Sunday Feature: Coleridge in Gottingen

John Worthen explores the impression German writers and thinkers made on the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge as he visited Gottingen in Germany in 1798. Retracing Coleridge's footsteps, John travels into the Harz mountains and up the highest peak, the Brocken, which the poet scaled twice in the hope of catching sight of the spectre and the setting for Goethe's Walpurgisnacht in Faust. He also talks to a lecturer in English literature at Gottingen University, as well as to German students who are studying the Romantic poets. And in England, John meets Dr Seamus Perry of Balliol College Oxford in the British Library, where they handle the treasured notebooks that Coleridge filled with his observations. He also talks to Professor Timothy Fulford of Nottingham Trent University about the legacy of Coleridge's German visit in his own and others' writings