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To celebrate Melvyn Bragg鈥檚 27 years presenting In Our Time, some well-known fans of the programme have chosen their favourite episodes. Historian and broadcaster Simon Schama has selected the episode on Shakespeare鈥檚 Sonnets and recorded an introduction to it. (This introduction will be available on 麻豆社 Sounds and the In Our Time webpage shortly after the broadcast and will be longer than the one broadcast on Radio 4). In 1609 Thomas Thorpe published a collection of poems entitled Shakespeare鈥檚 Sonnets, 鈥渘ever before imprinted鈥�. Yet, while some of Shakespeare's other poems and many of his plays were often reprinted in his lifetime, the Sonnets were not a publishing success. They had to make their own way, outside the main canon of Shakespeare鈥檚 work: wonderful, troubling, patchy, inspiring and baffling, and they have appealed in different ways to different times. Most are addressed to a man, something often overlooked and occasionally concealed; one early and notorious edition even changed some of the pronouns. With: Hannah Crawforth Senior Lecturer in Early Modern Literature at King鈥檚 College London Don Paterson Poet and Professor of Poetry at the University of St Andrews And Emma Smith Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Hertford College, Oxford Producer: Simon Tillotson Spanning history, religion, culture, science and philosophy, In Our Time from 麻豆社 Radio 4 is essential listening for the intellectually curious. In each episode, host Melvyn Bragg and expert guests explore the people, ideas, events and discoveries that have shaped our world In Our Time is a 麻豆社 Studios production