Adrian Schiller

In Paradise Lost Milton produced poem of epic scale conjuring up a vast awe-inspiring cosmos and ranging across huge tracts of space and time. And yet in putting a charismatic Satan and naked Adam and Eve at the centre of this story he also created an intensely human tragedy on the Fall of Man.

Written when Milton was in his fifties - blind bitterly disappointed by the Restoration and briefly in danger of execution - Paradise Lost's apparent ambivalence towards authority has led to intense debate about whether it manages to 'justify the ways of God to men' or exposes the cruelty of Christianity.