Yesterday was World Poetry Day, an annual observance started by UNESCO in 1999. One hopes one of the best known of all Scottish poets, William McGonagall was Remembered with a reading of some of his selected works. It is a decade since I received a copy of his poems

Speaking at his father’s funeral at the church of which I was rector, the teacher of English who had flown in for the occasion described the yachting days he remembered from his boyhood and his father’s propensity for writing “sub-McGonagallian doggerel” …