Poet, translator of classical texts , novelist, detective writer (under the pen-name Nicholas Blake), performer and, at that time , Professor of Poetry at Oxford, C Day-Lewis had many careers all at once. This first authorized biography tells the private story behind the many headlines that this handsome Anglo-Irish Poet Laureate generated in his lifetime. Day-Lewis made his name as one of the 'poets of the 1930s', launching a communist-influenced poetic revolution alongside W. H. Auden and Stephen Spender that aspired to spark wholesale political change to face down fascism. In the 1940s, 'Red Cecil', as he had become known, broke with communism, and with Auden. He went on to produce some of his most popular and enduring verse, reflecting both on the course of the Second World War and on the breakdown of his first marriage. Day-Lewis was always pulled between a fulfilling domestic life and a restless desire to explore. His travels, his infidelities and his reflections on his Irish roots are all part of the rich and many-faceted life that Peter Stanford describes. It is, however, as a poet that he is best remembered, and the poetry itself, often autobiographical, forms an integral part of this biography.

Together with Auden, Spender and MacNeice, C. Day Lewis was one of the leading young poets who in the 1930s broke away from the poetic establishment of those days. Day Lewis started writing poetry very young and, despite an active career which embraced schoolmastering , journalism, publishing, academic lecturing and the writing of detective stories, his devotion to poetry never wavered. Always prolife, he continued to write to the end of his days, so that when he died in 1972, having held the Chair of Poetry at Oxford from 1951 and 1956 and having been appointed Poet Laureate in 1968, he left behind a very large and varied body of work. Here, for the first time, are all the poems Day Lewis wrote, including the vers d'occasion which have never previously appeared in book form and a number of works which have only been published in a limited edition before now.

This is a very rich book of poetic criticism, focusing on the role of the 'image' in poetry. A fantastic book for any poetry fan.

A reissue of a much-loved adventure which has stood the test of time and is as exciting today as when it was first published nearly 70 years ago. It all begins when Nick breaks the classroom window with his football, and the Headmaster says Nick has to pay for the damage. Nick has no more hope of raising the money than of going to the Moon, so that's when rivalling Ted's and Toppy's gangs decide to sign a truce and plan Operation Glazier to get the money for Nick. The plan goes smoothly and soon the money has been collected, but when it goes missing the boys turn detective to try and find the culprit.

In the West of Ireland in 1939 a young novelist rents a lonely cottage to write his new book in peace. Almost at once, and without great resistance, he is seduced by the wife of the local squire. Harriet's husband is an older man - hot-tempered, impoverished, gone to seed - who once fought famously against the Black and Tans. Soon this eternal triangle becomes a local scandal, and the atmosphere of threat and violence, intensified by the approaching war in Europe, leads to a horrific murder. The Private Wound is Nicholas Blake's last book, written with such intensity of feeling and depth of character that it is widely regarded as his best. "Really splendid. When they come round to having a Crime-writer Laureate, Mr Blake's brow is there for the wreathing" - The Times