Percy Shelley declared poets to be the unaknowledged legislators of the world. Not for the first time he overplays his hand perhaps, but the poet's words do resonate down the ages and around the world.
Vital Lampada (Torch of Life)
As the Duke of Wellington is believed to have said the Battle of Waterloo was won on the Playing Fields of Eton - those who have a stake in society will...
Christina Rossetti: Remember
Christina Rossetti was a great Victorian poet of love and loss who lived her life in the shadow of her more famous brother the painter and founder...
Siegfried Sassoon: Suicide in the Trenches
Siegfried Sassoon was born into a life of wealth and privilege and in the years preceding the outbreak of war he felt no obligation to attain either academic...
Emily Bronte: The Bluebell
Emily Bronte from the village of Haworth on the edge of the Pennines in West Yorkshire, a bleak and remote place during her lifetime, of intemperate...
Alfred, Lord Tennyson: Charge of the Light Brigade
Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote the Charge of the Light Brigade in early December 1854, some two months after the British cavalry had assaulted the Russian...
Robert Browning: My Last Duchess
Robert Browning who was born in Southwark, London on 7 May 1812, is often portrayed as the epitome of the dashing Victorian poet, the man who had...
Edgar Allan Poe: The Raven
Most famous as the purveyor of nightmares both realised and imagined in such stories as the Tomb of Ligeia, Pit and the Pendulum, and Masque of the...
Alfred Noyes: The Highwayman
Alfred Noyes (1880-1958) was an English author, poet, and balladeer whose work though popular throughout his lifetime has largely been neglected since...
John Donne: The Flea
Considered pre-eminent amongst the Metaphysical Poets, John Donne's conceits, clever use of metaphor and often sharp language mark him out not just as...