Books by John Riley

By the time of his death at the age of 41, Riley had achieved a poetry whose importance is not circumscribed by the concerns and trends of its day. His finest poems are an embodiment of integrity and vision: precise observation and wit co-exist with an extraordinary beauty of image and rhythm.

Between 1929 and 1970, five years before his death, Dmitri Shostakovich wrote almost 40 film scores for most genres of Soviet films, from Stalinist cult epics to classical literary adaptations. His long and distinguished cinema career has hitherto been overlooked.