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)