Christopher Robin 169
Come live with me, and be my love 242
Dear Mama 309
Dearest, the cockroaches are having babies 313
Death is nothing at all 362
Death, be not proud, though some have callèd thee 357
Do not go gentle into that good night 371
Do you remember an Inn, Miranda? 41
Early morning over Rouen, hopeful, high, courageous morning 198
Earth has not anything to show more fair 89
Edward the Confessor 67
Einstein born 19
Everyday I think about dying 70
Everyone suddenly burst out singing 197
Everything passes and vanishes 360
Ewe bleateth after lamb 62
Father heard his children scream 65
For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday 355
Forget the long, smouldering afternoon 44
Forty boys on benches with their quills 87
From across the lake 66
From quiet homes and first beginning 257
From time to time our love is like a sail 102
George the Third 68
Glory be to God for dappled things 281
Go and open the door 240
Good-night; ensured release 366
Gran was in her chair she was taking a nap 312
Green Snake, when I hung you round my neck 137
Had we but world enough, and time 244
Haikus are easy 67
Half a league, half a league 194
Hand on the bridge 37
Happy the man, and happy he alone 414
Happy those early days! 407
He sipped at a weak hock and seltzer 288
Her father loved me, oft invited me 161
Here dead lie we because we did not choose 196
Hip bath, hip bath 259
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways 93
How many seconds in a minute? 403
How pleasant to know Mr Lear! 16
How should I not be glad to contemplate 420
I am having a rapprochement with galoshes 206
I am spending my time imagining the worst that could happen 191
I am the Smoke King 282
I caught this morning morning’s minion 95
I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun 360
I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind 98
I have eaten 76
I have never walked on Westminster Bridge 90
I leant upon a coppice gate 225
I long to hold some lady 190
I made hay while the sun shone 209
I met a traveller from an antique land 91
I must go down to the sea again 70
I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky 394
I quarreled with my brother 177
I remember … 315
I remember, I remember 27
I saw Len Hutton in his prime 71
I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed 141
I stood upon a high place 76
i thank You God for most this amazing 416
I think that I shall never see 78
I used to think nurses 80
I wandered lonely as a Cloud 51
I was welcomed here – clear gold 221
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree 410
I will put in my box 408
I’d like to be a teabag 121
I’m a maiden who is forty 346
I’m glad at last we’re going to do this film 148
I’m in love, I’m in love! 189
I’m nobody! Who are you? 75
I’ve got you under my skin 249
If I should die, think only this of me 202
If I should go before the rest of you 370
If I were doing my Laundry I’d wash my dirty Iran 298
If you can keep your head when all about you 392
In moving-slow he has no Peer 136
In the drinking-well 65
In the grey summer garden I shall find you 367
In the Land of the Bumbley Boo 118
In the twilight rain 65
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan 320
In youth I dreamed, as other youths have dreamt 401
‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller 284
It is eighteen years ago, almost to the day 181
It is midnight in the ice-rink 119
It was a dream I had last week 70
It was Christmas Day in the workhouse 231
It was many and many a year ago 399
It’s no go the merrygoround, it’s no go the rickshaw 113
James James 337
Jenny kissed me when we met 73
John Stuart Mill 68
Just one sonetto 81
Lady, lady, should you meet 185
Lana Turner has collapsed! 349
Late August, given heavy rain and sun 222
Let me die a youngman’s death 374
Let me not to the marriage of true minds 84
little tree 227
loneliness is a sign you are in desperate need of yourself 80
Lord Byron 68
Lord Lundy from his earliest years 327
Love set you going like a fat gold watch 165
Love, unrequited, robs me of my rest 278
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now 220
Macavity’s a Mystery Cat: he’s called the Hidden Paw 133
Matilda told such Dreadful Lies 330
Methinks I am a prophet new inspired 153
Mick Jagger a– 69
Miranda was the nicest child 336
Miss J. Hunter Dunn, Miss J. Hunter Dunn 186
Much to his Mum and Dad’s dismay 122
Music, when soft voices die 358
My candle burns at both ends 79
My love you have stumbled slowly 372
My luve is like a red, red rose 246
Night; and once again 66
No man is an island 73
Nobody heard him, the dead man 404
Not only the leaf shivering with delight 252
notice how they have perfect steering 306
Now when the number of my years 363
Of man’s first disobedience, and the fruit 30
Of pygmies, palms and pirates 117
Oh 61
Oh, to be in England 219
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth 99
Once a fellow met a fellow 259
One fine day in the middle of the night 105
One, two, buckle my shoe 35
Oscar Wilde 68
Our revels now are ended 164
Out of the night that covers me 388
Phone for the fish-knives, Norman 290
Please Mrs Butler 175
Please, darling, no more diets 238
poetry readings have to be some of the saddest 296
Poetry? It’s a hobby 204
Polish the silverware, dust off the telly screen 316
Remember me when I am gone away 94
Remember, the time of year 218
Robert de Niro 69
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness 223
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? 86
She walks in beauty, like the night 380
She’s here at Opening Time each day 342
Should auld acquaintance be forgot 216
Sir Christopher Wren 67
Sir Henry Rider Haggard 68
Sir Humphrey Davy 67
So far, so good 7
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone 369
Such love I cannot analyse 256
Sundays too my father got up early 205
sunken yachtsmen 307
Sunset and evening star 359
Take some Picts, Celts and Silures 411
The bed we loved in was a
spinning world 100
The boy stood on the burning deck 265
The boy was barely five years old 188
The cow who jumped over the moon remarked 115
The days are short 406
The first surprise: I like it 419
The good are vulnerable 373
The grey sea and the long black land 247
The Herring is a lucky fish 69
The horses line up 302
The King asked 171
The limerick is furtive and mean 64
The most important thing we’ve learned 291
The optimist builds himself safe inside a cell 77
The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea 1
The phantom lollipop lady 350
The Pobble who has no toes 106
The quality of mercy is not strained 155
The seasons mend their ruin as they go 96
The Secret Garden will never age 212
The silver swan, who living had no note 410
The snail pushes through a green 140
The sun was shining on the sea 270
The upland flocks grew starved and thinned 129
The was an Old Person of Ewell 63
The whiskey on your breath 179
The year’s at the spring 74
There is a kind of love called maintenance 251
There is a young lady whose nose 63
There is nothing more perky
There was an Old Man in a boat 63
There was an old person of Dean 63
There was an Old Person of Ischia 63
There were never strawberries 250
There’s a breathless hush in the Close to-night 396
There’s a doughty little Island in the ocean 261
There’s a famous seaside place called Blackpool 332
There’s an indescribable beauty in union 253
There’s antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium 235
They don’t publish the good news 417
They fuck you up, your mum and dad 393
They’re changing guard at Buckingham Palace 210
Things that go bump in the night 69
Thirty days hath September 233
This day is called the feast of Crispian 156
This is as close as I’ll ever be to a butterfly 143
This is the Night Mail crossing the Border 377
This is the tale of Sonia Snell 344
This morning I’ve got too much energy 305
Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels 48
Through the open French window the warm sun 415
Timothy Winters comes to school 347
To be, or not to be, that is the question 159
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose 214
To keep your marriage brimming 239
To lose two pounds a week 237
To set my brother Clarence and the King 152
To-con-vey one’s mood 67
Today is very boring 176
Tread lightly, she is near 365
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves 108
‘Twas on a lofty vase’s side 126
’Twas on the shores that round our coast 274
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood 386
Tyger Tyger, burning bright 128
Vincent Malloy is seven years old 351
Was I? 26
We sleep together, close and warm 255
What are days for? 417
What do cats remember of days? 142
What is that blood-stained thing 71
What is this life if, full of care 383
What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why 97
What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? 201
Whatever the difference is, it all began 101
When fishes flew and forests walked 131
When I am an old woman I shall wear purple 390
When I am dead, my dearest 361
When I consider how my light is spent 88
When I have fears, as Keats had fears 368
When I was sick and lay a-bed 167
When in trouble, when in doubt 424
When we two parted 183
When you are old and grey and full of sleep 208
When you stop to consider 79
When you walk through a storm 367
Whenever Richard Cory went down town 326
Where am I now when I need me 209
Where is the Jim Crow section 178
Whose woods these are I think I know 226
Why not take a poem 58
Wild nights! Wild nights! 248
Willy, Willy, Harry, Ste 234
Wynken, Blynken, and Nod one night 111
Yes. I remember Adlestrop 405
‘You are old, Father William,’ the young man said 33
You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water 7
You may talk o’ gin and beer 323
You! 61
Your Daddy is a soldier son 193
THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING
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PENGUIN BOOKS
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Penguin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.
First published 2019
Copyright © Gyles Brandreth, 2019
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Cover illustration by Piers Sanford
ISBN: 978-0-241-39793-0
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
Chapter One: How I Got into This
1 It’s too much of a mouthful. If I was starting over again, I’d make it something simpler, like ‘Gyles Brown’ or ‘Ben Brandreth’. The Gyles with a y was my father’s idea. (If I had been a girl I would have been called ‘Mercedes’. A Mercedes is what he really wanted.) Gyles with a y is a bit fey, but it’s different and I quite like that. Please think of me as ‘Gyles’. It’s only five letters and that’s good. According to the poet and playwright, Oscar Wilde, to live in the public memory you need a name of just five letters – like Oscar or Wilde, or Jesus or Plato, or, as he pointed out when he was in New York and visiting the world’s most famous elephant at P. T. Barnum’s celebrated circus: Jumbo.
2 And for footnotes.
3 At this point, my publisher reminds me that a gushing admirer once approached the great James Joyce in Zurich and asked, ‘May I shake the hand that wrote Ulysses?’ Joyce closed his eyes for a moment before replying, famously: ‘No, it’s done other things as well.’
4 The team captains were the comedian Cyril Fletcher, one of whose celebrated ‘Odd Odes’ appears on page 344, and the poet and eccentric, Caryl Brahms, who wrote a series of brilliant comic novels with S. J. Simon. (I reckon No Bed for Bacon is the one to start with.)
5 They aren’t. ‘Has anybody ever seen a drama critic in the daytime? Of course not. They come out afte
r dark, up to no good.’ P. G. Wodehouse.
Chapter Two: Thanks for the Memory
1 There really isn’t. Something does rhyme with ‘purple’, however, and that’s ‘hirple’, an old English word meaning ‘to walk with a limp’. How do I know that? My friend, the lexicographer, Susie Dent, told me. We do a podcast together and call it Something Rhymes with Purple. It was from Susie that I also learnt that the ‘black box’ flight recorder on aircraft is actually orange. Life is full of surprises.
2 I asked Google to give me Milton’s dates just now, and up popped the dates for the forthcoming tour of my friend, Milton Jones – the comedian whose gems include my favourite line about his wife: ‘It’s difficult to say what she does … She sells seashells on the seashore.’
3 If you and your baby want to help them with their research, you can find out more here: www.cnebabylab.psychol.cam.ac.uk.
Chapter Three: How Do You Learn a Poem by Heart?
1 The thirteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians is all above love. In the original Greek, the word ἀγάπη (agape) is used throughout. This was translated into English as ‘charity’ in the 1604–11 King James Version, but the word ‘love’ is preferred by most other translations and the version here is the one that was read by Tony Blair and the one I would recommend to learn by heart.
Chapter Five: On Westminster Bridge
1 A number of great poets have been MPs, among them four of my favourites: Geoffrey Chaucer (c.1343–1400), John Donne (1572–1631), George Herbert (1593–1633) and Andrew Marvell (1621–78). Chaucer does not feature in this book, simply because he is difficult to learn by heart without mastering the pronunciation of Middle English. There are some good readings of Chaucer readily available on YouTube to give you a flavour of how he sounds: keep listening, and quite quickly your ear adjusts and you get the gist of what he’s saying.
2 This poem is also known as ‘On His Blindness’. Milton’s eyesight declined over several years, probably as the result of untreated glaucoma. By 1652, he was completely blind. His first published poem was ‘On Shakespeare’ (1630); his most famous, Paradise Lost (1667). A Puritan and a passionate Christian, the ‘one talent which is death to hide’ in this Petrarchan sonnet refers to the parable of the talents in St Matthew’s Gospel.
3 François Dominique Toussaint L’Ouverture (1743–1803) was a Haitian revolutionary who was imprisoned by the French and whose plight caught the imagination of radical Romantics like the Cumbrian poet, William Wordsworth, who wrote a sonnet in L’Ouverture’s praise not long before he died in French captivity in 1803. Two hundred years later, John Agard, poet and playwright of Afro-Guyanese heritage, wrote this sonnet in praise of Wordsworth.