Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Great Regulars: Today Keats House in Hampstead opens

after renovation, thanks mainly to £424,000 provided by the Heritage Lottery Fund (Andrew Motion told me that when he worked there to write his biography of Keats, the rain would come in over his head).

In Keats's day all of this would have been unthinkable. When he sailed down the Thames in the autumn of 1820 to Italy, few in his native city knew his name. Such was his obscurity that he said that his epitaph should be "here lies one whose name was writ on water."

from Olivia Cole: London Evening Standard: A fitting tribute to the greatest Cockney poet--John Keats

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