The Keat-Shelley Memorial Association opened its centenary celebrations with plays, poetry readings and a gala dinner in Rome on 29 Oct. The association was formed in 1903 to buy the house at the foot of the Spanish Steps in Rome where the poet John Keats died on 23 February 1821. Two plays about the lives of the Romantic poets, Life is but a Day about Keats and A Paradise for Exiles about Shelley, both by Angus Graham-Campbell, were performed at the residence of the British ambassador in Rome. The following evening the poets CK Wiliams, Valerio Magrelli and Tony Harrison read from their works at a dinner in Palazzo Barberini. To close the evening, Sir Bob Geldof proposed a toast to the genius of Keats, on the eve of the poets birthday on 31 October 1795.

The Keats-Shelley House on the Spanish Steps was opened in 1909 as a library and museum to the Romantic poets and is now visited by about 20,000 people each year.