Scanning the preface to this lavish selection of Craig Brown's journalism, I was reminded of an intensely embarrassing episode from time gone by. It was a Boxing Day evening at the home of my wife's aunt, and in the absence of much other diversion the assembled company had settled down to declaim extracts from such elderly poetry anthologies as lay to hand. 'Jabberwocky', 'Bagpipe Music' and 'The Gods of the Copybook Headings' had been and gone, whereupon a rather earnest family friend announced that the introduction to the particular anthology she held before her seemed so full of luminous good sense that she preferred to read that instead. What followed, if not quite along the lines of 'A poem is a bejewelled tear, dropped from the eye of a tiny baby', ran it pretty close. Greatly amused by this sentimental mawk-fest, my wife burst out laughing. There was an anguished silence, trailed by a look or two of baffled enquiry. Everyone else, alas, turned out to have taken the thing at face value.

Blackwell Bookshop

Purchase your copy here, 10% off RRP