Category Archives: Poetry

A clod is washed away

The prescience of John Donne Continue reading

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Coloured counties

I enjoyed a walk on Bredon Hill listening to birds. Continue reading

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Gerald McGuire’s century

Today, 12 July, would have been campaigner Gerald McGuire’s 100th birthday. Continue reading

Posted in Access, campaigns, National parks, Obituary, Open Spaces Society, Poetry, Ramblers, walking | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Poppy-day solecism

Too often the words of Laurence Binyon’s poem To the Fallen are wrongly transposed. Continue reading

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Poetic licence

Did W H Auden think the Night Mail crossed the Cheviots, or was he just being poetic? Continue reading

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Copydog?

This year, as in every other year, on the final day of the Horse of the Year Show, Sunday 11 October, the immortal words of Ronald Duncan’s eulogy, The Horse, will be recited. Duncan wrote the poem in 1964 at the request … Continue reading

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‘A bloodless coup’

Another anniversary!  Today, 9 July, the Open Spaces Society holds its AGM exactly 30 years after the AGM on 9 July 1985 when, for the only time in its 150-year history, the society booted out its president. That president was the late Earl of … Continue reading

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Thrice forgotten by the Guardian

Three times this year, the Guardian has made a common but egregious error.  Three times it has misquoted the text of Laurence Binyon’s elegy in Poems for the Fallen.  And three times Chris Hall has pointed this out. The first … Continue reading

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