The Road Home: Remaking Homer's Odyssey

The Hollywood actor Tom Holland explores the continuing appeal of Homer's Odyssey. From the Coen Brothers' film 'O Brother Where Art Thou?' to feminist rewritings of the story of Penelope's long-suffering wait for her husband to return, we remain as fascinated as ever by one of the poetic cornerstones of western life. Why should that be?

Homer has been quarried and mined and remade ever since the Iliad and the Odyssey were first sung. But today poets, dramatists, songwriters, novelists and filmmakers are working on the poems like never before it seems.

Dante, Tennyson and James Joyce all had goes at rewriting the story of Odysseus (also called Ulysses) and his struggle to get home after the Trojan War, but what do today's reworkers have to say about the story and its meaning to us?

With Simon Armitage, Michael Longley, Zachary Mason, Alice Oswald, Edith Hall, and the late Peter Reading and Christopher Logue.

Producer:Tim Dee

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2012.