Don Paterson strikes gold...

Scottish poet Don Paterson has become the latest recipient of the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry. Created in 1933 by King George V, the Medal is awarded annually by the monarch for a book of verse publihsed in the Commonwealth. Traditionally the award is announced on Shakespeare's supposed birthday, April 23rd; however, this year the poet was named in the 2010 New Year's Honour List. Paterson, who recently won the £10,000 Forward Poetry Prize in October, was awarded the honour for his poetry anthology 'Rain'. Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy chaired the judging panel, and said Paterson's work was 'poetry of bravery and conviction...acutely attuned to the most intimate of human exchanges'. The Medal has previously been won by names such as T.S. Eliot, John Betjeman and W.H. Auden.

On this day...

The approaching of a new year has incurred many epigrams over the last century by authors and playwrights alike. Here are some of the more famous ones:

• "The only way to spend New Year's Eve is either quietly with friends or in a brothel. Otherwise when the evening ends and people pair off, someone is bound to be left in tears."
  - W.H. Auden
  
  
• "The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective."
  - G.K. Chesterton
  
  
• "Yesterday, everybody smoked his last cigar, took his last drink and swore his last oath. Today, we are a pious and exemplary community. Thirty days from now, we shall have cast our reformation to the winds and gone to cutting our ancient shortcomings considerably shorter than ever."
  - Mark Twain
  
  
• "Good resolutions are simply cheques that men draw on a bank where they have no account."
  - Oscar Wilde