Rhyme and treason Wordsworth a secret agent and Coleridge a traitor? Pandaemonium may be entertainment, says John Sutherland, but as history it's pure travesty. John Sutherland Thursday September 06 2001, The Guardian The Guardian Pandaemonium highlights a problem familiar to teachers of English literature. You have this class. They've spent the weekend (you suspect) popping ecstasy and watching MTV. How do you make the 1802 Preface to the Lyrical Ballads, with all that high-toned stuff about "poetic diction", sexy? Pandaemonium falls back on Oscar Wilde's axiom: "Lies are more beautiful than truth." What director Julien Temple and screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce have created is visually striking - stunning at times. But these effects arre achieved at the cost of biographical and historical truth. Does it matter? No, says the movie's producer, Michael Kustow. Yes, says Professor Dryasdust. Temple's movie opens with a wholly imaginary gathering. It is the election of the Poet Laureate, in 1813. Bizarrely, the Lord Chamberlain has decided to announce the royal choice of bard in the style of the Hollywood Oscars, in public, at Carlton House. Enter, from his stretch coach and horses, mad, bad Lord Byron. He throws his kerchief over his shoulder as he passes through the crowd. The Regency bobbysoxers go crazy. Byron, we apprehend, is the people's poet. But whose will be the name in the envelope? From his Lakeland fells in stalks William Wordsworth, looking as if he had a shepherd's crook stuffed up his jacksie. Robert Southey twitters in. Forget that no-talent versifier. Last but not least comes Samuel Taylor Coleridge, stoned out of his mind on laudanum, and looking (as played by Linus Roache) like Robert Downey Jr after a hard night. Sam promptly falls flat on his face. Laureate? Not a hope. We flash back to Bristol in the revolutionary 1790s. Young Coleridge, clear-headed and vigorous, is a political firebrand. "No king! No war! No slavery!" is his rousing cry. In collaboration with the radical printer, John Thelwall, he is clandestinely distributing a seditious magazine, The Watchman. Coleridge brings into his radical gang a new, allegedly "democratic" friend, William. What next? Government heavies break down the door and throw Thelwall into the Tower, where they tear out his fingernails. The authorities publicly incinerate thousands of copies of Coleridge's magazine, like Nazis in 1933. Who, you wonder, shopped Coleridge and Thelwall? Well, to be honest, you don't wonder. Wordsworth, the rat. It's rattling good stuff. There's just one small objection. None of it ever happened. This is fantasy literary history. The main section of Pandaemonium concentrates on the years 1797-8, when Coleridge and Wordsworth moved in together, at Nether Stowey and Alfoxden in Somerset. Here it was that they collaborated to produce Lyrical Ballads. The viewing audience is subjected to some gross simplifications. Sam has a toothache and starts on the slippery slope with some medicinal opium. He meets an ancient mariner (ho-hum). Uninspired Wordsworth goes walking with his sister, Dorothy: "I wander lonely as a cow," he mutters. "Wouldn't 'cloud' be better, William?" she sweetly suggests. This is also fantasy, but you can live with it. Drama has to make its short cuts. But Pandaemonium takes other liberties which are harder to condone. Three years ago, the American critic Kenneth Johnston published a book called The Hidden Wordsworth. Among other assertions (argued soberly, and at immense length), Johnston alleged that Wordsworth was a founder member of the British secret service, a government informer or long-time, hireling snitch. Johnston's revisionary thesis provoked furious controversy in the scholarly world. The consensus was that he had got it wrong. Wordsworth was exonerated. The creators of Pandaemonium have, perversely I think, swallowed The Hidden Wordsworth hook, line and sinker. And they go well beyond Johnston. Their Wordsworth is a despicable government spy. Worse than this, he is a psychopath: encouraged by his cold bitch of a wife, Mary, he methodically sets out to destroy Coleridge. Why? Because he is jealous of the other poet's genius. Of course, we are to understand, Wordsworth himself has only a minor talent. He has embarked on some dreary white elephant called The Prelude (don't bother to read it). But he is uneasily aware that Coleridge has created a "real" masterpiece, called Kubla Khan. As the master stroke of his Machiavellian schemes, Wordsworth ushers Coleridge into the presence of his sister, Dorothy. Once she was pert and bright as a pin. Now she is a harridan in a wheelchair, giggling and blowing raspberries. In the sonorous tones of a 19th-century drug tsar, Wordsworth tells Coleridge: "This is the end of the road to which Kubla Khan is the gateway. This is your 'pleasure dome'." Apparently Coleridge carries the only manuscript copy of the poem on his person. In a fit of remorse, he casts it in the fire. We see it consumed by the flames. Game, set and match to gloating William Wordsworth. But wait, wait! Poor mad Dorothy has memorised the poem and she begins to recite it. Kubla Khan is saved for literature! Hurrah! Church bells ring all over London, publishers dance in the streets. Wordsworth looks like the shepherd has stuck two crooks up his jacksie. None of this happened, of course. But, at this point, who cares? We're in the literary Land of Oz. Well, as it happens, I care. Of course, you can't libel the dead. But this is dreadfully unfair to the Wordsworths. William never betrayed Coleridge. Their relationship was vexed, but essentially civilised and creative. Mary was a good friend to Coleridge. It is true that Dorothy was a victim of senile dementia - but it was many years after Coleridge died, and not drug-related. Kubla Khan was published quite normally. The Prelude is one of the two or three greatest poems in the English language. I know all this. Probably you do as well. But will those susceptible viewers, boning up the Romantics for their A levels, know it? At the very least, the makers of Pandaemonium should have appended a disclaimer to the opening credits: "This Film Will Seriously Injure Your Examination Prospects." It's entertaining, nice to look at and, in a Ken Russell kind of way, thrilling film-making. But, regarded as literary history, Pandaemonium is pure travesty. Who advised its makers? At the end of the credits, after acknowledgement of the services of the clapperboard operator, "special thanks" are offered to Richard Holmes, our most distinguished biographer of Coleridge. I can't believe he would want to be associated with this film. Nor, even though it has been influenced by him, would Kenneth Johnston (I hope). Pandaemonium has been produced for the BBC with a generous subvention from the Lottery fund. Poetic licenc -- (Thanks to Gigi, Mari)