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English Poetry Before Chaucer (University of Exeter Press - Exeter Medieval Texts and Studies)

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In his biography "Life", Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones writes concerning his great disrespect for the foppish, holier-than-thou teachers he had in school while growing up in London in the 1950's. Michael Swanton was one of those teachers. Richards recounts a very humorous tale of how he and a mob of other unruly schoolmates lynched Swanton on the schoolground one day:

"Maybe it was just one term in which, for whatever reason these mad mass bundles would go on in the playing fields. There were about three hundred of us, everybody leaping around. It is strange, thinking back, that nobody stopped us. There were probably just too many of us running about. And nobody got hurt. But it allowed a certain degree of anarchy to the point that when the head prefect did come along and try to stop us one day, he was set upon and lynched. He was one of those perennial martinets, captain of sport, head of school, the most brilliant of all things. He swung his weight around, he would be really officious to the younger kids, and we decided to gve him a taste. His name was Swanton - I remember him well. And it was raining, very nasty weather, and we stripped him and then chased him until he climbed a tree. We left him with his hat and then chased him until that's all he had left on. Swanton came down from the tree and rose to become a professor of medieval studies at the University of Exeter and wrote a key work called 'English Poetry Before Chaucer'" - Keith Richards from "Life" 2010 Back Bay Books/Mindless Records.