The subtly subversive chronicler of Englishness still makes grown men cry

A wildly funny and slyly subversive comic genius who deftly skewered the mores of Victorian England

The P.M. has the brittle self-confidence of a true Wykehamist

The decline and fall of the dreaming spires and their replacement by shuttered shops, sad cafés and mothballed pubs

An author of seriously funny plays

Henry Green had a strange and distinctive talent

Grim, funny glimpses of a Britain in decline

The great man’s peerless poetry is not the “soppy stuff” of cheap romanticism, but a harsh, unsparing — and often beautiful — look at the world

The playwright will not be remembered for his poetry

To make people laugh for an hour is good business sense — but it says nothing about writing, or creativity, or art