Oxford’s professor of poetry, Geoffrey Hill, has been given a knighthood in the New Year honours list. Hill, 79, who has sometimes been described as a “difficult” poet, partly because of his allusiveness, and interest in history, theology, and philosophy, has said: “In my view, difficult poetry is the most democratic, because you are doing your audience the honour of supposing that they are intelligent human beings.”

Hill was born in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire. He studied at Keble College, Oxford, before following an academic career with posts in Leeds and Cambridge and Boston University. 

Dannie Abse, 88, has been awarded a CBE in the New Year list. After losing his wife in a car crash in 2005, he wrote a memoir, The Presence, which was Wales Book of the Year in 2008. His New Selected Poems was published in 2009.