“In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree … “ - Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge is one of the most famous poems in the English Language. But it is also one of the strangest. It was composed during an opium dream, it remains unfinished and according to one theory, was implicated in a war in South Africa. And what is its relation to the real life Kublai Khan, the 13th century Mongol emperor who conquered China?
Joining Rajan Datar to discuss this mysterious poem is Coleridge’s award winning biographer Richard Holmes, the poet and senior lecturer in English Dr Peter Anderson from Cape Town University in South Africa, Professor Samantha Harvey from Boise State University in the US, and the Chinese historian Professor Kent Deng from the London School of Economics.
(Photo: Royal Pavilion in the Phraya Nakhon Cave, Thailand. Credit: Mazzzur/GettyImages)