Category: Poetry

The Dragon Book of Verse

The Dragon Book of Verse was first published in 1935. The introduction to my (1937) edition was the property of Leighton Park School in Reading; a Quaker school founded in 1890. The Introduction explains that it is divided into two Books.

Black Sheep

When Wendy Cope was on Desert Island Discs this week she chose some beautiful music. This made a welcome change from some of the stuff I’ve heard on the programme recently.

Published
Categorised as Poetry

Naughty Margaret

Earlier this month I introduced my great, great great grandmother, Margaret Bryan. She kept for a few years an album with entries by her friends and today it’s time to take a look at some of them.

The Last Rose of Summer

An old friend died yesterday. We were contemporaries in the Irish Guards and at Durham, so go back a long way.

Paul Muldoon

Hugo Williams’ weekly columns in the TLS were written between 1988 and 1994. He published a selection in 1995 under the title Freelancing, Adventures of a Poet.

Dorset Days

Last Sunday I heard Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle in Puycelsi in the Tarn. Later today I will be back in church in Dorset for more music.

Divan

Last week Daniel Barenboim and his West-Eastern Divan Orchestra were back at the Proms. How on earth did the orchestra get such a silly name? The Penguin Cafe Orchestra is a silly name too.

Published
Categorised as Music, Poetry

Robert Herrick

Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen is PG Wodehouse’s last complete novel, published in 1974, a year before he died aged ninety-three. At an age when his creative juices might be expected to dry up, it is right up to his usual high standard. If you want to know why Bertie Wooster is mistaken for arch-criminal Alpine Joe… Continue reading Robert Herrick

Betjeman

I have been trying to buy Lord Mount Prospect by John Betjeman and these days you can get anything … at a price.

Published
Categorised as Poetry

The World of Yesterday

I bought The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig on the recommendation of an erudite friend. “One of the greatest memoirs of the twentieth century” says David Hare. John Banville adds ” a marvellous recapturing of a Europe that Hitler and his thugs destroyed”.