What in Me Is Dark

A testament to the enduring power of a great work of literature to inspire. * Financial Times, *Books of the Year* *
[A] thoughtful, wide-rangingand astute book... A remarkable feat of distillation and elucidation… As a response to such a complex and equivocal historical figure [as Milton] neither hagiography nor iconoclasm seems quite adequate, and Reade’s excellent book strikes a difficult and deft balance between the two. * Observer *
Clever, wide-ranging... Reade is an academic, but his book is mercifully unlike most academic works. It is witty and sardonic.... [Reade] is sensitive and shockable. -- Lucy Hughes-Hallett * New Statesman *
Eminently readable... Reade includes a wealth of curious detail * The Telegraph *
If we ever needed a lesson about the challenges of freedom it is now. Orlando Reade’s passionate and illuminating account of the afterlives of Paradise Lost is an urgent reminder that freedom- in all senses - is poetry: there to be loved, resisted, re-worked and made to sing again for each new generation. -- Lyndsey Stonebridge, author of We Are Free to Change the World
An admirably lucid new book * Independent *
Rare and refreshing... gloriously and uniquely about disobedience – both in human and cosmic terms. * The Spectator *
Fresh and arresting... What in Me is Dark is a lucid and sometimes moving reminder of how Milton’s epic, for all its pre-modern erudition and doctrinal complexity, has continually been given new life by its modern readers. * Literary Review *
Orlando Reade's immensely readable history of the reception of Paradise Lost shows how Milton's great poem vaults across the centuries to meet new readers, its radicalism undimmed. -- Adam Smyth, author of The Book-Makers
What in Me is Dark, with its brisk canter over a field as wild and varied as Milton's own masterpiece, will send readers back to the original text with a new sense of its paradoxes, beauties and continuing relevance. * Financial Times *