Many have asked why Houseman, who was Worcestershire born and bred, wrote 'A Shropshire Lad'. Bishop Barnes of Birmingham once asked A.E.H why he called that famous book of poems, 'A Shropshire Lad', when he lived at Catshill, near the Lickey Hills, Shropshire to him was the land of sunset, the golden west, the Eldorado, and he liked to sit looking across those valleys and woods and ridges to the high-reared head of the Clees.