Ways of life : on places, painters and poets

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, from John Clare and Ivor Gurney, to marginal figures such as Leigh Hunt and Joseph Severn, and reassess the less well-known work of celebrated writers including John Donne, Christina Rossetti and Thomas Hardy.

Ways of Life is an original, acute and emotionally-charged collection of writings, from a truly important and insightful writer.