Poets and Olympians reforge their links Last week 100 poets from around the world met at London's Southbank Centre for the Poetry Parnassus, a day-long festival linked to the Cultural Olympiad, a revival of the artistic competitions that accompanied the Olympics between 1912 and 1948. British authors, from literary heavyweights to keen amateurs, have long been drawn to the Games. It all started with Shakespeare who gave the word "Olympian" to George in his speech before the Battle of Towton in Henry VI, Part III, promising soldiers "such rewards/As victors wear at the Olympian games." His audiences would have got the allusion, as people were starting to call sporting events Olympic or Olimpick - indeed, there is evidence to suggest that the Bard visited the Cotswold Olimpicks in 1612, where revels like shin-kicking and single-stick took place alongside chess, cards, hare coursing, dancing and drinking. These first British Olimpicks were soon championed by poets in a way that prefigures the Poetry Parnassus. In 1636, Matthew Walbancke published a book of poems inspired by Dover's Games, called Annalia Dubrensia, Upon the yeerely celebration of Mr Robert Dovers Olimpick Games upon Cotswold-Hill. The poets were all Dover's friends including Ben Jonson, and their tongues were firmly in their cheeks as they compared his boozy and ribald festival to the ancient Olympics. It could be seen as Britain's first Cultural Olympiad project. Thomas Hughes's 1857 novel Tom Brown's Schooldays presented the public-school model of sport as the foundation of manliness and morality. It was this book that set the young Pierre de Coubertin on the path that led, in 1894, to the forming of the International Olympic Committee. He won first prize for poetry at the 1912 Games. My own prize, though, goes to George Robertson. Winner of the Gaisford Prize for Greek verse at Oxford, he competed in the 1896 Olympics in lawn tennis, the discus and the shot. His discus throw of 25.2 metres is one of the worst in the Games" history: but he should be remembered for his poetry rather than his athletics. Robertson composed an ode about the Games "in Ancient Greek in Pindarian meter." He recited it at the closing ceremony and won a prize, even though no one knew how Ancient Greek should sound. I hope Poetry Parnassus will award Robertson his due. Martin Polley, the author of The British Olympics, will be taking part in the Telegraph discussion on the Olympics at the Telegraph Ways With Words festival on Tuesday, July 10 at 8pm. To book visit www.wayswithwords.co.uk