Best Selling Books by Tom LEONARD

Highlights the life and achievements of the eighteenth-century German composer and musician, and examines the development of his most important compositions.

Described as a writer of savage indignation and uncomfortable humour, Leonard''s concerns are with language, power, class and politics. This collection of his poetry and prose is taken from the past dozen years and includes a series of pieces he wrote on the Gulf War.

Hamilton, A. Gallus, did you say? Our Merry. Birthday.--Leonard T. Unrerelated incidents. Granny''s. Honest.--Kelman, J. Young Cecil. No longer the warehouseman. The City slicker and the barmaid. Where I was. Fifty pence. Jim Dandy

The poet James Thomson was author of the pessimistic masterpiece The City of Dreadful Night, which Hermann Melville described as a modern Book of Job. Born into a millenialist family, reared in a London Scottish orphanage, Thomson was an early member of the Corps of Army schoolmasters. Expelled from the Army for insubordination, he wrote for the weekly freethought National Reformer where he published pioneering translations of Leopardi, versions of Heine, prose satires on Church affairs and biting criticism of the narrowness of contemporary British literature.