MOVE over, Shakespeare, because here come Winchester's young bards - armed with toilet rolls!

Youngsters were immersed in all things poetic when they spent a day at Winchester's Theatre Royal moving gracefully from rhyme to sonnet.

Toilet paper was used to prevent the seven young poets from editing their thoughts or suffering from writers' block, and after scribbling furiously on the seemingly never-ending paper they turned their favourite phrases into poems.

Freelance actor and writer Tom Cocklin put the youngsters, aged between eight and 16, through their paces.

He said: "It's a new experience to me, but some of them are better writers than I was."