Alfred Noyes was the son of Alfred and Amelia Adams Noyes. Although born in Wolverhampton he has a strong link with Aberystwyth. His father was a teacher and the family moved to Aberystwyth where he taught Latin and Greek.

Alfred grew up in the seaside town, living in a house that still stands on the corner of Eastgate and Pier Street.

In 1898, Alfred left Aberystwyth for University where he attended Exeter College in Oxford. Though he failed to earn a degree, the young poet published his first collection of poetry, The Loom of Years, in 1902.

Between 1903 and 1908, Noyes published five volumes of poetry including The Forest of Wild Thyme (1905) and The Flower of Old Japan and Other Poems (1907).

His best-known poems from this time are The Highwayman and Drake.

Drake, which appeared serially in Blackwood's Magazine, was a two-hundred page epic about life at sea.

The Highwayman has been one of the people of Britain's favourite poems. In a nationwide poll conducted by the BBC to find the nation's favourite poem in 1995, The Highwayman was voted the nation's 15th favourite poem (see below).

Alfred Noyes married Garnett Daniels in 1907, and they had three children. His increasing popularity allowed the family to live off royalty checks. In 1914, Noyes became a lecturer at Princeton University, where he taught English Literature until 1923.

He was a noted critic of modernist writers, particularly James Joyce.

In 1922 he began an epic called The Torch Bearers, which was published in three volumes (Watchers of the Sky, 1922; The Book of Earth, 1925; and The Last Voyage, 1930). The book was inspired by his visit to a telescope located at Mount Wilson, California and attempted to reconcile his views of science with religion.

After the death of his wife in 1926, Noyes converted to Roman Catholicism and married his second wife, Mary Angela Mayne Weld-Blundell.

In 1929, the family moved to Lisle Combe, St Lawrence, Isle of Wight where Noyes continued to write essays and poems, culminating in the collection, Orchard's Bay (1939).

The couple had three children: Hugh, Veronica, and Margaret. His younger daughter married Michael Nolan (later Lord Nolan) in 1953.

His collected poems were published in 1950. By this time he had started dictating his work as a result of increasing blindness.

In 1953, his autobiography, Two Worlds for Memory, was published. He authored around sixty books, including poetry volumes, novels, and short stories.

Alfred Noyes died in June 1958, and is buried on the Isle of Wight

The Nations' Favourite Poems

15:Alfred Noyes - The Highwayman
14:William Henry Davies - Leisure
13:Dylan Thomas - Fern Hill
12:Thomas Gray - Elegy Written In A Country Churchyard
11:Christina Rossetti - Remember
10:William Butler Yeats - He Wishes For The Cloths Of Heaven
9:John Keats - Ode To A Nightingale
8:Wilfred Owen - Dulce Et Decorum
7:William Butler Yeats - The Lake Of Innisfree
6:John Keats - To Autumn
5:William Wordsworth - The Daffodils
4:Stevie Smith - Not Waving But Drowning
3:Walter De La Mare - The Listeners
2:Alfred, Lord Tennyson - The Lady Of Shallott
1:Rudyard Kipling - If