Poetry please!

My colleague Michael Gove, who speaks for the Opposition on education, caused a bit of a stir the other day when he called for the return of traditional elements to the school curriculum. One  of the things that he wanted was to see more poetry taught in English lessons and all children encouraged to learn more verse by heart.

I’m completely behind him on this but then I’ve got more books of verse than books about politics on my shelves at home.  But where Michael was remarkably brave was to identify his favourite poems. Alexander Pope is a most unfashionable poet these days but Michael picked out both The Dunciad and the Rape of the Lock as among his choices, along with Browning’s My Last Duchess, Tennyson’s Ulysses and Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock .

This set me thinking about my own list. The trouble is, my preference can vary depending on the occasion or the  mood I’m in. For example, in December I always go back to Betjeman’s Christmas.

If pressed, my top selections would include Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18, Wordsworth’s Intimations of Immortality, and Byron’s Don Juan (I first read this as a set text for A-level and still laugh out loud at the ingenuity of his rhymes). Then I suppose I would have to add a Keats poem (either Ode to a Nightingale or Ode to Autumn). For Tennyson I’m torn between Ulysses and Locksley Hall.

Finally, for sentimental reasons I’ll throw in Ogden Nash’s Custard the Dragon and Edward Lear’s The Jumblies, whichmy sons asked for night after night when they were little.

So, what would your selection be?

Must reads

One of the things I get to do during the long summer recess is to plough through some of the background reading that I almost never have time to do while Parliament is sitting. It’s a combination of business and pleasure. I’ve always loved history as an academic discipline and I also believe that it is impossible to understand a nation’s policies and attitudes today without knowing something its past. 

Two books on my summer reading list I would particularly recommend.

Bill Emmott’s Rivals is about the political and economic relationships between China, India and Japan and how they will shape world affairs in the next ten or twenty years. Emmott is a former editor of the Economist. He lived in Japan for several yeras and has visited all three countries frequently. His book is easy to read and blissfully free of jargon. It’s a first-rate introduction to developments in Asia that are going to affect the lives of all of us.

Iran is a fascinating and, for most westerners, baffling country,  fervently islamic but at the same time cosmopolitan, proud of being Persian, with all that that means in terms of history and culture. I remember a dinner at the Iranian parliament last year when members of their Foreign Affairs Committee (all of whom were either hard-line or very hard-line in their politics) were delighted when I asked them to recommend some Iranian poets to read. They all started arguing about the merits of their own individual favourites! No western government really understands how decisions are taken by the different centres of power (Supreme Leader, President, Ministries, Republican Guard, clergy, Speaker) in Tehran. Yet understanding Iran is essential for anyone who wants to see a peaceful Middle East and to stop nuclear proliferation.

Hooman Majd was born in Tehran and now works as a journalist in America. He has met both the reformist former President Khatami and President Ahmadinejad. His book The Ayatollah Begs To Differ explains contemporary Iran to western readers. Majd combines the analytical skill of a top social scientist with the pithy, clear words of the best journalists. Please do read this book.