I particularly appreciate Crystal's frankness and open-mindedness - he never claims every line Shakespeare wrote is sacred. Nor does he blindly accept all of Shakespeare's plays as equally brilliant.

Round the back of London's South Bank, something important is hidden away. It's within easy walk of a currently rammed Olympic transport hub, but unlike London Bridge, there's no one in a purple and orange overall to offer helpful and insistent directions. In fact, you'd be forgiven for thinking there'd been something of a cover up.

Literary biographers almost invariably conclude that their subject is unjustly neglected and deserves to be more widely read. Few writers have a reputation as uninspiring as Edmund Spenser (1554?-99), a poet who commands hardly any general readers and who English undergraduates routinely shun.