Five poetic responses to war, from Michael Redgrave's reading of Henry V to a musical rendition of a 1950s folk classic.

From elegy to grim irony, pastoralism to rhetorical call to arms, five very different poets respond to the experience of war in this 1960s TV programme on English literature. A live performance of folk classic Where Have All the Flowers Gone? contrasts with Michael Redgrave's reading of Henry V's stirring St Crispin's day speech. Wilfred Owen's moving WW1 Anthem for Doomed Youth is the perfect foil to Peter Appleton's biting nursery rhyme parody The Responsibility.

David Daiches introduces and talks about war poetry, interspersed with live readings and actings out of poems and passages: Thomas Hardy's In Time of 'The Breaking of Nations'; Henry V, act IV, scene 3, by Shakespeare, read by Michael Redgrave; Anthem for Doomed Youth by Wilfred Owen; The Responsibility by Peter Appleton; Peter Seeger's Where Have All the Flowers Gone is performed by a male quartet.