Books by andrew motion

Editorial Reviews - Amazon

The latest collection from one of our finest narrative and lyrical poets. The new verse of Andrew Morton bears a strong Romantic imprint, with Keats, Shelley, Goethe and Napoleon making specific appearances throughout the course of the book. ...Read More »

Love in a Life, Andrew Motion's sixth volume of poetry, marks a conspicuous development in the work of the founder of the modern Narrative School. Directness and a new colloquialism are wedded to Motion's distinctive obliquities in a volume where the idea of marriage governs the architecture of each poem and the book as a whole. The stories of two marriages gradually emerge, like chapters in a ... ...Read More »

"In the Blood" is Andrew Motion's beautifully written memoir of growing up in post-war England - an unforgettable evocation of family life, school life and country life. It also tells the story of how these worlds are shattered, when his mother suffers a terrible riding accident. The tragedy shadows the book, feeding its mood of elegy as well as its celebratory vigilance. Written from a teenage ch... ...Read More »

Andrew Motion was appointed Poet Laureate in 1999, but alongside his work as a poet he also had a significant career as a prize-winning biographer and an illuminating critic. "Ways of Life" celebrates this talent with a selection of his articles about painters and poets, as well as a number of striking personal pieces. The literary essays in "Ways of Life" look at a wide assortment of writers, fro... ...Read More »

Andrew Motion's new collection moves between private and public realms. In a series of elegiac idylls he conjures expeditionary narratives of a rural childhood - and reconsiders moments of the Victorian past. There are poems for vanished friends and public figures alike, provoking that most sensitive of concerns: what should we make public, what should be made public of us ...Read More »

What is the truth about the mysterious Dr Cake Why, at his funeral, is there no name on the brass plate so ostentatiously screwed into his coffin-lid Andrew Motion, poet laureate, has wriiten a novel about poets and their afterlife. ...Read More »

Dr Cake is an unexceptional man. After a period of study and practice in London and several years spent travelling in Europe, he has chosen the life of a village doctor and lives quietly and alone. Why then, on the brass plate so ostentatiously screwed into his coffin-lid, is there no name ...Read More »

Andrew Motion could have written a conventional biography of Thomas Wainewright, the dandified friend of Blake, Charles Lamb, de Quincey and Keats; art critic and painter (he painted Byron's portrait) who was also a notorious forger and poisoner. Motion's well-regarded biographies of Philip Larkin and John Keats demonstrate that he certainly possesses the biographical skill to get under the skin o... ...Read More »

A child asks if people drown in the Thames. A favourite flower-print dress disappears. Loved ones die. Empties are dragged to the curb. Though rooted in the ordinary, Motion's poems are anything but. In the masterful "Look" the poet forges connections among events that seem, at least on the surface, quite unrelated. First, his unborn twins swim "in mooning blue, / their dawdlers' legs / kicki... ...Read More »

Whitbread Prize-winning biographer Andrew Motion (Philip Larkin: A Writer's Life) aims to broaden our understanding of John Keats (1795-1821) by paying close attention to the historical context in which he wrote and the political opinions he voiced. The poet was "of a sceptical and republican school", Motion argues, and Keats's work reflected his experiences "not just as a private individual, ... ...Read More »

Philip Larkin, known to many through his poems, contrived to present a picture of himself to the world which kept many facets of his complicated personality hidden. In this biography Andrew Motion, Larkin's literary executor and close friend, reveals the full man. Granted access to private documents and assisted by the men and women most intimately connected with the poet, this book tells the stor... ...Read More »