Peter Armstrong is a phrase-maker of unprecedented innovation and this new collection is his most imaginatively daring and intellectually subtle yet. Armstrong is one of the very few writers to have appeared in the last 30 years with the ability to work with the grain of Auden's English, and turn it to supremely original ends. These intricate, radiant meditations on art and work, politics and the North represent some of the most accomplished writing of our time.

Praise for Peter Armstrong:'Language is made into a real sculpture . . . rather like sounds forming themselves from invisible thoughts and feelings, and emerging before the reader's eyes' Peter Porter