• YOU may well know about the misreading of Laurence Binyon’s poem “For the Fallen”: one often sees “They shall not grow old…”, whereas what Binyon wrote was actually “They shall grow not old…”.

The problem resembles that of saying “till death do us part” instead of the marriage formula in the Book of Common Prayer: “till death us do part.”

I wrote a poem setting right the Binyon misquotation – and then lamenting the worse wrong that caused the Fallen to die.

‘They shall not grow old’ is what is often read
‘They shall grow not old’, though, is what Binyon said
But what counts most is that from toe to head
Every last one of them is dead, is dead.

ROBERT ILSON
NW3