Mrs English and Other Women constitutes an inevitably partial and subjective memoir of marriages, relationships and breakups. Thomas examines his own nature, valuing both security and passion, a complex and sometimes destructive mix. But in his writing it illustrates Yeats’ wise observation that ‘we make rhetoric out of our quarrel with others, we make poetry out of the quarrel with ourselves’. It has meant sometimes clinging on…
About D.M. Thomas
D.M.Thomas, author of the iconic, bestselling novel The White Hotel, is also a distinguished poet, winner of a Cholmondeley award for poetry and the Orwell prize for his biography of Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
A fifty minute selection of his poetry, including poems from his two previous collections with Francis Boutle (Flight and Smoke and Two Countries), read by himself, can be downloaded from the Poetry Archive at poetryarchive.org
‘But sex and love can get confused, alas; though neither a rock-climber nor a brawler, I’ve clung on to the Eiger, the north face; jealous and drunk, I’ve punched like Norman Mailer…’
‘It is Thomas’s achievement to give us a clear if uncomfortable picture of both the loving and the brutalising fantasies on which our hearts continue to feed.’
‘There aren’t many poets in England as good as Thomas.’
