Being possessed of little self-awareness and what I hoped, afterwards, was an endearing gaucherie, I went up to Toby Martinez de las Rivas after a reading in London in support of the first Faber New Poets pamphlets in 2010. I remember coming out with something along the lines of ‘I’m a huge fan of y...

1197 Richard ‘the Lion Heart’ is in prison in Germany. His ransom, set at some 40,000 marks [that’s about 25 old tonnes of high grade silver] is greater than the Gross Domestic Product of all England. He’s too big to be allowed to fail, surely? Yet no one is rushing to bail him out, least of all pi...

Ja nus hons pris ne dira sa reson / Adroitement, s’ensi com dolans non; / Mès par confort puet il fere chançon. / Richard I 'Coeur-de-Lion', imprisoned / / All valiant dust that builds on dust / Kipling,  'Recessional' / / / At home, with you, isn’t much of a prison. / Still I’m thinkin...