In 1968, the Little Missenden Festival commissioned Ted Hughes to write a sequence of five poems for children, to be chanted at Harvest Festival by children from the village infant school. Hughes response Five Autumn Songs are wonderfully varied in tone, register and style, uncompromising in their poetic topics and imagery, while bridging the worlds of children and adults.

Ted Hughes attended the session in 1968 and came again in 1973 and 1978 to the festival, to speak about children's poe...