St. George's Day Kebab and The Bard's Birthday

April 23 is not only St.George's Day (complete with themed websites and merchandising), but also the date that Shakespeare's birthday in 1564 is celebrated.

We don't actually know his exact birth date, but he did expire on 23rd April 1616, so there is a neat symmetry.

Listen to two excellent new poems commissioned for St.George's Day on BBC Radio 4 site.

Finally, the Daily Telegraph tries to stir up patriotic feeling with a cheeky map showing an alleged EU plot to merge the south coast of England with northern France into a new "Manche" region. About time Calais was back in English hands if you ask me.

National Poetry Day selections

It is England's (or is it Britain's?) National Poetry Day. Here are Cardinal Wolsey's selections:











First, the moving verse written by Ben Johnson (pictured), on the death of his first daughter Mary in 1593 aged 6 months.

Here lies, to each her parents' ruth,
Mary, the daughter of their youth;
Yet all heaven's gifts being heaven's due,
It makes the father less to rue.
At six months' end, she parted hence
With safety of her innocence;
Whose soul heaven's queen, whose name she bears,
In comfort of her mother's tears,
Hath placed amongst her virgin-train:
Where, while that severed doth remain,
This grave partakes the fleshly birth;
Which cover lightly, gentle earth!

Next, a nice reading of John Donne's poem Death Be Not Proud from the anonymous Classic Poetry Aloud podcast.

Shakespeare fans will enjoy the BBC's Scrambled Sonnet game. (Shakespeare, Donne and Johnson were contemporaries).

Finally, from 1890, an amazing wax cylinder recording of Alfred Lord Tennyson reading The Charge of the Light Brigade . The recording was made by Thomas Edison in the poet laureate's home. Listen for the strange knocking toward the end of the recording - the ghost of the doomed cavalry?