Here are 35 of the greatest poems in the French language, carefully selected and read in French by Bill Homewood, the bilingual English classical actor who has spent half his life in France. To help those English speakers with just a little French to appreciate the glories of these poems, he provides his own clear English translations.

The poems range from the earliest medieval and renaissance masterpieces - François Villon, Joachim de Bellay, Pierre de Ronsard and others - to the high romance of the 19th century, with Victor Hugo, Paul Verlaine and Charles Baudelaire, then on to the poets who revolutionised style and led us into the 20th century: Stéphane Mallarmé, Arthur Rimbaud, Guillaume Apollinaire and Paul Eluard.

Recorded in France, this collection has already attracted praise from leading figures in French culture and critics alike.