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💭 Can feeling and imagination preserve what reason alone cannot? In this episode, Jack Thomson explores how Edmund Burke’s political vision of order, tradition, and moral imagination found unexpected echoes in the Romantic movement — especially in the poetry of Wordsworth and Byron.

Through Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, we trace the emergence of the conservative imagination: the belief that society is a living organism shaped by inherited wisdom and sentiment. From there, Jack turns to the Romantics — to Wordsworth’s reverence for nature and continuity, and to Byron’s passionate rebellion against rationalist constraint — showing how the age’s poets both deepened and disrupted Burke’s legacy.

🎧 In this episode:

• Burke’s Reflections and the politics of moral imagination
• Wordsworth’s transformation of Burkean feeling into poetic vision
• Byron’s ambivalent embrace of liberty, passion, and tradition
• How Romanticism redefined the language of political and emotional order

This is the fourth instalment of our Heritage Series, tracing the evolution of conservative and traditionalist thought — from Plato and Augustine to de Maistre, Burke, and beyond — exploring how art, faith, and politics intertwine in the making of Western civilisation.

📚 Hosted by the History of Ideas Reading Club (University of Buckingham)
🎙️ Produced by Beyond the Text: The Intellectual Historian’s Podcast
🎧 Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts & all major platforms

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