This lecture considers how Thomas Chatterton created literary worlds. My aim is to reveal the connections between his very different poetic visions of mediaeval Redcliffe, African mythology, contemporary eighteenth-century politics, and environmentalism. Although these areas of Chatterton’s writing are usually treated separately by critics, they in fact share many common features, and between them characterize Chatterton’s distinctive – if extraordinarily precocious – poetic voices. These shared characteristics have, moreover, been brought into sharp relief by some of the pressing issues of our own time, from the traumas of the pandemic to the debates on the commemoration (and misrepresentation) of historical figures such as Edward Colston and indeed Chatterton himself. In the poetry of Thomas Chatterton we can, I argue, find not only an unexpected influence on some of our major cultural touchstones, but significance and relevance for us today through the consolation of literature.