Information for The Invention of Love at Hampstead Theatre, Inner London (Play). Written 1997. A play about the poet A E Housman, auther of 'A Shropshire Lad'. Housman was also a great, though not well loved, classical scholar. Poetry, scholarship and love and entwined in this sympathetic view of a private life lived parallel to the public career of his near-contemporary Oscar Wilde. The story is not a literal biography. Winner of Best Play Award in the 1997 Evening Standard Awards.