Edward Wilson-Lee: What Would the World be like Without Shakespeare?

Edward Wilson-Lee, author of the astonishing 'Shakespeare in Swahililand: Adventures with the Ever-Living Poet' answers our questions. In this clip, Edward tells us what the world as we know it would be like without The Bard...
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This radical, breath-taking book combines travel, history, biography and satire in an ode to Shakespeare. Wilson-Lee teaches Shakespeare at Cambridge but grew up in East Africa and 'Shakespeare in Swahililand' explores Shakespeare’s global legacy like no other book before it. In these pages explorers stagger through Africa's interior accompanied by Shakespeare; eccentrics live out their dreams on the African Savannah with Shakespeare by their side; decadent emigres, railway labourers, Indian settler communities, African intellectuals and rebels all turned to Shakespeare and adapted his plays to fit their needs. The book examines how Shakespeare influenced the first African leaders of independent nations, Cold War intrigues and even Che Guevara.
With its extraordinary sequence of stories and momentous travels from Zanzibar, through Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia and Sudan, this literary adventure throws high culture and the wild together in celebration of Shakespeare's legacy as a poet of the world.