Adrian Mitchell

In 2002, he was nominated, semi-seriously, as Britain's "Shadow Poet Laureate" Adrian Mitchell was born on 24 October 1932[1] near Hampstead Heath, north London.

His mother, Kathleen Fabian, was a Fröbel-trained nursery school teacher and his father, Jock Mitchell, a research chemist from Cupar in Fife.

Soon afterwards I became a freelance journalist, writing about pop music for the Daily Mail and TV for the pre-tabloid Sun and the Sunday Times.

[2]Ever inspired by the example of his own favourite poet and precursor William Blake, about whom he wrote the acclaimed Tyger for the National Theatre, Mitchell's often angry output swirled from anarchistic anti-war satire, through love poetry to, increasingly, stories and poems for children.

"[citation needed] In "Loose Leaf Poem", from Ride the Nightmare, Mitchell wrote:[7] He was in the habit of stipulating in any preface to his collections: "None of the work in this book is to be used in connection with any examination whatsoever.

"[citation needed] His best-known poem, "To Whom It May Concern", was his bitterly sarcastic reaction to the televised horrors of the Vietnam War.

As Mitchell delivered his lines from the pavement in front of the National Gallery, angry demonstrators in the square below scuffled with police.

[1] Ever inspired by the example of his own favourite poet and precursor William Blake, about whom he wrote the acclaimed Tyger for the National Theatre, Mitchell's often angry output swirled from anarchistic anti-war satire, through love poetry to, increasingly, stories and poems for children.

[citation needed] Mitchell died on 20 December 2008[1] at the age of 76 in a North London hospital, following a suspected heart attack.

[14][15] In a National Poetry Day poll in 2005, Mitchell's poem "Human Beings" was voted the one most people would like to see launched into space.

John Berger said: "Against the present British state he opposes a kind of revolutionary populism, bawdiness, wit and the tenderness sometimes to be found between animals."

Angela Carter once wrote that Mitchell was "a joyous, acrid and demotic tumbling lyricist Pied Piper, determinedly singing us away from catastrophe."

"[18] "Adrian", said fellow poet Michael Rosen, "was a socialist and a pacifist who believed, like William Blake, that everything human was holy.

[21] He was survived by his second wife, actress Celia Hewitt, whose bookshop, Ripping Yarns, was[22] in Highgate, and their two daughters Sasha and Beattie.