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Recording dizzying changes in culture and politics, these elegant essays range in subject from the photographer Lee Miller to the Archbishop of Canterbury, from the actress Sarah Bernhardt to the rapist Jimmy Savile, from a celebration of Mad Men to a diagnosis of the incoherence of Conservatism in the new century, the painter Patrick Caulfield or the young Chekhov. The poems, in contrast, are private: tender meditations, filled with love, memory, vulnerability and the melancholy of ageing. Titles include a weekend in St Petersburg, Imperfect Villanelle, Thomas Gainsborough, Shakespearean Weather, and Kay Kendall Plays the Trumpet Underground. This is a powerful compilation of prose and poetry by one of the distinctive thinkers of our time. 'David Hare's great quality has always been his refusal to accept the division between fact and imagination... Whether he is writing about Tony Blair or Joan Didion, whether he is writing out of love or rage, evoking the intimate moments of his own life or the great moral questions of our times, he brings his subjects to life with an irresistible immediacy. All the wit, combativeness, energy and edge he has brought to the stage are present here on the page.' - Fintan O'Toole. 304 pages.