WHAT W. H. AUDEN CAN DO FOR YOU

Alexander McCall Smith sprang to fame with the No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series and has been delighting fans with his bestsellers ever since. In this unusual and highly personal memoir he describes what the poems of W H Auden have meant to him in some of life's high and low points. In 1940 Auden controversially moved to America, but the plight of all those affected by war remained uppermost in his mind. The words "And love illuminates again/The city and the lion's den" were written to a refugee friend, and eventually he returned to Europe and Christianity. Auden was gay and there is a hint of this in the famous poem "Lay your sleeping head my love/Human on my faithless arm". In an interesting episode he and his partner Chester Kallman collaborated with the composer Stravinsky. One of the most famous poems is "Stop all the Clocks", read by a grieving lover in Four Weddings and a Funeral. Auden's verse can be criticised for prioritising sound over sense, but McCall Smith is fascinated by its sheer intellectual density. In one poem he traces Nazi Germany back to the split between feeling and intellect: "I and the public know/What all schoolchildren learn, /Those to whom evil is done/Do evil in return". Auden is a poet of love, both individually and communally. 137pp, printed on art paper.