Patrick O'Brian's unknown poems discovered in a drawer

Cache of more than 100 pieces, of which even his family was unaware, will be published next year as The Uncertain Land and Other Poems

• Read two of the poems below

After sitting in a desk drawer for almost 20 years, a large cache of poetry by the British author Patrick O’Brian has been discovered, with the majority unknown even to his own family.

More than 100 poems, which will be collected and published as The Uncertain Land and Other Poems next March, were discovered this year when trustees for the O’Brian estate handed over a manila folder containing the poems. They had been written between the early 1940s to the late 1970s.