I went to YouTube this afternoon to see if there was any archive footage of Thomas Hardy reading his own poetry. He died only in 1928 so theoretically it was possible. I couldn't find any, but, beckoned here and there in the usual YouTube way, I dipped into a bit of Jeremy Irons reading ‘Afterwards' in his actorish, labouredly sensitive way - a sonority that had worked perfectly on the wistful voice-overs that were an integral part of the original TV series of Brideshead Revisited but didn't suit Hardy. Then I tried a bit of someone folksy reading a different short poem, and soon stopped. Then, unexpectedly, I reached this much more satisfying clip, hearing it for the first time in decades and laughing:
