DARE TO BE TRUE

Some iconic English "Georges" (fact or fiction, past or present, living or dead) for St George's Day. Each one represents something quintessentially English.

Pictured above: George Herbert (1593-1633), leading figure of the group that has come to be known to history as the Metaphysical Poets. He was born in Wales, but there wasn't as much of a distinction of those things in those days - and it's his distinctive and enduring contribution to English poetry, in a tradition that was effectively cut short by the titanic political struggles of the mid-seventeenth century and the cultural earthquake attendant on it.