Felicia Browne

Although broad and effortless poetic and classical allusion is generally assumed to be part of the make up of  anyone fortunate enough to have been educated in a comprehensive school in Llanrumney  in the 1970s, I did have to double check yesterday's Casabianca quotation to make sure I had it precisely right..

In doing so, I was delighted to find that the authoress was born Felicia Browne in September 1793 in Liverpool, but moved when she was very young to Gwrych, an isolated Welsh seaside house; then, in 1809, to St. Asaph, Wales.

Thus (and a happy St David's day to you), we share a surname and a Welsh upbringing.

THE stately Homes of England,
How beautiful they stand!
Amidst their tall ancestral trees,
O'er all the pleasant land.
The deer across their greensward bound
Thro' shade and sunny gleam,
And the swan glides past them with the sound
Of some rejoicing stream.

That was another one of hers. Not really very Welsh and later waspishly reworked by Teddington's own Noel Coward. You can't have everything I suppose.