Shakespeare whose birth is annually celebrated. Stephen was a thresher who lived in a little village called Carlton. His best, in fact his only good, poem The Thresher’s Labour was published by subscription – that is, people subscribed towards the cost of printing in return for having their names listed in the book.

As usual in those days, it was immediately pirated – not content with robbing the poet of his meagre profits, the piratical publishers wrote a libellous preface sneering at Stephen and suggesting that his arrogance in daring to write poetry when he was nothing but a mere peasant had resulted in his becoming impotent. Eventually he was made a clergyman and provided with a little cottage in Kew where he lived miserably until committing suicide.

The first Lord Palmerston left an acre of land in Carlton the produce of which goes towards a Duck Feast each year for the villagers. We missed the actual feast, but saw the hat made of duck feathers used each year when money is collected towards the celebration – the acre not providing enough to feast the whole village at 20th century prices.

We talked to the villagers in the pub over lunch, ploughman’s, of course – called on the local schoolmaster who told us that he taught his flock about their “famous” poet – found that the village parson was old and mad and had been married five times, and then moved on.

I forget the names of the other uneducated poets who came from that area. I think there was a soldier who wrote his verse round campfires on the battlefields of Europe. On the whole the walk was fruitful in a small way as we found tiny village museums which cared for forgotten volumes of verse. As we wended our way towards Bath Peter sprained his ankle leaping over a ditch – probably in search of a bird’s nest. Luckily we had brought with us the address of a potentially useful student whose father was a doctor in Bath, so with the help of the walking stick that Peter always carried on a walk, we found him at home and willing to drive us to Bristol – our final destination.

Peter had written ahead to Bristol Library and when he limped in with his stick the librarian had copies of all the relevant old newspapers ready for us that covered the time of Anne Yearsley, a Bristol milkwoman, married and with a large family of children. She had written not only poetry but plays which had been performed and which made her a reasonable sum of money. An intelligent woman, she had wished to use it to educate one of her sons who would then be able to raise the whole family out of poverty. But her patroness, Mrs Mary Montagu, a celebrated Bluestocking, would not allow this but doled out the money shilling by shilling so that the family were made reasonably comfortable but KEPT IN THEIR PLACE.