This is a collection of Craig Raine's pieces on the literary world and some of its most fascinating figures and classics. His knowledge of the span of literary theory (and anecdote) and the incisiveness of his thinking uncover as far more contradictory and complex in their successes writers customarily held in reverence. The essays range from a powerful piece on the KGB's literary archive, to thoughts about tragedy in Kipling's life, through Auden, Nabokov, Beckett, to the state of health of Samuel Johnson's testicles. This book celebrates the diversity of the world of books.