Have it by heart

Earlier this year the Education Secretary Michael Gove suggested that primary school children ought to learn a poem by heart. Even if the teaching unions had not objected I would have needed no further convincing. I was converted to Gove’s idea years ago, by Terry Waite.

Having haphazardly discovered poetry on my own at state school, it was slightly later that I heard Ronald Runcie’s hostage-negotiator-turned-hostage give a sermon on a cold Sunday evening in chapel.