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Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22319, 5 February 1938, Page 18

A December issue of the Court Circular contained this announcement: Mr John Masefield (Poet Laureate) and Mr Wystan Auden had the honour of being received by the King, when His Majesty presented to Mr Auden the Kings Gold Medal for Poetry for the year 1936. The King’s Medal is offered annually for poetry in the English language published in volume form within the Empire by a British subject. It is given either for a poet’s first or second volume of verse or to a poet still under 35. In the year of the first award, 1934, hundreds of volumes were submitted and the choice was Lawrence Whistler’s “Four Walls.” For the year 1935 no medal was given. The award now announced is the first official recognition of any member of a certain group of young poets— Stephen Spender and Cecil Day Lewis are other representatives of the same school—whose work has provoked much controversy. It is reported from Madrid that Ernest Hemingway has written his first play, “The Fifth Column.” The action of the play takes place in the Florida Hotel, Madrid, which has been gutted by shell-fire; and it was there that Hemingway wrote the play.