Old Toffer S Book Of Consequential Dogs

This wonderfully witty and varied collection, illustrated in full-colour by the brilliant Sara Ogilvie, is perfect for younger readers to appreciate.I've rounded up a rowdy assemblyOf my own Consequential DogsAs counterparts to Eliot's mogs.Mine are a rough and ready bunch:You wouldn't take them out to lunch . . .But if they strike you as friendly, funny,Full of bounce and fond of a romp,Forgetful of poetic pomp,I trust you'll take them as you find themAnd, at the very least, not mind them.T. S. Eliot's best-selling collection of practical cat poems has been one of the most successful poetry collections ever. At last, in the 80th year of Old Possum's Cats, we have the companion volume that Eliot had envisaged, written by master poet and Costa-winner, Christopher Reid.A book that will be enjoyed by generations to come, perfect for reading together!

It follows the exploits of a group of hapless bards, more intimately connected than they themselves can possibly know, in their attempts to navigate the hazards of London literary society. Reid's colourful cast includes an ageing ex-offender, a lecherous academic, a fading grande dame and her underachieving best friend, and two young graduates, one as feckless as the other is ambitious. Hard as each may try, the poets' attempts at literary and social advancement are continually hampered both by fate and by a variety of personal shortcomings, ensuring that their story accelerates irrevocably towards comic catastrophe and collapse. Six Bad Poets is a delicious romp through a world that the author has observed closely over many years, and from which he reports with merciless accuracy, zest and humour.

At the outset of his career Ted Hughes described letter writing as 'excellent training for conversation with the world', and he was to become a prolific master of this art. This selection begins when Hughes was seventeen, and documents the course of a life at once resolutely private but intensely attuned to others. It is a fascinatingly detailed picture of a mind of genius as it evolved through an incomparably eventful life and career.

Lunch in Soho with a former lover - but Zanzotti's is under new management, and as the wine takes effect fond memories give way to something closer to the bone. A mock-elegy for the heady joys of old-time Soho, The Song of Lunch displays the full range of Christopher Reid's wit, craft and human sympathy.

A bright and charming new poetry collection, from 2009 Costa Book of the Year winner, Christopher Reid.