Poets Laureate of Great Britain

The English Poet Laureate is responsible for composing poems for court and national occasions. The office is awarded for life. After a poet laureate dies, the Prime Minister nominates potential successors from which the reigning monarch chooses one. The Lord Chamberlain appoints the poet laureate by issuing a warrant to the laureate-elect. The appointment is always announced in The London Gazette.

In 1616 Ben Jonson was named the first English Poet Laureate, but the title did not become an official royal office until 1668.

• Ben Jonson (1616)
  
• William D'Avenant (1638)
  
• John Dryden (1668) (first so-called)
  
• Thomas Shadwell (1689)
  
• Nahum Tate (1692)
  
• Nicholas Rowe (1715)
  
• Laurence Eusden (1718)
  
• Colley Cibber (1730)
  
• William Whitehead (1757)*
  
• Thomas Warton (1785)
  
• Henry Pye (1790)
  
• Robert Southey (1813)**
  
• William Wordsworth (1843)
  
• Alfred Tennyson (1850)***
  
• Alfred Austin (1896)
  
• Robert Bridges (1913)
  
• John Masefield (1930)
  
• Cecil Day-Lewis (1968)
  
• John Betjeman (1972)
  
• Ted Hughes (1984)
  
• Andrew Motion (1999)