A sixty-poem sequence brings a new departure in Alan Brownjohn s poetry. Ludbrooke is a rueful, proud, somewhat devious figure who negotiates the hurdles and snares of an older man s life with or so he likes to think a combination of principle, aplomb, dexterity and romantic flair. Yet his successes are few and modest, and his strategies suggest an alter ego which his creator is obliged to disown. Ludbrooke has been linked by some with the appearance in earlier poems of a character called The Old Fox . But Ludbrooke behaves as if he is younger in spirit, more agile and varied in his activities. These 13-line poems described by the poet Peter Reading as sonnets for the unlucky broadly cover three years of Ludbrooke s day-to-day life in multicultural 21st-century Britain: a batch of near-love affairs, worries about the figure he cuts among friends, battles with work and alcohol but finally a determination never to give up. The Others in Brownjohn s remarkable new volume other poems rather than personalities address a characteristically wide range of subjects: love, disquieting memories, features of a post-industrial world given an edge of slightly surreal fantasy. Some are intensely personal, others look outwards with the alert eye he has always brought to his poems of social observation. Everything in Ludbrooke and Others is achieved with craft and elegance, and in the distinctive voice which makes every poem by this poet instantly recognizable and enjoyable."
About the Author: Poet Alan Brownjohn was born in London on 28 July 1931 and was educated at Merton College, Oxford. He worked as a schoolteacher between 1957 and 1965 and lectured at Battersea College of Education and South Bank Polytechnic until he left to become a full-time freelance writer in 1979. A regular broadcaster, reviewer and contributor to journals including the Times Literary Supplement, Encounter and the Sunday Times, Alan Brownjohn was poetry critic for the New Statesman and was Chairman of the Poetry Society between 1982 and 1988. He has also served on the Arts Council literature panel, was a Labour councillor and a candidate for Parliament. His first collection of poetry, The Railings, was published in 1961. Other poetry books include Collected Poems 1952-1983 (1983, re-issued in 1988) and The Observation Car (1990). He is also the author of three novels, The Way You Tell Them: A Yarn of the Nineties (1990), The Long Shadows (1997) and A Funny Old Year (2001), as well as two books for children and a critical study of the poet Philip Larkin. His novel Windows on the Moon was published in 2009. His latest poetry collection Ludbrooke & Others was published by Enitharmon in July 2010. Alan received the Writers' Guild's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2007.