It's a time of austerity and a London Olympics is soon to take place. The Poetry Society is in crisis, as was first revealed in a leak to the Evening Standard. Key to the argument is how the Poetry Review magazine relates to the organisation, and which poets and what kind of poetry it should be promoting. There's an angry public meeting, and the resignation of the woman in charge, following her disagreements with those she reports to.

These developments, however, all took place in 1947-48, and the executive forced out – foreshadowing the recent resignation of Judith Palmer, the Poetry Society's director, who gave her first account of why she quit this week – was Muriel Spark, then 29, who fell out with the society's old guard when combining the job of chief administrator with editing the Review. (See Martin Stannard's biography for a full account of her departure.)

How's that for a poetic refrain?