Blackadder was only half right about Ralegh

Queen Elizabeth's dandyish pet explorer was also a poet of beautiful, mysterious angst.

A hero with a dark side ... the statue of Sir Walter Ralegh outside the UK's Ministry of Defence. Photograph: Martin Godwin

On Radio 4 this summer, Andrew Marr has been keen to elucidate Englishness by looking at individually famous English people. One week it was Miss Marple, the next it was Sir Walter Ralegh (which, by the way, is the spelling of his surname he eventually plumped for after trying out a range of variations - though he never spelled it as 'Raleigh')... Having spent the best part of my adult life slavishly devoted to the latter, I turned on the wireless with great interest.