Gary Dexter Book order

Can you make a living from poetry? Gary Dexter had to. Career scuppered by a debilitating eye condition, newly married and mortgaged, and the proud owner of a 20-year-old degree in Modern Verse, he did the only thing possible. He learned by heart as many poems as he could, then hit the streets, offering passers-by to recite them in return for a voluntary cash donation. To his surprise, it became a regular job, bringing in a much-needed £12.45 / hour. More surprising, though, were his encounters with the nation's poetry-lovers and -haters (often after closing time)

A middle-aged man on an overnight bus journey to Scotland to attend an anti-nuclear rally commits some jottings to a journal, addressed to his two young daughters. He makes observations about his fellow passengers and reminisces about his days as a student in Hull in the 1980s.

A captivating collection of literary rivalries and conflicts, sourced from the Guardian's 'Writers on Writers' column.

Most book titles simply describe the contents of the book they are attached to. Crime and Punishment is about crime and punishment, and Brideshead Revisited is about revisiting Brideshead. But a small number of book titles have a rather odd, separate existence, almost as independent literary artefacts. The stories behind them are quite different from the stories behind the actual books.