owl and the Pussy Cat by Edward Lear read by John Cleese
I Remember, I Remember by Thomas Hood read by Ralph Fiennes
The Tiger by William Blake read by Timothy West
Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge read by Pete Postlethwaite
Macavity by T S Eliot read by David Suchet
Perhaps by Vera Brittain read by Dame Judi Dench
Sir Ian McKellen reads Shakespeare's The Seven Ages of Man

INCLUDES POEMS WRITTEN BY:

• William Shakespeare
• Emily Dickinson
• Ted Hughes
• Dylan Thomas
• Oscar Wilde
• Rudyard Kipling
• W. B. Yeats
• Percy Bysshe Shelley
• A. E. Housman
• Robert Burns
• D. H. Lawrence
• John Keats
• Seamus Heaney
• Wilfred Owen
• Matthew Arnold
• John Donne
• Walt Whitman
• Rabindranath Tagore
• William Blake
• William Wordsworth
• Ogden Nash
• Christina Rossetti
and many others.

This highly entertaining anthology of verse is the comic, tragic, tender and telling story of life's seven ages - from childhood to old age. Within the framework of Shakespeare's speech, The Seven Ages of Man, performed by Sir Ian McKellen, are 150 great poems from all ages - from Chaucer to Ted Hughes. They are presented by the finest cast ever assembled on one recording.