Edgar Guest

His great-niece Judith Guest is a successful novelist who wrote Ordinary People. Guest's poem "It Couldn't Be Done" was recited by Idris Elba on the BBC's Sports Personality of the Year Award on 16th December 2012 whilst celebrating Team GB and Paralympics GB winning the team award for 2012. Guest was made Poet Laureate of Michigan the only poet to have been awarded the title.

For 40 years Guest was widely read throughout North America and his sentimental optimistic poems were in the same vein as the light verse of Nick Kenny who wrote syndicated columns during the same decades. His popularity led to a weekly Detroit radio show which he hosted from 1931 until 1942 followed by a 1951 NBC television series A Guest in Your Home.