Dancing by the Light of the Moon

by Gyles Brandreth

  ‘Do not go gentle’ by Dylan Thomas, from The Poems of Dylan Thomas, copyright ©1952 by Dylan Thomas. Reprinted by permission of The Dylan Thomas Trust AND New Directions Publishing Corp.

  John Updike

  ‘January’ by John Updike, from A Child’s Calendar (Alfred A. Knopf, 1965), reprinted by permission Holiday House, Inc and Wylie Agency, UK.

  Simon Williams

  ‘Lying Doggo’ reprinted with kind permission of Simon Williams as agreed with Gyles Brandreth.

  Williams Carlos Williams

  ‘This Is Just to Say’ By William Carlos Williams, from The Collected Poems: Volume I, 1909–1939, copyright ©1938 by New Directions Publishing Corp. Reprinted by permission of Carcanet Press Limited AND New Directions Publishing Corp.

  Mary Wilson

  ‘On the Death of Harold Wilson’ by Mary Wilson, reprinted by permission the family and estate of Mary Wilson as agreed with Gyles Brandreth.

  Kit Wright

  ‘The Magic Box’ by Kit Wright from The Magic Box Poems for Children (Pan Macmillan, 2013), reprinted by kind permission the author.

  Richard Wright

  ‘From across the lake’ by Richard Wright, from Haiku – This Other World (Arcade Publishing, 1998), reprinted by permission of John Hawkins and Associates, and the Estate of Richard Wright.

  Benjamin Zephaniah

  ‘Be nice to your turkeys dis Christmas’ and ‘Who’s Who’ by Benjamin Zephaniah from Talking Turkeys (1995), reprinted by permission Puffin, Penguin Random House, UK.

  ‘The British’ by Benjamin Zephaniah from Wicked World (2000), reprinted by permission Puffin, Penguin Random House, UK.

  Index of Poets and Poems

  The page references in this index correspond to the print edition from which this ebook was created, and clicking on them will take you to the the location in the ebook where the equivalent print page would begin. To find a specific word or phrase from the index, please use the search feature of your ebook reader.

  ‘14 March 1879’: Tom Stoppard 19

  ‘A Hand in the Bird’: Roald Dahl 346

  ‘A handsome young fellow called Frears’: Michael Palin 64

  ‘A lightning flash’: Masaoka Shiki 66

  ‘A Poem Just For Me’: Roger McGough 209–10

  ‘A Subaltern’s Love-song’: John Betjeman 186–7

  ‘Abou Ben Adhem’: Leigh Hunt 322–3

  ‘Adlestrop’: Edward Thomas 405

  ‘After killing a spider’: Masaoka Shiki 66

  ‘Against Dieting’: Blake Morrison 238

  Agard, John:

  ‘Toussaint L’Ouverture Acknowledges Wordsworth’s Sonnet “To Toussaint L’Ouverture”’ 90

  ‘What the Teacher Said When Asked: What Er We Avin for Geography, Miss?’ 305–6

  ‘A Red, Red Rose’: Robert Burns 246–7

  ‘Although at the limericks of Lear’: Gyles Brandreth 64

  ‘An August Midnight’: Thomas Hardy 221

  ‘An old silent pond’: Matsuo Bashō 65

  ‘And the days are not full enough’: Ezra Pound 77

  ‘Annabel Lee’: Edgar Allan Poe’: 399–400

  ‘Anne Hathaway’: Carol Anne Duffy 100

  ‘Another Christmas Poem’: Carol Anne Duffy 229

  ‘Any Part of Piggy’: Noël Coward 135

  ‘Arrest of Oscar Wilde at the Cadogan Hotel, The’: John Betjeman 288–9

  A Shropshire Lad: A.E. Housman 220

  Ahlberg, Allan: ‘Please Mrs Butler’ 175–6

  Allingham, William: ‘Everything passes and vanishes’ 360

  Angelou, Maya: ‘Phenomenal Woman’ 300–2

  Anon:

  ‘The Limerick is Furtive and Mean’ 64

  ‘The Silver Swan’ 410

  ‘Two Dead Boys’ 105

  ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’: Wilfred Owen 201

  ‘Atlas’: U.A. Fanthorpe 251–2

  Arkell, Reginald: ‘Miranda’ 336–7

  Armitage, Simon: ‘The Catch’ 44

  As You Like It: William Shakespeare 157–8

  Auden, W. H.:

  ‘Funeral Blues’ 369–70

  ‘Lord Byron’ 68

  ‘Night Mail’ 377–9

  ‘Oscar Wilde’ 68

  ‘Sir Henry Rider Haggard’ 68

  ‘A Word to Husbands’: Ogden Nash 239

  ‘Auld Lang Syne’: Robert Burns 216–18

  ‘Bagpipe Music’: Louis MacNeice 113–14

  ‘Ballad of Hero’: Kate Tempest 193

  Barker, Ronnie: ‘Christmas Day in the Workhouse’ 231–2

  Bashō, Matsuo:

  ‘An old silent pond’ 65

  ‘Bitten by fleas and lice’ 66

  ‘In the twilight rain’ 65

  ‘Beat! Beat! Drums!’: Walt Whitman 268–9

  ‘Beauty of Union, The’: George the Poet 253–4

  Belloc, Hilaire:

  from ‘Dedicatory Ode’ 257

  ‘Lord Lundy’ 327

  ‘Matilda’ 330

  ‘Tarantella’ 41

  Bensley, Connie: ‘In the palm of his hand’ 189

  Bentley, Edward Clerihew:

  ‘Edward the Confessor’ 67

  ‘George the Third’ 68

  ‘John Stuart Mill’ 68

  ‘Sir Christopher Wren’ 67

  ‘Sir Humphrey Davy’ 67

  Betjeman, John:

  ‘A Subaltern’s Love-song’ 186–7

  ‘How to Get On in Society’ 290–1

  ‘The Arrest of Oscar Wilde at the Cadogan Hotel’ 288–9

  ‘The Last Laugh’ 209

  ‘Bitten by fleas and lice’: Matsuo Bashō 66

  ‘Blackberry-Picking’: Seamus Heaney 222–3

  Blake, William: ‘The Tyger’ 128–9

  Boult, Jenny: ‘Shopping Trolleys’ 306–7

  Brand New Ancients: Kate Tempest 316–17

  Brandreth, Gyles:

  ‘Although at the limericks of Lear’ 64

  ‘How to Lose 2lbs a Week’ 237

  ‘Old to a Goldfish’ 61

  ‘Bright star, would I were as stedfast as thou art’: John Keats 92

  ‘Bring Me Sunshine’: Arthur Kent and Sylvia Dee 22

  ‘British, The’: Benjamin Zephaniah 411–12

  Brooke, Rupert: ‘The Soldier’ 202

  Browning, Elizabeth Barrett: ‘Sonnet XLII’ from Sonnets from the Portuguese 93

  Browning, Robert:

  ‘Home-Thoughts, from Abroad’ 219

  ‘Meeting at Night’ 247

  ‘Pippa’s Song’ 74

  ‘Buckingham Palace’: A.A. Milne 210–11

  Bukowski, Charles: ‘poetry readings’ 296–8

  Bunting, Basil: ‘What the Chairman Told Tom’ 204–5

  Burns, Robert:

  ‘Auld Lang Syne’ 216–18

  ‘A Red, Red Rose’ 246–7

  ‘Epitaph on a Friend’ 358

  Burton, Tim: ‘Vincent Malloy’ 351–4

  Byron, George Gordon, Lord:

  ‘She Walks in Beauty’ 380

  ‘When We Two Parted’ 183

  ‘Camp Fires of the Past, The’: Rex Ingamells 389–9

  Cannan, May Wedderburn: ‘Rouen’ 198

  Carroll, Lewis:

  ‘Jabberwocky’ 108

  ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter’ 270

  ‘You are old, Father William’ 33–4

  ‘Casabianca’: Felicia Hemans 265–6

  ‘Catch, The’: Simon Armitage 44

  ‘Cats sleep, anywhere’: Eleanor Farjeon 132

  ‘Charge of the Light Brigade, The’: Alfred, Lord Tennyson 194–6

  Carter, James: ‘Take a Poem’ 58

  Causley, Charles: ‘Timothy Winters’ 347–8

  Chesterton, G.K.: ‘The Donkey’ 131

  ‘The Rolling English Road’ 381–2

  ‘Christmas Day in the Workhouse’: Ronnie Barker 231–2

  ‘Cocoon’: Hollie McNish 143–4

  Cohen, Leonard: ‘I
Long to Hold Some Lady’ 190

  Coleridge, Samuel Taylor:

  ‘Kubla Khan Or, A Vision in a Dream. A Fragment’ 320–22

  ‘Composed upon Westminster Bridge’: William Wordsworth 89

  ‘Considering the Snail’: Thom Gunn 140

  Cooper Clarke, John:

  ‘I mustn’t go down to the sea again’ 307

  ‘To-con-vey one’s mood’ 67

  Cope, Wendy:

  ‘Another Christmas Poem’ 229

  ‘Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis’ 70

  ‘Shakespeare at School’ 87

  ‘Cow Who Jumped Over the Moon, The’: Celia Johnson 115–16

  Coward, Noël:

  ‘Any Part of Piggy’ 135

  ‘When I Have Fears’ 368–9

  ‘Crossing the Bar’: Alfred, Lord Tennyson 359

  Crane, Stephen: ‘I stood upon a high place’ 76

  Cullen, Countee: ‘Yet Do I Marvel’ 98

  Cummings, e.e:

  ‘I thank you God’ 416

  ‘little tree’ 227

  Dahl, Roald:

  ‘A Hand in the Bird’ 346

  ‘Hot and Cold’ 118

  ‘Television’ 291–4

  ‘Darkling Thrush, The’: Thomas Hardy 225–6

  ‘Days in the Month, The’: Anon 233

  ‘Days’: Philip Larkin 417

  ‘Death is nothing at all’: Henry Scott Holland 362–3

  ‘Death, be not proud’: John Donne 357

  ‘Dedicatory Ode’: Hilaire Belloc 257

  ‘Desespoir’: Oscar Wilde 96

  Daryush, Elizabeth: ‘Still-Life’ 415

  Davies, W.H.: ‘Leisure’ 383

  Day-Lewis, Cecil: ‘Walking Away’ 181

  De la Mare, Walter: ‘The Listeners’ 284–5

  Dee, Sylvia and Kent, Arthur: ‘Bring me Sunshine’ 22

  Dickinson, Emily:

  ‘If I can stop one heart from breaking’ 75

  ‘I’m Nobody! Who Are You?’ 75

  ‘Wild Nights’ 248

  ‘Disobedience’: A.A. Milne 337–9

  Dixon, Peter: ‘Teabag’ 121–2

  ‘Donkey, The’: G.K. Chesterton 131

  Donne, John:

  ‘Death, be not proud’ 357

  ‘Meditation XVII’ 73

  ‘The Sun Rising’ 182–3

  ‘Do not go gentle into that good night’: Dylan Thomas 371

  ‘Door, The’: Miroslav Holub 240–1

  ‘Dulce et Decorum est’: Wilfred Owen 397–8

  ‘Dusting the Phone’: Jackie Kay 191

  ‘Earl’s Court Road Pub’: Diana Morgan 342–3

  ‘Edward the Confessor’: Edmund Clerihew Bentley 67

  ‘Elements’: Tom Lehrer 235–6

  Dryden, John: ‘Happy the man’ 414

  Du Bois, W.E.B: ‘The Song of the Smoke’ 282–3

  Duffy, Carol Ann: ‘Anne Hathaway’ 100

  Edgar, Marriott: ‘The Lion and Albert’ 332–5

  Eliot, T.S.: ‘Journey of the Magi’ 384–5

  ‘Macavity: the Mystery Cat’ 133–5

  ‘Epitaph on a Friend’: Robert Burns 358

  ‘Everyone Sang’: Siegfried Sassoon 197

  ‘Everything is Going to be All Right’: Derek Mahon 410

  ‘Everything passes and vanishes’: William Allingham 360

  Ewart, Gavin: ‘The Lover Writes a One-Word Poem’ 61

  Fanthorpe, U.A.: ‘Atlas’ 251–2

  Farjeon, Eleanor:

  ‘Cats sleep, anywhere’ 132

  ‘I quarreled with my brother’ 177–8

  ‘First Fig’: Edna St Vincent Millay 79

  ‘Fleas’: Strickland Gillilan 60

  ‘Friendship’: Elizabeth Jennings 256–7

  ‘From across the lake’: Richard Wright 66

  Feinstein, Elaine: ‘Getting Older’ 419

  Fenton, James: ‘God, A Poem’ 303–4

  Field, Eugene: ‘Wynken, Blynken, and Nod’ 111–12

  Flanders, Michael and Swann, Donald: ‘The Hippopotamus Song’ 138–40

  Fletcher, Cyril: ‘Sonia Snell’ 344–5

  Frost, Robert:

  ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’ 226–7

  ‘The Road Not Taken’ 386

  ‘Funeral Blues’: W.H. Auden 369–70

  Fuller, Roy: ‘In the Bathroom’ 71

  ‘Galoshes’: Paul Jennings 206–8

  George the Poet: ‘The Beauty of Union’ 253–4

  ‘George the Third’: Edmund Clerihew Bentley 68

  ‘Getting Older’: Elaine Feinstein 419

  Gilbert, W.S.:

  ‘The Lord Chancellor’s Song’ from Iolanthe 278–81

  ‘The Yarn of the “Nancy Bell”’ 274–8

  ‘God, A Poem’: James Fenton 303–4

  ‘Good News, The’: Thich Nhat Hanh 417–18

  ‘Good, The’: Brendan Kennelly 373–4

  ‘Gran Can You Rap?’: Jack Ousbey 312–13

  Gillilan, Strickland: ‘Lines on the Antiquity of Microbes’ 60

  Ginsberg, Allen: ‘Homework’ 298

  Graham, Harry: ‘Ruthless Rhymes’ 64–65

  Graves, Robert:

  ‘I’d Love to Be a Fairy’s Child’ 387

  ‘Welsh Incident’ 285–6

  Gray, Thomas: ‘Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat Drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes’ 126–7

  Greenlaw, Lavinia: ‘Love from a Foreign City’ 313–14

  Grenfell, Joyce: ‘If I Should Go Before the Rest of You’ 370

  ‘Growing Pain’: Vernon Scannell 188

  ‘Gunga Din’: Rudyard Kipling 323–6

  Gunn, Thom: ‘Considering the Snail 140

  ‘Haikus are easy’: Anon 67

  Hamlet: William Shakespeare 159–60

  Hammerstein II, Oscar: ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ from Carousel 367–8

  ‘Happy the man’: John Dryden 414

  Hardy, Thomas:

  ‘An August Midnight’ 221

  ‘The Darkling Thrush’ 225–6

  ‘Hawk, The’: Ted Hughes 141–2

  Hayden, Robert: ‘Those Winter Sundays’ 205–6

  Heaney, Seamus: ‘Blackberry-Picking’ 222–3

  Hemans, Felicia: ‘Casabianca’ 265–6

  Henley, William Ernest: ‘Invictus’ 388–89

  Henri, Adrian: ‘The Phantom Lollipop Lady’ 350–1

  Henry V: William Shakespeare 156–7

  ‘Here Dead We Lie’: A.E. Houseman 196

  ‘High Flight’: John Gillespie Magee, Jr 99

  ‘Hippopotamus Song, The’: Michael Flanders and Donald Swann 138–40

  Holland, Henry Scott: ‘Death is nothing at all’ 362–3

  Holub, Miroslav: ‘The door’ 240–1

  ‘Home-Thoughts, from Abroad’: Robert Browning 219

  ‘Homework’: Allen Ginsberg 298–9

  Hood, Thomas: ‘I Remember, I Remember’ 27–8

  Hopkins, Gerard Manley:

  ‘Pied Beauty’ 281

  ‘The Windhover’ 95–6

  ‘Horace’: Monty Python 122–3

  ‘Hot and Cold’: Roald Dahl 118

  Housman, A.E.:

  ‘Here Dead We Lie’ 196

  ‘Parta Quies’ 366

  ‘Poem II’ from A Shropshire Lad 220

  ‘How many seconds in a minute?’: Christina Rossetti 403

  ‘How Pleasant to Know Mr Lear’: Edward Lear 16–17

  ‘How to Get On in Society’: John Betjeman 290–1

  ‘How to Lose 2lbs a Week’: Gyles Brandreth 237

  Hughes, Langston:

  ‘Merry-Go-Round’ 178–9

  ‘Minstrel Man’ 287

  Hughes, Ted: ‘Hawk Roosting’ 141–2

  Hunt, Leigh:

  ‘Abou Ben Adhem’ 322–3

  ‘Rondeau’ 73–4

  ‘I Long to Hold Some Lady’: Leonard Cohen 190

  ‘I mustn’t go down to the sea again’: John Cooper Clarke 307–8

&nbs
p; ‘I quarreled with my brother’: Eleanor Farjeon 177–8

  ‘I Remember, I Remember’: Thomas Hood 27–8

  ‘I stood upon a high place’: Stephen Crane 76

  ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud’: William Wordsworth 51–2

  ‘I thank You God’: E.E. Cummings 416

  ‘I’d Love to Be a Fairy’s Child’: Robert Graves 387

  ‘I’m Nobody! Who Are You?’: Emily Dickinson 75

  ‘I’ve Got You under My Skin’: Cole Porter 249

  ‘Idyll’: Siegfried Sassoon 367

  ‘If I can stop one heart from breaking’: Emily Dickinson 75

  ‘If I Should Go Before the Rest of You’: Joyce Grenfell 370

  ‘If’: Rudyard Kipling 392–3

  ‘In the Bathroom’: Roy Fuller 71

  ‘In the Land of the Bumbley Boo’: Spike Milligan 118–19

  ‘In the palm of his hand’: Connie Bensley 189

  ‘In the twilight rain’: Matsuo Bashō 65

  ‘In youth I dreamed’: Arthur Quiller-Couch 401–2

  ‘Inessential Things’: Brian Patten 142

  ‘Invictus’: William Ernest Henley 388–9

  ‘J.P. Donleavy’s Dublin’: Derek Mahon 79

  ‘Jabberwocky’: Lewis Carroll 108–10

  ‘January’: John Updike 406

  ‘John Stuart Mill’: Edmund Clerihew Bentley 68

  ‘Journey of the Magi’: T.S. Eliot 384–5

  Ingamells, Rex: ‘The Camp Fires of the Past’ 389–90

  Jennings, Elizabeth: ‘Friendship’ 256–7

  Jennings, Paul: ‘Galoshes’ 206–7

  Johnson, Celia: ‘The Cow Who Jumped over the Moon’ 115–16

  Johnson, Linton Kwesi: ‘Sonny’s Lettah (Anti-Sus Poem)’ 309–12

  Joseph, Jenny: ‘Warning’ 390–91

  Joyce Kilmer, Alfred: ‘Trees’ 78

  Kay, Jackie:

  ‘Dusting the Phone’ 191

  ‘Promise’ 218

  Keats, John:

  ‘Bright star, would I were as stedfast as thou art’ 92

  ‘To Autumn’ 223–4

  Kennelly, Brendan: ‘The Good 373–4

  Kent, Arthur and Dee, Sylvia: ‘Bring me Sunshine’ 22

  King Lear: William Shakespeare 162–3

  ‘Kings and Queens of England’: Anon 233–4

  ‘King’s Breakfast, The’: A.A. Milne 171–4

  Kipling, Rudyard:

  ‘Gunga Din’ 323–6

  ‘If’ 392–3

  ‘Kubla Khan Or, A Vision in a Dream. A Fragment’: Samuel Taylor Coleridge 320–2

  ‘Lake Isle of Innisfree, The’: W.B. Yeats 410–11

  ‘Lambs of Grasmere’: Christina Rossetti 129–30

  ‘Land of Counterpane, The’: Robert Louis Stevenson 167

  Larkin, Philip:

  ‘Days’ 417

  ‘This Be The Verse’ 393–4

  ‘Last Laugh, The’: John Betjeman 209