Alexander Pope at Twickenham

Accompanying Alan Wall's Gilgamesh is his new collection of shorter poems and sequences, the centrepiece of which is the London section, in which the author inhabits the clothes of a number of old masters who have lived in London or its environs: Alexander Pope, of course, but also Thomas More, Johnson, Coleridge, Keats, Burton, Rosenberg, Pound and others. Then, 'Lenses' deals with Alexander Topcliffe, an early astronomer, and the unlucky Marsyas also makes an appearance: the cast of characters is extensive, and each is presented with the skill of a novelist, mixed with the precision of the poet.