Warning: When I Am an Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple

Voted Britain’s best-loved poem by viewers of BBC TV’s Bookworm, this perennial favorite with its declaration of defiance against convention appeals to all those with a secret desire to throw off the strictures of propriety and set out deliberately to shock and be outrageous.

It sums up this wish perfectly with its pronouncement: "When I am an old woman I shall wear purple/With a red hat that doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me/I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired/And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells.”

Reprinted here as a gift book with line drawings by Pythia Ashton-Jewell, this edition of the classic is ideal both for those who know and love the poem and for those who have yet to relish its gleeful anticipation.