English poet and critic Alvarez begins this autobiography with his recollections of his childhood as the sickly son of deeply unhappy parents. Alvarez courted danger as a way of overcoming his infirmities and found in the deadly ballet of the Battle of Britain - Messerschmitts and Spifires dancing and dueling across the London sky - an image of beauty and risk that would never leave him. And, yet, poetry and the literary life were his first loves as an adult, and he describes the excitement of his early successes at Oxford and as poetry critic at the Observer.

Draws on interviews the author has conducted for ABC Radio National’s literary program ‘Books and Writing. Joseph Heller reveals how marvellous he found his own writing; Gore Vidal is his acerbic best; Susan Sontag takes issue with being called a public intellectual; Joyce Carol Oates gives up on being a study in remoteness when she realises that Koval has read almost everything she has written; Les Murray drives through his New South Wales district and introduces his dead relatives; Judith Wright declares that there was no point to writing poetry after her beloved husband died; Edna O'Brien says that writing is a holy job; Ian McEwan praises the rational approach to life.