A Shropshire Lad - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

• A Shropshire Lad is mentioned in E. M. Forster's A Room with a View. One of the characters, Reverend Beebe, picks up the book from a stack whilst visiting the Emerson home. Lamenting the son's "unconventional" – if not sacrilegious – literary taste, he remarks, "Never heard of it."
• A copy of the book sits on Robbie's desk in Ian McEwan's novel, Atonement.
• Alice Munro's short story "Wenlock Edge" also contains a reference to the poem.
• Salman Rushdie's novel Shalimar the Clown also contains a reference to Housman's poem.
• Tom Stoppard's play The Invention of Love – based on the life and work of A.E. Housman – contains numerous references to and quotes from the poems, but is more focused on his work as a scholar of classics.
• Barbara Stanwyck (as Julia Sturges) reads the entire poem, except for the very last line, to Robert Wagner (as Giff Rogers) in the 1953 film version of Titanic.
• The Roger Zelazny novella "For a Breath I Tarry" references the poem and shares some of the poem's setting and mood with its own.
• "A Shropshire Lad" is mentioned in Dorothy L. Sayers' mystery "Strong Poison". Lord Peter Wimsey's manservant Bunter is putting his Lordship's books away and looks with some curiosity at the chosen few left open on the table, including Housman's "A Shropshire Lad".
• In Walker Percy's 1960 novel "The Moviegoer", the narrator mentions that his father died in Crete during WWII with a copy of "The Shropshire Lad" in his pocket.