We do not known, and will probably never know, when he began writing poetry. The answer almost certainly lay in the sack of papers that Susan Owen, on her son’s strict instructions, burnt at his death.

Less finished, but more intimate, is a passage from a fragmentary “Ballad of a Morose Afternoon”, which he most probably wrote some time after he had left Dunsden.

There were, broadly, two interrelated reasons for this. The first was related to Britain’s economic and imperial difficulties, and the second to the internal dissension in all three parties. This was, perhaps, a symptom of the need for a realignment of political parties.