' To say that Babs is my closest friend is rather like saying that Einstein was good at sums. & if you've ever had a best friend, ...

Dannie Abse's distinctiveness as a poet lies in his clarity. His distinction lies in his imaginative & feeling responses to a variety of different worlds
- work as a doctor, the experience of life in Wales & North London, the mysterious nature of creativity, the Jewish & bardic traditions. His new collection draws on all these strands & is divided between personal experience & more general reflections, often prompted by an urgent awareness of the passing of time, counterpointed with transcendent moments of joy in ordinary things.


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'I may have to ask you to do something very dangerous, ' Ma said. The children of Clifton are dying & Jessie's mother is desperate for medicine to save their lives, but it is 1840 & no such remedy yet exists. Except that it isn't 1840 at all, it is 1996, & the critical situation forces Jessie's mother to reveal an unbelievable secret. The world Jessie has known all this time is just a sham, a living history museum, a reconstructed village for tourists. & now her mother wants her to escape into the twentieth century to get help
- before the children run out of time.
...

Jonny Bealby was devastated when his fiancee Melanie died unexpectedly while they were travelling in Kashmir. Two years later, still heartbroken & utterly disillusioned, he took on the challenge of a lifetime. Setting out with only his motorbike for company, he began a daring & dangerous journey around the African continent in a desperate attempt to unearth some meaning in his life. Bittersweet, bold & beautifully told, Running with the Moon is a tale of true love & loss, of exploration, adventure & courage. ...

Jonny Bealby was devastated when his fiancee Melanie died unexpectedly while they were travelling in Kashmir. Two years later, still heartbroken & utterly disillusioned, he took on the challenge of a lifetime. Setting out with only his motorbike for company, he began a daring & dangerous journey around the African continent in a desperate attempt to unearth some meaning in his life. Bittersweet, bold & beautifully told, Running with the Moon is a tale of true love & loss, of exploration, adventure & courage. ...

On leaving school a sixteen-year-old boy goes to live with his uncle on a remote Welsh hill-farm. His aunt has recently committed suicide after losing her livestock in the foot-&-mouth epidemic & his uncle has turned, once again, to the bottle. The boy is an innocent, a spiritual savant; a shaman. In one of his ecstatic trances the boy learns that he has an appointed role in the world, which he must discover for himself. During an episode of brutal & climactic violence, he does exactly that. Runt is a powerful, disturbing & moving novel that reinvigorates the language of fiction & illuminates domestic tragedy with a penetrating epic light. ...

On leaving school a sixteen-year-old boy goes to live with his uncle on a remote Welsh hill-farm. His aunt has recently committed suicide after losing her livestock in the foot-&-mouth epidemic & his uncle has turned, once again, to the bottle. The boy is an innocent, a spiritual savant; a shaman. In one of his ecstatic trances the boy learns that he has an appointed role in the world, which he must discover for himself. During an episode of brutal & climactic violence, he does exactly that. Runt is a powerful, disturbing & moving novel that reinvigorates the language of fiction & illuminates domestic tragedy with a penetrating epic light. ...

Rupert Hart-Davis (1907-1999) not only founded a prestigious publishing company; he also involved himself vigorously in literary politics. His story is the story of literary life in the 20th century. He worked for William Heinemann & Jonathan Cape (who sacked him), & numbered among his close friends Duff & Diana Cooper, Peter & Ian Fleming, Arthur Ransome, John Betjeman, Eric Linklater & Joyce Grenfell. His mother
- to whom he was obsessively devoted
- died when he was at Oxford. Desolated, he left without a degree, to try his hand at acting. He played alongside Richardson, Gielgud & Olivier
- & found himself having to choose between two attractive young actresses: Celia Johnson & Peggy Ashcroft. When he told Celia he was marrying Peggy, she broke down in tears. The marriage didn't last, & Rupert went on to marry three more times. Before marrying his colleague, Ruth Simon, he lived for some years with his wife, Comfort, in the country at weekends, & with Ruth in London during the working week. After Ruth's death, he married his secretary June, with whom he lived in retirement in his beloved Yorkshire dales.


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