Letter: David Jacobs and Elizabeth Bishop's art of losing

Some years ago I took part in a fundraising event on behalf of the Rose theatre, Kingston, with Simon Hoggart and Jacqueline Wilson. The expert chairman was David Jacobs. We each had to choose six books we would take to a desert island and give our reasons for doing so. Among my choices was the Collected Poems of Elizabeth Bishop. I read her masterpiece One Art, which contains the repeated line "The art of losing isn't hard to master." It's a work of wry stoicism in the face of loss, and Jacobs – whose son and second wife died in tragic circumstances – told me how moved he was by it. He wrote down the title and the name of the publisher on a scrap of paper. I never met him again, but I was lastingly impressed by his courtesy and unforced charm.