There was an old man of San Remo Whose verses were sometimes quite lameo. While his middle lines rhymed As their syllables chimed His first and his fifth were the sameo. Frank McNally, in The Irish Times, pays measured tribute to Edward Lear, who was born two hundred years ago today. … in general his limericks…

Cynthia L Haven wrote in a recent Times Literary Supplement essay (November 23rd) about the wave of commemorations and celebrations that attended the hundredth anniversary this year of the birth of the great Polish poet Czesław Miłosz. Yet she emphasises the difficulties that many will have in understanding the now largely vanished world of religion and ideology…