The impulse to create is pure, self sufficient, its own reward or punishment. - Vernon Scannell

The authentic British poetry of the second world war was not a poetry of protest, still less was it inspired by patriotic enthusiasm

The practice of reading aloud did do something towards attuning my ear .The subtle cadences of Elizabethan blank verse taught me more than the substantial study of English prosody could do at that time.

The best poetry of WW2 , the most truthful and penetrating, poetry which is rooted in the ground of physical experience, suspicious of the abstract and conforming to the discipline of provenly effective forms.