Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, it's a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that at some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right?

It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's out of ice cream.

Listen to Evil Genius on BBC Sounds.

Welcome to our Proms Plus event marking the centenary of World War I, with a selection

of poetry chosen by my two guests, both of whom have a very personal link to the subject.

Colonel Tim Collins OBE served in the British Army for more than two decades, including

tours in Northern Ireland,

Germany and Cyprus. But he's best known for a speech he made to his troops on the eve of

the invasion of Iraq in 2003. He told them they were there to liberate not to conquer,

and that the mark of Cain would be on anyone who killed without good reason. The speech won him global acclaim

has featured in several films since devoted to the Iraq War and a copy of it is said to hang in the

Oval Office. Baroness Shirley Williams has been a prominent feature of British political life for

five decades, first becoming an MP for Labour in 1964. She went on to hold several key ministerial positions

and was co-founder of the SDP in 1981.

Pertinently to our subject today, Shirley is also the daughter of Vera Britain,

a feminist, pacifist campaigner and author of Testament of Youth,

in which she recounts her service as a nurse in World War I.

The conflict took the lives of Britain's fiancé, her brother and two close friends.

The war produced strong poetic responses in the approach to it and as it ran its bloody course,

and our first two poems today will capture what it was like to be poised on the brink of war.

Both were written during the summer precisely 100 years ago, and the sense of dread is palpable.

Shirley, they're your choices, the first part of Anna Akhmatova's poem written in the silver age of great Russian writing leading up to the revolution.

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