Housman's A Shropshire Lad was an 1896 collection of charming, if often rather pessimistic, bucolic verses by a Cambridge don who had probably never even visited Shropshire.

Betjeman also wrote an individual poem called A Shropshire Lad, in retrospective honour of Captain Webb, the first Channel swimmer of early C20, obviously intending the title to have referential classic resonances back to the Housman book; the gallant Captain being, obviously, a native of Shropshire.

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