The title didn’t quite say it all. Former poet laureate Andrew Motion certainly read a moving selection of works from his collection of war poems, The Cinder Path, but there was a great deal more to this excellent evening than that.

In addition to his superbly sad and knowing poems about conflicts from World War I to Afghanistan, Motion also talked about his early years, his parents and his recent marriage to Korean translator Kyeong-Soo Kim.

We were treated to poems about everything from mowing the lawn to the fact that his father didn’t like small-talk, possibly because he had once bitten off his own tongue in a childhood accident.

Some of the personal information was quite surprising. Who’d have thought that Andrew Motion would count Simon Cowell among his friends?

Other revelations were more predictable . Like his assertion that his recent recruitment as creative writing teacher at Jamie Oliver’s TV Dream School had been a big mistake.

He described the project as ”Well-intentioned but seriously ill-conceived”, admitting that after a single session trying to teach 20 disruptive youngsters he went home and burst into tears.

“I’ve taught for 30 years and never had to keep order. I’ve never had to raise my voice. They didn’t need someone like me. They needed serious professional help.”