We are inside a pre-biotic chemical reaction some 4,500 million years ago, as it suddenly forms a membrane and becomes a prokaryot cell. Then a eukaryot cell. Then a multicellular organism. That's for the first chapter, and from the cell's viewpoint....

"Time's Tidings" is a rich and varied collection of poems on the theme of time. Edited and introduced by the author of the award-winning "Mean Time", it is published from Greenwich, the heart of Britain's millennium celebrations. Carol Ann Duffy has...

Memory, love, history and ideas: Thomas McCarthy has a uniquely direct and engaged approach both to the private and the public, which are inseparable in his poetry. His special blend of wit and lyricism is shown to the full in this selection which dr...

Ford Madox Ford's post-war masterpiece, "Parade's End", is recognised as one of the great British novels about the First World War. This selection from his other extensive writings about the war, published and unpublished, sheds light on the tetralog...

Celebrating D. J. Enright's 70th birthday, this selection made, with advice by the poet himself, is the ideal introduction to the work of a man considered by the New York Times "to be quite simply the funniest poet alive".

The conceit that unites this poetry collection is the technology, lore, and tradition of printing. "The Hellbox" is the box into which printers chucked broken or worn hot-metal type. Delanty expands this conceit to include a wide human discourse of f...

This selection, made by Peter Scupham himself, brings together work from his eight individual collections, from his first book, "The Snowing Globe" in 1972 to his latest, "Watching the Perseids" in 1990

The life of Sergeant Roger Lamb, a young Dubliner who served with the Royal Welsh Fusiliers during the American War of Independence, was the subject of a novelistic enterprise originally published in two parts because of war time paper shortages. The...

This is the first major selection to appear in Britain from one of the finest poets of the Silver Age of Russian literature. The rich, exotic poetry of Nikolay Gumilyov (1886-1921) draws on his extensive travels in Europe and Africa. Its deepest conc...

Adam Schwartzman's anthology offers substantial selections of ten outstanding South African poets drawn from more than four decades and from very different traditions and cultures. Far from establishing a canon, the vital and diverse literatures repr...