Gentleman also write poems. Michael Thwaites, winner of the King’s Medal for poetry back in 1940, is resolutely old school: set subjects, square metrics, good manners. He is a quiet achiever. Even his voice is quiet, though not so quiet that you can’t hear it. Solid statements, with a minimum of flourish or divertimenti, are his rule.

Unfinished Journey: Collected Poems 1932–2004 is divided into five chronological sections, so you can follow the story of a life lived. ‘Milton Blind’, an earnest construction, wins the Newdigate Prize for 1938. There is his wartime classic, ‘The Jervis Bay’, the narration of a 1940 sea battle in the North Atlantic, which borrows from British imperial action verse while interleaving Murrayesque graphics: