Roger McGough

One of Britain’s best-loved poets comes to the Festival for the first time. A distillation of 40 books The Collected Poems 1959- 2024 charts his passage from youthful exuberance as one of the game-changing Liverpool poets to political send-ups and pandemic playfulness. From the 60s hits of Scaffold to Radio 4’s Poetry Please, Roger has entertained the nation for seven decades with his humour and wry reflections. As Time Out put it “McGough has done for poetry what champagne does for weddings.”