Keats? It’s just poetic licence

QUESTION Is it true that poet John Keats’s father changed the family name from Keast?

MANY biographies have been written about the short life of John Keats ( 1795- 1821), the English Romantic poet best known for Ode To A Nightingale. But little is known about the early life of his father, Thomas.

A West Country lad, he moved to London as a teenager and was head ostler in the livery stable of John Jennings of Finsbury.

In 1795, he married his employer’s daughter, 20-year- old Frances. They had five children and took over the business.

Some historians have claimed the family were related to the Rev Philip Keats, a headmaster of Blundell’s School in Tiverton, Devon. His son was one of Nelson’s captains, Sir Richard Goodwin Keats, and it seems unlikely the poet would have ignored such a famous relation.

John Keats’s sister, Frances Mary, who long outlived her brothers, remembered hearing that her father came from Land’s End. There are records of a Thomas Keast being baptised at nearby Sennen in 1776.

Keast is a Cornish name and it seems possible Thomas changed it to the more common Keats when he moved to London.

Amy Whittaker, Pymore, Dorset.

QUESTION Who has saved the most penalties in a match?

THE previous answer listed four goalkeepers who saved three penalties in normal time of a competitive football match.

I can add Dundee United’s Cammy Bell, who saved three penalties in a 23-minute spell in the first half of a 3- 1 win away to Dunfermline Athletic on September 10, 2016.

Alex Christie, Dundee.