The chemist with a sample analyses an aliquot of that sample, a part of a part of a larger whole. The title of John Clegg's new collection speaks to the poems' sense of being parts of larger wholes, themselves parts of a larger whole... The scientific knowledge and the sometimes old-fashioned diction that abound in these poems are both part of worlds of reference in which sequencing (narrative, historical, scientific) is crucial and revelatory, as in the series of poems 'A Gene Sequence,' ...

The chemist with a sample analyses an aliquot of that sample, a part of a part of a larger whole. The title of John Clegg's new collection speaks to the poems' sense of being parts of larger wholes, themselves parts of a larger whole... The scientific knowledge and the sometimes old-fashioned diction that abound in these poems are both part of worlds of reference in which sequencing (narrative, historical, scientific) is crucial and revelatory, as in the series of poems 'A Gene Sequence' w...

Sometime during the twentieth century, the self-mythology of the literary critic fused with that of the cowboy: lone outriders practising a defunct trade. In Holy Toledo! John Clegg tracks the critic's silhouette over the dangerous, sundrenched landscapes of New Mexico, California, Nashville, Utah, Oxford, Cambridge, and London. Here is Donald Davie listening to gospel radio in a Nashville taxi, and here is F.R. Leavis standing on a chair, 'unscrewing instead the world from round the light...

Shortlisted for the 2017 Ledbury Forte Poetry Prize For Second Collections. Sometime during the twentieth century, the self-mythology of the literary critic fused with that of the cowboy: lone outriders practising a defunct trade. In Holy Toldedo! John Clegg tracks the critic's silhouette over the dangerous, sun-drenched landscapes of New Mexico, California, Nashville, Utah, Oxford, Cambridge, and London. Here is Donald Davie listening to gospel radio in a Nashville taxi, and here...

C.H. Sisson called John Heath-Stubbs 'a Johnsonian presence with a Miltonic disability' – a reference to the poet's blindness. This selection of an abundant poet restores him to a new readership with the work on which his popularity was based. His ground-breaking early poetry is given its due, especially the major long poem Wounded Thammuz, printed here in its entirety. Heath-Stubbs was at the centre of the New Romantic school. The Second World War left him as almost the sole repr...

This selection of Middleton's letters offers a new beginning point for readers of this dazzling, many-talented writer. The first letter here dates from 1936, the last from 2015, and this selection charts a life lived to the full as the poet reports on his work, his writing life and his continuous transatlantic engagement with the poets and critics of his generation.Enthusiastic, discursive and slyly humorous, Christopher Middleton (1926–2015) was an electrifying correspondent. This...

The book opens with early 1950's life as viewed through the eyes of a child up until the age of seven, when out flow the memories of growing up in Ludlow, South Shropshire in the late1950's-early 1960's, capturing a mode of existence now lost in the mists of time. In the two main streets featured, only one house had a phone; prior to the late 50's only one had a TV set; laundry was done in sink or boiler, before being wrung through a mangle; most family vegetables were grown in the back ga...

C.H. Sisson called John Heath-Stubbs "... a Johnsonian presence with a Miltonic disability"—a reference to the poet's blindness. This selection of an abundant poet restores him to a new readership with the work on which his popularity was based. His ground-breaking early poetry is given its due, especially the major long poem "Wounded Thammuz," printed here in its entirety. Heath-Stubbs was at the centre of the New Romantic school. The Second World War left him as almost the sole represent...

A forsaken telephone is heard ringing in the woods and the fact our main character decides to answer it, leads to the question, 'What happens next?' He's of a rather nonconformist disposition and relates the ensuing adventure in a self-deprecating, conversational manner, weaving into his account many of the topics that people in Britain have to currently deal with. Some may find certain views contentious, especially regarding recent medical matters, while others could well applaud, that at...

The Teller is a tale set in the late Bronze Age, told by an itinerant storyteller to members of an Iron Age tribe living on a defended hilltop c 405 BC in the region now known as the Welsh Marches. It describes survival during worsening weather and how they sustained themselves on what little was available. Apart from when luxuries such as meat, fish, wheat, barley and peas, were obtainable, the rest of their diet was barely nourishing, similar to what would now be described as foraging fa...

The Teller, volume 2, is a continuation of the story of survival in what we call, the Early Iron Age, made all the more desperate by the fact two potentially hostile tribes now occupied the same coveted swathe of territory, actually the rich, rolling farmlands north of the river Severn.

The year is 401 BC, a new art form is burgeoning, what we now call La Tene, or Celtic, spreading north from the alpine regions. Three years earlier Athens had finally been defeated by Sparta and her allies; Rome is but a fledgling city state; the Etruscan confederation is in decline; hordes of Gallic warriors are rampaging south over the Alps and through all this, two from the far northern Tin Islands, blithely wander.It is a tale related by a contemporary storyteller, thankfully u...