Overview
In this richly varied selection of Tony Harrison's provocative prose of
the last fifty years, the great poet of page, stage and screen presents a
lifetime's thinking about art and politics, creativity and mortality.
In so doing, he takes us on an extraordinary journey through languages
and across continents and millennia, from his Nigerian Lysistrata to the
British Raj of his version of Racine's Phedre, to post-Communist Europe
for the film Prometheus to a one-off performance of The Kaisers of
Carnuntum at the Roman amphitheatre between Vienna and Bratislava, tothe
peace camp at Greenham Common, and from a Leeds street bonfire
celebrating the defeat of Japan by the new atomic bomb to wines made
from the vines on volcanoes. A collection of work filled with passion
and humour that educates as it dazzles.