'She made us choose a poem and learn it off by heart. It would be useful, she said, if we were ever bored and at a dinner party; we could recite in our head. '

She made us choose a poem and learn it off by heart. It would be useful, she said, if we were ever bored and at a dinner party; we could recite in our head. I couldn’t imagine ever being at a dinner party, but I can still recite ‘Ode to a Nightingale’.