Useful info from Alistair about Auden

 You'll find on Box of Broadcasts three very useful programmes about Auden. The first is a documentary - 'Tell Me the Truth About Love' (BBC 4 2009) which is a very fine audi-visual biography of Auden; the second is a drama-documentary:'The Addictions of Sin' (BBC 2 2004) which frames Auden through his re-conversion to Christianity in 1941 which made him reject the political and moral positions he had held in the 1930s. The third is a drama - Christopher and His Kind (BB2 2011) - which tells the story of the time spent in Berlin by Christopher Isherwood and W.H.Auden. They were there in the dying years of the Weimar Republic as the Nazi movement is gaining ground. It is very well done, not least by the very tall Matt Smith (Dr Who) as Isherwood who was very short. It captures well the sexual libertinism of the period - Isherwood and Auden were in Berlin for the easy access to hard-up gay young men; but Auden was influenced by the art and culture of the Weimar period, not
least by the ideas of Brecht. It is well worth watching because it also helps us to understand the period in Europe in which Auden was writing. Auden and Isherwood and other post-war writers are much more international and mobile than their pre-war counterparts and they lived much more on the edges of society, in part because they were gay, in part because they were interested in radical politics. 

You can access Box of Broadcast by simply googling Box of Broadcasts- you then enter it by putting in 'University of Sussex' and then putting in the information you put in to access the Sussex library on-line. The system is slow and needs patience and is not always responsive but it is a fantastic resource for students of English literature. Happy viewing!