Arts chiefs have sparked outrage by giving taxpayers' money to a profitable publisher while withdrawing funding from a cash-strapped charity devoted to poetry
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Which books appealed most this year? Candia McWilliam’s memoir of blindness, Jonathan Franzen’s blockbuster and John le Carré’s latest thriller are among our favourites ...... more
Hero of the Sixties counter-culture Michael Horovitz tells Tim Willis why it would take uncommon sense for him to be appointed Oxford professor of Poetry on Friday.... more
There’s an over-long election limping to its conclusion this week - the Oxford Professor of Poetry - a laureateship but with no daft obligation to write about Kate Middleton or corgis... more
He was the poet laureate whose harsh, dark evocations of nature made him a staple of the school curriculum even as his doomed marriage to fellow writer Sylvia Plath made him a hate figure for extreme feminists... more
Unassuming isn't the first word that comes to mind when thinking of former Poet Laureate Ted Hughes, but that's how he struck me the first time I set eyes on him... more
This week not even the sophisticated American security services could prevent a couple of polo-playing socialists from gatecrashing a White House dinner... more
It is a disgrace, no question, that the Government proposes to chisel a few bawbees off the bottom line by reducing the compensation payment to any victim of crime found to have convictions for motoring offences... more
Language "caught alive" is an intoxicating experience in all poetry - the sound is "the gold in the ore", said Robert Frost - and most particularly so with the poems of TS Eliot... more
From Seamus Heaney's Underground underworld to Andrew Motion's Thames trek, London is a poet's playground. Adam O'Riordan explores the capital's text appeal... more
Veteran County Tyrone stand-up Kevin McAleer's show Chalk and Cheese will not turn him into the next Ricky Gervais, but its understated absurdism certainly deserves a wider audience.... more
Nina Raine's debut play about young Londoners has won her a coveted Evening Standard theatre award. Here she tells how years of hardship have finally paid off.... more
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