The context in which McCartney was exposed to both King Lear and Edward Lear is vital to an understanding of his achievement. All apprenticeships are characterised by caricature and impersonation. Like almost all great writers, he’d apprenticed himself to the masters of the trade: Dickens, Shakespeare, Robert Louis Stevenson, Lewis Carroll. That Sir Paul McCartney turns out to be such a brilliant mimic shouldn’t have come as a surprise. He lost no time in getting to the point: would I be willing to come to Washington to serve as his “Poetry Supremo”? The newly elected Donald Trump introduced himself quite matter-of-factly. The voice, though, was immediately familiar. T owards the end of 2016 I had a phone call from an unfamiliar number.
