Who writes historical poetry today—by which I mean poetry whose theme is the past: a recovery or commentary on things over and done with? The nineteenth century had Sir Walter Scott, reflecting one of the many features of Romanticism; but, as regards what we have now, I can only answer, Geoffrey Hill.

His widely acclaimed Mercian Hymns (1971), a sequence of prose poems, was dominated by the 'presiding genius' of King Offa; and … Tenebrae reveals part of its nature in the titles and epigraphs to a number of the poems. 'An Apology for the Revival of Christian Architecture in England', supported by quotes from Coleridge and Disraeli, constitutes a sequence of thirteen sonnets, including a subsection of three called 'A Short History of the British in India'. Likewise, 'Lachrimae' is made up of seven sonnets headed by a passage from the Jesuit martyr-poet Robert Southwell: 'Passions I allow...