'With nerves frozen numb he napped in his armour'

Fitt II of poet Simon Armitage’s version of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, composed by an unknown poet and preserved on a single surviving manuscript dating from around 1400, tells one of the earliest great stories of English literature.

A green knight on a green horse brashly interrupts the Yuletide festivities of King Arthur’s Round Table, challenging one of their number to a wager. Hear Simon Armitage read from his version of the poem as part of Four Seasons - Winter on Radio 4, a day of poems for the shortest day.

(Image: Simon Armitage, credit: BBC)