Books by Lucy McDiarmid

This is a study of the various answers these three great modern British poets - Yeats, Eliot and Auden - gave to the question of how a 'mere writer' could affect the world of his audience. The author concentrates on the years between the wars, a time when the pressure to save civilization was felt by poets and political leaders alike.

In its original treatment of what Yeats called 'intemperate speech', The Irish Art of Controversy suggests new ways of thinking about modern Ireland and about controversy's bluff, bravado and improvisational flair.