Why didn't I learn poetry like the Elizabethans?

It sounds boring, but I wish I'd been made to memorise prose and verse. Then I'd have a private fund of inspiration

What comes next? A trained memory seemed to ease life for the imprisoned Elizabeth.

I have been researching the ways in which writers learned to write in the past. I would like to suggest that we have lost some rather good things - one being the importance of memorising material, another the merits of translation.

Memorising vast amounts of text lay at the heart of a schoolboy's...