John Skelton

Description

John Skelton was born in the early 1460s. He studied at the University of Cambridge and the University of Oxford. He was made 'poet laureate' (a higher degree in rhetoric) at Oxford in 1488. The title of laureate was also conferred on him by the University of Louvain in 1492, and by Cambridge in 1493. Gaining fame as a rhetorician and a translator, Skelton entered into the service of Henry VII in late 1488. The first work that can reliably be attributed to him is the Elegy on the Death of the Earl of Northumberland (1489). He became tutor to Prince Henry, later King Henry VIII, and served in this capacity from 1496 to 1501. In 1498, Skelton was consecutively ordained subdeacon, deacon, and priest of the Abbey of St. Mary Grace. In the autumn of the same year, Skelton wrote The Bowge of Courte (rewards of court), a satire of court politics, printed in 1499 by Wynken de Worde Skelton retired about 1503 and became rector of the parish church in Diss, Norfolk, as the reward for his services. He stayed in residence there until 1512 , when he returned to court, and received the title 'Orator regius', King's Orator, from Henry VIII. In the following years he wrote several poems on the defeat of the French, the Scots, and James IV. Skelton died peacefully on 21 June 1529.

An acclaimed writer and poet, Anthony Thwaite has worked as a broadcaster, critic, reviewer and academic. He worked as a producer for BBC radio, was literary editor of The Listener, Assistant Professor of English at the University of Libya, Henfield Writing Fellow at the University of East Anglia, literary editor of the New Statesman, and co-editor of Encounter from 1973 to 1985 and is a former director of the publisher, Andre Deutsch. In 1986 he was Chairman of the Judges for the Booker Prize for Fiction.

"'Faber has a poetry list worth bragging about. What other publisher could conjure up a series like this?' The Times"