deaths
December 20, 2008
Adrian Mitchell, English author, poet, and playwright (born 1932)
Adrian Mitchell
Adrian Mitchell FRSL was an English poet, novelist, and playwright. A former journalist, he became a noted figure on the British left. For almost half a century he was the foremost poet of the country's Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament movement. His best-known poem, "To Whom It May Concern", was his bitterly sarcastic reaction to the televised horrors of the Vietnam War. Mitchell's poems ranged from anarchistic anti-war satire, through love poetry, to stories and poems for children. He also wrote librettos. In 2002, he was nominated, semi-seriously, as Britain's "Shadow Poet Laureate"