American summer music festivals are usually too busy competing for audiences to ever consider doing something jointly, much less doing something worthwhile on behalf of living American composers. So ...

It's one of those poems people reach for in times when it feels like the sky is falling. It's also generally regarded as one of the great poems of the 20th century. "September 1, 1939," as its title ...

When a new Poet Laureate had to be chosen in 1972, WH Auden was widely seen as the obvious choice. Many academics regarded Auden – known for works including September 1, 1939, and Stop All The Clocks, ...

There was a time when every able schoolchild in American memorized poems -- which is perhaps why the very word "memorization," for many, conjures unhappy images of 1950s schoolrooms where glassy-eyed ...

COMPLETEWORKS OF W.H. AUDEN POEMS — VOLS I AND II edited by Edward Mendelson (Princeton £48 each, 848pp and 1140pp) In the phenomenally successful film Four Weddings And A Funeral (1994), the actor ...

How China caught the science fiction bug: “One afternoon in June 1999, more than three million Chinese schoolchildren took their seats for the Gaokao, the country’s national college entrance exam.