On his third birthday Oskar decides to stop growing. Haunted by the deaths of his parents & wielding his tin drum Oskar recounts the events of his extraordinary life; from the long nightmare of the Nazi era to his anarchic adventures is post-war Germany. ...

Just before her fifteenth birthday Jinnie Howlett is offered a position as maid-of-all-work at a farm near the Cumbrian border. She hopes this will be a welcome relief from the workhouse she knows too well.

But when she meets her brutish employers Jinnie realises she has only exchanged one life of drudgery for another. She is grateful when one of the sons befriends her, but it isn

...

Robert Crawford's new collection is an exhilarating celebration of the world he lives in: his family, his fellow Scots, his country & his country's languages. Beginning with a group of moving, renewing love poems to his wife, the book builds into a polyphonic hymn to life in all its aspects.

There is a powerful sense of communion & connection in The Tip of My Tongue: while singing the Scottish part of the planet, Crawford also embraces the rhythms of the whole circumference
- from Perth, Scotl&, to Perth, Australia
- catching 'how Kincardineshire's sky's/ Transvaalish, Budapesty, Santa Barbaran, / Zurich on a perfect day'.

These are poems that are convincingly earthed in the land & the language yet unafraid of spiritual, even religious notes; richly lyrical & passionate yet shot through with a humour & a vitality that is utterly engaging. As Liam Mc Ilvanney wrote in the Sunday Herald, 'for intellectual range, emotional depth, & lexical shimmer, Crawford is unsurpassed among recent Scottish poets'.





...

Robert Crawford's new collection is an exhilarating celebration of the world he lives in: his family, his fellow Scots, his country & his country's languages. Beginning with a group of moving, renewing love poems to his wife, the book builds into a polyphonic hymn to life in all its aspects.

There is a powerful sense of communion & connection in The Tip of My Tongue: while singing the Scottish part of the planet, Crawford also embraces the rhythms of the whole circumference
- from Perth, Scotl&, to Perth, Australia
- catching 'how Kincardineshire's sky's/ Transvaalish, Budapesty, Santa Barbaran, / Zurich on a perfect day'.

These are poems that are convincingly earthed in the land & the language yet unafraid of spiritual, even religious notes; richly lyrical & passionate yet shot through with a humour & a vitality that is utterly engaging. As Liam Mc Ilvanney wrote in the Sunday Herald, 'for intellectual range, emotional depth, & lexical shimmer, Crawford is unsurpassed among recent Scottish poets'.





...

Everyone seems to know best when it comes to Jan's future
- but he's still working out for himself who he really is. Jan feels
...

Captain John Staple's exploits in the Peninsula had earned him the sobriquet ' Crazy' Jack amongst his fellows in the Dragoon Guards. Now home from Waterloo, life in peacetime is rather dull for the boisterous, adventure-loving Captain. But when he finds himself lost & benighted at an unmanned toll-house in the Pennines, his soldiering days suddenly pale away besides an adventure
- & romance
- of a lifetime.

...

Captain John Staple's exploits in the Peninsula had earned him the sobriquet ' Crazy' Jack amongst his fellows in the Dragoon Guards. Now home from Waterloo, life in peacetime is rather dull for the boisterous, adventure-loving Captain. But when he finds himself lost & benighted at an unmanned toll-house in the Pennines, his soldiering days suddenly pale away besides an adventure
- & romance
- of a lifetime.

...

The Tomb in Seville is an account of a journey Norman Lewis made in l 934 with his Sicilian brother-in-law Eugene Corvaja. ...

You've heard of the lone ranger? I'm his brother hydrangea!

The other night I dreamt I was eating a ten-pound marshmallow.

...