10 Poets Buried in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey

National Library of Wales, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Bain News Service, publisher, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

1. Geoffrey Chaucer c. 1343 1400 Author and poet
2. Edmund Spenser c. 1552 1599 Poet
3. Abraham Cowley 1618 1667 Poet
4. John Dryden 1631 1700 Poet and playwright
5. Samuel Johnson 1709 1784 Author, poet and lexicographer
6. Alfred, Lord Tennyson 1809 1892 Poet
7. Robert Browning 1812 1889 Poet and playwright
8. Thomas Hardy 1840 1928 Author and poet
9. John Masefield 1878 1967 Poet and author
10. Rudyard Kipling 1865 1936 Author and poet

10 Literary types who turned down knighthoods

1. Alan Bennett, playwright (in 1996; had previously declined appointment as CBE in 1988)

2. Arnold Bennett, novelist, declined knighthood offered for service in running the British government's French propaganda department during World War I.

3. E. M. Forster, author and essayist; declined knighthood in 1949, but accepted a Companion of Honour in the 1953 New Year Honours list and an Order of Merit in 1969

4. Michael Frayn, novelist and dramatist; declined a knighthood in the 2003 New Year Honours and a CBE four years previously; Frayn stated: "I haven't done this for reasons of modesty. I like the name 'Michael Frayn'; it's a nice little name to run around with. I've spent 70 years getting used to it and I don't want to change it now."

5. John Galsworthy, playwright, declined knighthood in 1918 New Year Honours, but accepted appointment to the Order of Merit in 1929 as it was not a title.

6. Aldous Huxley, author (in 1959)

7. Rudyard Kipling, writer, and poet; declined knighthood in 1899 and again in 1903; his wife stated that Kipling felt he could "do his work better without it". Kipling also declined the Order of Merit in 1921 and again in 1924. Kipling expressed his own view on the importance of titles and poetry in his poem "The Last Rhyme of True Thomas".

8. T. E. Lawrence, Arabist, archaeologist, soldier; King George V offered Lawrence a knighthood on 30 October 1918 at a private audience in Buckingham Palace for his services in the Arab Revolt, but he declined

9. George Bernard Shaw, playwright, critic, and socialist; also declined OM

10. Danny Boyle, theatre and film director (in 2013)

Proofs of Holy Writ

Rudyard Kipling's very last story was called "Proofs of Holy Writ". You can find it here. It was completed too late for inclusion in Limits and Renewals, his last collection, published in London in April 1932 but was published in The Strand magazine in April 1934, and reprinted there in 1947 with an introduction by Hilton Brown. It is also in volume 30 of the Sussex Edition.

It was said to have arisen from a dinner table conversation between Kipling and John Buchan about the process by which the splendidly poetic language of the KJV miraculously emerged from a committee of 47 learned men. Might they, Buchan wondered, have consulted the great creative writers of the day, like Will Shakespeare or Ben Jonson ? 'That's an idea', said Kipling, and went away to turn it into a tale. The story is prefaced by these words from Isaiah 60

ARISE, shine: for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee.

2 For, behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people: but the Lord shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee.

3 And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising. ...

19 The sun shall be no more thy light by day; neither for brightness shall the moon give light unto thee: but the Lord shall be unto thee an everlasting light, and thy God thy glory.

20 Thy sun shall no more go down; neither shall thy moon withdraw itself: for the Lord shall be thine everlasting light, and the days of thy mourning shall be ended.