Today is the 50th anniversary of the death of Stevie Smith. She was 68, and had been suffering from a brain tumour. At the end, her head wrapped in a startling pink turban, she was reported to have amazed visitors by performing her final poem Come Death from her hospital bed. I’ve been keen on Smith ever since I was a teenager, a passion that at one point was so fierce that I was unaccountably moved to give a paper on her at an academic...