SOURCE: "John Skelton," in Two Cheers for Democracy, Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1951, pp. 135-53.

In the following lecture given at the Aldeburgh Festival of 1950, Forster offers an introduction to the pleasures of reading Skelton 's poetry.

John Skelton was an East Anglian; he was a poet, also a clergyman, and he was extremely strange. Partly strange because the age in which he flourished—that of the early Tudors—is remote from us, and difficult to interpret. But he was also a strange creature personally, and whatever you think of him when we've finished—and you will possibly think badly of him—you will agree that we have been in contact with someone unusual.

Let us begin with solidity—with the church where he was rector. That still stands, that can be seen and touched, though its incumbent left it over four hundred years ago. He was rector of...