40 Fun Facts About Poets Laureate of the United Kingdom

Which Glasgow-born poet became the first woman appointed Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom in 2009?

Carol Ann Duffy was also the first openly lesbian holder of the post, which had gone only to men since 1668.

Which fortified wine do modern Poets Laureate receive by the barrel, a perk Ted Hughes revived in 1984?

Sherry stands in for the Canary wine added to the laureate's pay in 1630, and the barrel Hughes received came to 720 bottles.

Alfred Tennyson's laureate poem The Charge of the Light Brigade honours a doomed cavalry attack in which conflict?

The Crimean War saw the Light Brigade cut down at Balaclava in 1854, and Tennyson wrote his tribute within weeks of reading about it in The Times.

Which American poet married future Poet Laureate Ted Hughes in 1956, four months after the two first met?

Sylvia Plath married Hughes at St George the Martyr in Holborn, and his final collection broke decades of silence about their life together.

Which London railway station holds a statue of John Betjeman, who led the campaign to save it from demolition?

St Pancras unveiled the bronze in 2007, when the station he helped rescue in the 1960s reopened as the London terminus for Eurostar.

Which poet became England's first official Poet Laureate in 1668 and was later the only one dismissed?

John Dryden lost the post in 1689 because, as a Catholic convert, he refused to swear allegiance to the new Protestant monarchs.

Which Romantic poet became Poet Laureate in 1843 only after a promise that nothing would be required of him?

William Wordsworth first refused as too old, then became the only laureate to write no official verse at all.

Which Poet Laureate, appointed in 1968, was the father of the actor who won Oscars for My Left Foot and Lincoln?

Cecil Day-Lewis was the father of Daniel Day-Lewis, and topped up his poetry income by writing detective novels under a pen name.

Which 1968 children's story by future Poet Laureate Ted Hughes became a 1999 animated film directed by Brad Bird?

The Iron Man reached American readers and cinemas as The Iron Giant, renamed to avoid confusion with the Marvel hero.

What kind of toy was John Betjeman's Archibald Ormsby-Gore, the model for Aloysius in Brideshead Revisited?

A teddy bear went up to Magdalen College with Betjeman, and his Oxford contemporary Evelyn Waugh gave Sebastian Flyte one of his own.

Which Huddersfield-born poet, once a probation officer, was appointed Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom in 2019?

Simon Armitage gave his laureate salary to set up the Laurel Prize for poetry about nature and the environment.

Which Poet Laureate from 1813 to 1843 wrote the original published version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears?

Robert Southey published The Story of the Three Bears in 1837 with an ill-mannered old woman as the intruder; the golden-haired girl came later.

Which break with tradition did Andrew Motion stipulate on becoming Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom in 1999?

A ten-year term replaced the appointment for life that laureates had held for three centuries, and his successors have kept to it.

On whose advice does the British monarch formally appoint each new Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom?

The Prime Minister has put the name forward since 1790; before that the Lord Chamberlain appointed laureates on royal instructions.

Which king made Poet Laureate an established office of the royal household by an appointment in 1668?

Charles II chose his man after the success of Annus Mirabilis, a poem about the year of the Great Fire of London.

The title Poet Laureate recalls the laurel wreath worn by which Greek god, the patron of lyric poetry?

Apollo wears laurel for the nymph Daphne, who in the myth was turned into a laurel tree to escape his pursuit.

Which playwright, granted a royal pension by James I in 1616, is sometimes called England's first Poet Laureate?

Ben Jonson received 100 marks a year from the king, though the royal family never formally gave him the title.

Which Dublin-born Poet Laureate gave King Lear a happy ending that stayed on the English stage until 1838?

Nahum Tate let Lear regain his throne and married Cordelia to Edgar, and he also wrote the Christmas hymn While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks.

Which Edinburgh-born writer turned down the post of Poet Laureate in 1813, a year before his first novel appeared?

Walter Scott felt the laureateship had fallen into disrepute after years of dutiful royal odes, and it went to a friend instead.

Which former sailor, author of the poem Sea-Fever, was Poet Laureate from 1930 until his death in 1967?

John Masefield trained for the sea aboard HMS Conway as a boy, and also wrote the children's fantasy The Box of Delights.

Which poet and Hull university librarian declined the post of Poet Laureate after John Betjeman died in 1984?

Philip Larkin was sounded out at Betjeman's memorial service, and the laureateship went to Ted Hughes instead.

Which author of Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard refused the post of Poet Laureate when offered it in 1757?

Thomas Gray was so self-critical and fearful of failure that he published only thirteen poems in his lifetime.

Which bird gives its name to the 1970 Ted Hughes collection inspired by drawings from the artist Leonard Baskin?

Crow was written mostly between 1966 and 1969, years Hughes looked back on as a time of creative freedom he never regained.

Which War Horse author devised the post of Children's Laureate together with Poet Laureate Ted Hughes?

Michael Morpurgo went on to hold the post himself from 2003 to 2005, as the third Children's Laureate after Quentin Blake and Anne Fine.

Which Poet Laureate from 1913 to 1930 had trained in medicine and worked as a London hospital physician?

Robert Bridges is the only medical graduate to hold the post, and he won Gerard Manley Hopkins lasting fame by publishing his poems in 1918.

Which actor-manager, made Poet Laureate in 1730, was crowned King of Dunces in Alexander Pope's The Dunciad?

Colley Cibber wrote 30 birthday odes for the royal family, and each tended to be followed by a flurry of anonymous parodies.

Which Scots title for a national poet has been held by Edwin Morgan, Liz Lochhead and Jackie Kay?

Makar is the Scots form of the word maker, and the Scottish Parliament created the national post in 2004.

Which medieval English poet did Edward III reward with a gallon of wine a day for the rest of his life?

Geoffrey Chaucer received the grant on Saint George's Day 1374, weeks before he became comptroller of customs for the port of London.

Which English town gives its name to a 1937 John Betjeman poem voicing dismay at its rapid industrial growth?

Slough was developing fast before the Second World War, and his daughter Candida later said he regretted ever writing the poem.

In which English county did John Betjeman die at his Trebetherick home and lie buried at St Enodoc's Church?

Cornwall was also the subject of one of the Shell Guides he wrote for motorists, published in 1934.

Which island was home to both Alfred Tennyson's house Farringford and Queen Victoria's Osborne House?

The Isle of Wight house drew so many starstruck tourists that he moved to Sussex in 1869, though he kept Farringford for the winters.

Which long poem, seventeen years in the writing, did Alfred Tennyson publish in 1850, the year he became Poet Laureate?

In Memoriam mourns Arthur Hallam, who died at 22, and Queen Victoria said it soothed her after Prince Albert's death.

Which honour did Alfred Tennyson finally accept in 1883 after more than once turning down a baronetcy?

A hereditary peerage made him Baron Tennyson, and he took his seat in the House of Lords in March 1884.

Which online collection of poets reading their own work did Andrew Motion co-found while serving as Poet Laureate?

The Poetry Archive went live in 2005 and holds historic voices too, including an 1890 recording of Alfred Tennyson.

Which playwright became Poet Laureate in 1689 after being mocked as heir to a kingdom of dullness in Mac Flecknoe?

Thomas Shadwell owed the post to the Whig triumph of 1688, and began the custom of odes for New Year and the royal birthday.

Which dramatist, made Poet Laureate in 1715, is regarded as the first editor of William Shakespeare's works?

Nicholas Rowe published his seven-volume edition in 1709–10 and also wrote a short biography of the playwright.

Which newspaper leader writer became Poet Laureate in 1896, ending the vacancy left by Lord Tennyson's death?

Alfred Austin was said to owe the post to his support for Lord Salisbury, and his hasty poem in praise of the Jameson Raid that same year drew criticism.

In which northern English county was future Poet Laureate Ted Hughes born, in the village of Mytholmroyd?

Yorkshire's Calder Valley, where he grew up among farms and moorland, is the landscape of his 1979 collection Remains of Elmet.

In which London church was Alfred Tennyson buried in 1892, in a grave beside that of Robert Browning?

Westminster Abbey drew thousands of mourners to the funeral, and Queen Victoria's tribute was a laurel wreath set with a lyre.

Whose death in 1852 did Alfred Tennyson mark with a funeral ode written in his role as Poet Laureate?

The Duke of Wellington was given a state funeral, an honour shared by few British subjects, among them Lord Nelson and Winston Churchill.