This is a rare and successful modern epic poem by one of the most learned and linguistically inventive English poets to emerge since the second world war. Difficult though it is in places at first, it is also very moving. Catching the high Arthurian spirit, while also being witty, it will change the life of anyone who reads it.

Both TS Eliot and the critic Herbert Read regarded the young John Heath-Stubbs as perhaps the most remarkable young classical poet of their time. This is a matter of critical record. Others in the 1940s and 1950s said that he had the best ear for a line and for the music of a sustained passage since Milton. These Collected Poems, the fruit of a lifetime which is still yielding admirable work, amply justify that praise.